Untitled - CBS Observer

Introduction
It was a cold morning in February 2013. Jesper Møller, the CEO of Toms Confectionery Group, was look-
ing down at the frozen fountain in the courtyard by Toms’ headquarters outside Copenhagen. Designed in
1962 by the famous Danish architect Arne Jacobsen, the headquarters, like the company, was an iconic
piece of Danish history. For decades, Toms had been a Danish household name and local market leader
within the confectionery industry. Today, however, it was time to look ahead.
Toms, like most other companies, had gone through the
financial crisis with a solid focus on the cost base. How-
ever, as a small player in the global confectionery industry,
the company could only go so far with cost cutting alone.
Instead, Toms needed to make a thorough analysis to capture
the opportunities that lay ahead. That morning, Møller had
called together his management team to discuss Toms’ fiveyear
strategy for the chocolate confectionery business under
the following headline:
How should Toms profitably grow its
chocolate confectionery business?
Toms’ ambition was to find focused growth as a strong niche
player. Until 2012, the Danish market had accounted for
almost 60 percent of Toms’ revenues. But Denmark is a mature,
price-competitive market with heavy excise taxes on confectionery
products. Møller and his team feared that the Danish
market would become increasingly unattractive for chocolate
confectionery manufacturers. Instead, Møller was confident
that other attractive opportunities existed.
In the spring of 2012, Toms took a significant step forward
by acquiring the German chocolate company Hanseatische
Chocolade GmbH. Overnight, Toms added sales of 360 million
Danish kroner. However, the management team agreed
that this was only the first step in Toms’ path.
As Møller and the management team watched the day’s first
truckload of cocoa beans approach the factory loading dock,
they began reflecting on the past, present and future of Toms
as a chocolate confectionery company.
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