I recently had the pleasure of Ben & Jerry attending my the hallowed halls of my sometime employer Melbourne University. It really was something special, with great insight for startups. Guys who not only get it, but do it. here’s some quotes from the two ice-cream headache regulars during their talk. I can’t remember who said which bit, but I guess it doesn’t matter, and I’m sure they won’t mind.
Cool stuff they said:
Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s and Slimfast in the same year.
Ben is a dropout from 5 Universities.
They wanted to make ice-cream. So they both did an ice-cream making course.
They chose a market with no competitors, over a market with warm weather.
They didn’t know how to write a business plan. So they copied a plan from a pizza palour and exchanged the word pizza for ice-cream in the plan.
Their first store was in an old abandoned gas station.
They bought used equipment.
The got through their first winter by selling to local restaurants.
Ben had the idea to start selling packaged ice cream in winter. He bought an old truck and manned it himself. Selling mainly to distributors and mum and pop stores. he got 30 accounts in one month.
The flaw in their business model created the packaged ice cream opportunity
They had push back from Pillsbury who sold Haagan Das for distributors to not stock Ben & Jerry’s. So they started their famous underground gorilla marketing campaign ‘What’s the Dough boy afraid of?’
They even ran a ‘What’s the dough boy afraid of’ advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine.
They put a toll free number on the pack for a free Doughboy marketing kit to gain support. In it included a letter to Pillsbury titled – Pick on someone your own size, a t-shirt and and bumper sticker. The media picked it up and eventually Pillsbury backed down.
Eventually they realised they weren’t ice cream guys, but business guys, and they had to change.
So they did an equity offer just in the state of Vermont. The net result was 1 in 100 local families took stock ownership in the company.
Their discussion of socially responsible strategies was fascinating too, particularly for the fashion in which they were fundamentally integrated into what the firm does (rather than bolt-on afterthoughts). The firm does good stuff for communities but from a clear profit-driven perspective. See more here: http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/building-a-socially-valuable-chain-of-activities-at-ben-and-jerrys/