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Mba540 Week 2 Benchmarking

Week 2 Benchmarking
University of Phoenix
MBA 540
Maximizing Shareholder Wealth

Wild Oats
Wild Oats was founded in 1987 by Michael Gilliland and his wife, Elizabeth Cook, with the purchase of the Crystal Market vegetarian natural foods store in Boulder, Colorado. With no experience in the natural foods business, the founders relied on the expertise of their employees and the wealth of natural product knowledge in Boulder to build Crystal Market into a thriving business. In 1991, Wild Oats opened their first supermarket-sized store in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1992, Crystal Market was re-named Wild Oats Vegetarian Market, and in the ensuing years the company began opening and acquiring other, small natural foods stores.
In 1993 and 1994, Wild Oats was named one of the "500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America" by Inc. Magazine. In 1996, it became a public company traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market. The Wild Oats story continued with a period of rapid growth through acquisitions and new store development, which peaked in 1999 with the addition of 47 stores in a single year. Wild Oats operated 109 stores in 23 states and British Columbia, Canada (Capers™ Community Markets) at the time it merged with Whole Foods Market in August of 2007.
Wild Oats merged with Whole Foods Market to form a giant in the natural food market, but also because Wild Oats had accumulated an enormous amount of debt. While opening new stores at a frantic pace, the natural food market began to feel the economic pressures of the last few years and sales margins decreased sharply. As debt began to quickly consume the company, Whole Food Market expressed interest in a merger. Whole Foods Market was willing to assume all of Wild Oats' debt and would allow the company to keep all stores.
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