Mr. Fisher’s great-great grandfather, who laid the foundation of the family business by establishing a hardware business, Emerson & Fisher in Saint John, New Brunswick, in the late 1800s. Then, the family bought the Enterprise Foundry in Sackville, and moved there in the 1870s. Due to their good management, the business was growing fastly. As the business grew in the 1970s, over 400 people were hired to make all variations of cooking and heating products. However, good time did not last long. As we all know, the oil crisis occurred in the 80s which rose interest rate and fuel price. Therefore, a drastic downturn in their business during the 80s. As a result, the company went broke in 1982.

However, they did not give up after setback. Mr. Fisher, who is the fourth-generation entrepreneur of this family business, saw an opportunity to build Compact Appliances which was a distribution company to provide alternate heating options for home and commercial use. But as the company grew, he quickly realized that expansion would be limited by the size of the accessible market: primarily the Atlantic region. Therefore, he had to come up with a solution to solve this problem.

To solve the problem, Mr. Fisher decided to diversify his product offerings instead of  selling more units of the same good to a limited market.  In addition, the company would add more heating and related products to its portfolio. According to the perspective of line extension, despite the disadvantages of line extensions, there are some cases in which it is not economically feasible to create a new brand and in which a line extension might work. In his case, the volume of the product in this market is pretty low. Also, this is an undifferentiated commodity; therefore, it has less need of its own name than does a breakthrough product. Without doubt, his strategy was successful.

In conclusion, the reason why Mr. Fisher could be successful is because he stresses offering a diversified portfolio of products and built a suitable company’s business model.