My friends, there is a huge ocean out there containing many species of fish, enough for everyone!

There was once a fisherman who was only interested in one type of fish. And that fish was the lobster. The reason why he was only interested in the lobster was because he loved lobsters. He knew where to find them, he knew how to catch them, and he knew many different ways to prepare delicious lobster meals. He had relationships with and belong to a network of lobster lovers; merchants who sold his lobsters as meals to their customers.

Lobster was a very expensive meal, yet many customers continue to demand its taste. His job was to supply the best lobsters in the world to merchants that offer prepared lobster meals to customers. With that said, he continuously added lobsters to his custom design lobster farm in an effort to meet the demand of his network of merchants. He continued to search for more efficient ways to catch, preserve and acquire lobsters for his inventory. He considered himself a professional lobster expert. In his own mind, he was the Frank Perdue of lobsters; therefore he could provide a quick accurate visual evaluation and answer any questions that one might have about lobsters. New merchants seek out his expertise and services as a supplier of quality lobsters. Life was good as a lobster expert.

Two major events occurred that adversely affected the business of supplying lobsters to merchants:

Because of advancement in technologies and motivation driven by corporate greed, many merchants attempted to increase stakeholder’s value by directly entering the lobster supply side of the business. This was justified as an effort to reduce their lobster supply cost. They invested in specialized boats, salaries, deep sea fishing gears, refrigeration, and all the tools that were necessary to run a lobster supply operation. Managing their own lobster supply operation allowed the merchants to consolidate and process all their sea food deliverables into one operation.
As a result of the merchant’s direct involvement in the supply side of the lobster business, new types suppliers entered that space. They sold to the merchants the newest and latest lobster equipment and supplies. The merchants were told that these new equipments were able to locate lobsters in the open sea and secure them faster than the old school lobster expert could. It would also save them a boat-load of money.
With the perception of merchants now raking in huge profits by managing their own lobster supply operation, more suppliers entered that space to get a piece of the action. Their objective was to sell the merchants recommendations on how to store, preserve, separate and select the best lobsters that could be served as delicious meals. This would also save the merchants even more money, they claimed.
With this shift in dynamics of the lobster supply side of the business, old school lobster suppliers saw huge decline in demands for their lobsters; many were forced to close or reduce their operations. As a result, the less experienced fishing hands flee to the merchant’s lobster supply model in search of employment.

The second event that adversely affected the lobster supply business was the financial melt-down of 2008. The impact crippled the entire economy. Customer demand for lobster meals steeply declined; which led merchants to cut back on the largest over-head cost (salaries of the fishing hands) of efficiently managing a lobster supply operation. These roles left vacant by fishing hands brought even more new suppliers to that space, selling automation and off-shoring as an intermediary solution until the next recovery. With less demand for lobster meals, the supply of inventoried lobsters increased. And with this increasing daily supply of available lobsters from the ocean, selecting the best lobster to be prepared as a delicious meal became the biggest challenge in the lobster supplier operation.

In the great economic recovery of 2010, the need for lobster farms and in-house inventory were no longer needed; the huge ocean served as the true supplier of lobsters. To survive, all the players had to change their procedures in order to adjust to the new balance of nature.

Here are the three major changes that occurred, which started the 2010 recovery:

Old School suppliers adjusted to utilizing technological tools to improve efficiency and their hand-on experience to add consultative value in their supply process.

Merchants re-evaluated their internal operations and discovered that hi-tech tools were only as good as the people using them; so they separated the lobster processing functions from the other sea foods processing functions.

Lobsters, concerned about being over-supplied and diminishing in value, took initiatives to distinguish themselves so that they could be easily found, identified and evaluated by suppliers and merchants.

That is how the Great Recovery of 2010 got started…and everyone lived happily ever after…

Cast of Characters

Old School Suppliers.……………………….....Third Party Recruiters
Merchants……………………………………………………….Employers
Fishing Hands………………………………….....Corporate Recruiters
Lobsters………………………………….…………..Passive Job Seekers
New Suppliers…………………………....……….Technology Vendors
Ocean………………………………………………………………..Internet
Inventory…………………………….…………………Resume Database
Other Sea Foods……………………..……………….Active Job Seekers