In our trainings we talk about the values of innovative thinkers. Apart from being humble, open and curious, innovation often requires a lot of courage and persistence. Having a creative idea can sometimes mean to belong to a minority consisting of one person.
The Austrian entrepreneur Josef Zotter is such a person. He is breaking almost all rules of established management thinking. However, doing this Zotter developed a very successful business model that made his chocolate manufacture the only Austrian enterprise that is now taught as a case study at Harvard Business School.
Zotter is not adapting himself and his company to the wishes of the customer but forces the customer to adapt to him.
The chocolate market worldwide is dominated by a few big players that offer their products more or less for the same price, with the same few varieties and using the same suppliers. The only differentiator is the brand printed on the packaging. What these big players have in common is that they only focus on a small part of the chocolate manufacturing value chain, outsourcing the rest to specialized suppliers. That is exactly what current business theories would advise. The Zotter Schokoladen Manufaktur uses a very different philosophy: Zotter follows his bean-to-bar approach controlling the entire value chain from the cacao-bean until the end product - the bar of chocolate. He has direct contracts with the cacao farmers, roasts the beans and does all further processing steps himself. Instead of efficiency and often poor quality he focuses on high quality accepting less efficiency in the production process.
Instead of 10 flavors he offers 300 (!) with highly unusual tastes like fish-coconut flavor.
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