Soren Chemical Case

Michael Chesek

Group 7

Soren Chemical

Market Size

Soren Chemicals is a developer and producer of water treatment chemicals the primarily serve large commercial pools with their clarifier Kailan MW. Through market research Soren Chemical has decided to extend their products to target smaller residential pools, where they have found substantive potential for market growth. Kailan MW was a successful product because very small quantities of the clarifier are needed to treat large volumes of water, but it is not applicable to smaller volumes of water because of misuse and safety risks. Therefore, Soren Chemical introduced a diluted product called “Coracle” to target residential pools, with less bathing loads, and a less intensive maintenance program than commercial pools.

It is estimated in the case that there are 9 million residential pools in the United States. Also as indicated by Table A in page 5, the average months of pool usage are 5 months, which can be assumed are the months of May through September, since the case indicates that the pool chemical selling season ends in May. At this time, Coracle has three leading competitors for residential clarifiers: Keystone Chemical, Kymera, and Jackson Laboratories, each holding a 15-20% share of the residential clarifier market. Therefore, the remaining estimated addressable market size for Coracle is between 40-55% if competition and market share of smaller competitors is not considered. If one considers that distributors carry tens of thousands of products from many suppliers, at least two of the formulators sold Kailan MW with a diluted version as a private label clarifier, along with the other competitors, there is roughly a 15% market share that Coracle needs to address, hypothetically. However, if one considers that there are about 9 million residential pools, which cost about $50 in annual treatments per pool, the total market when multiplied at retail is 112.5 million dollars. Then, if we take...