GreyMatter
Uncommon Perspectives by Naveen Bachwani
Filed under Work | 9 May 2005 |
2 responses
When I look back on my university years, I realize that much of my ‘extra-curricular’ reading has involved perspectives that you might call uncommon. I don’t know if it was my inclination towards the irreverent, or my exposure to such perspectives that, in turn, shaped my inclination. Either way, I usually found myself on the side of the underdog.
One such ‘underdog’ was the socially relevant ice-cream business popularly known as “Ben & Jerry’s”.
I had the pleasure of reading the story of its startup when I was in business school. “The Inside Scoop” was a fascinating account of how two friends began a small enterprise in a converted garage and eventually went on to make millions. And, along the way, they also found time to setup the ‘Ben & Jerry’s foundation’ and established some pretty unconventional (and socially-responsible) business practices.
According to Answers.com :
Childhood friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield took a correspondence course in ice cream-making from Penn State University, Agriculture 5150, and founded the company in 1978 in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont. Starting with a $12,000 investment ($4,000 of which was borrowed), the friends built a devoted following, both for their products and the company’s business practices.
The company became known for its known for its innovative flavor combinations and names (such as “Cherry Garcia,” the first ice cream named for a rock legend), its environmentally friendly production policies, and its local, national and international social involvement.
The packaging for their pint containers is made from recycled, bleach-free papers. The company is supporting research into thermoacoustics to minimize the potential negative environmental impact from using ozone-depleting refrigerants. As a whole the company is very eco-friendly and encourages its users and consumers to be the same.
For one day every April, Ben and Jerry’s observes Free Cone Day as a “thank you” to its customers. On this day, over one million cones are given away.
In 1988, Ben and Jerry were named “U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year” by President Ronald Reagan.
Naturally, I was troubled to learn that Ben & Jerry’s had been bought over by the giant Unilever group! It’s not a recent development, but one that came as a surprise to me – an unpleasant one.
Donella Meadows has captured some of my sentiments in an essay entiled “The Globalization of Ben & Jerry’s” :
So Unilever has gobbled up Ben & Jerry’s. The $45 billion megacompany that rose from the British and Dutch colonial empires (turning palm and coconut oil into soap and margarine) has acquired Vermont’s outrageous little ice cream maker for $326 million.
Truth is, the freewheeling Ben & Jerry’s has been less free since going public and growing big enough to bring in professional managers. In order to attract those managers, the company said it had to sacrifice its self-imposed limit on the gap between its lowest and highest compensation rates. That’s when we all knew the point had been crossed, the awful point beyond which a business has to make serious tradeoffs between getting bigger and sticking to its principles.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? Does every David end up being devoured by the Goliath of its time? I think Meadows sums it up best in her concluding paragraph :
I try hard not to be a cynic, so I’ll challenge Unilever not to give me and everyone else the excuse to do so. I will believe that a huge corporation can be principled if Ben & Jerry’s continues to refuse to use milk produced with bovine growth hormone.
Maybe there’s a chance. Ben and Jerry and Unilever, I wish you success, measured in more than money. But if it doesn’t work, if five or twenty years from now there’s nothing more than a Ben & Jerry’s historical marker in Vermont, maybe we will be willing to rethink the system that rewards corporations for seeking the cheapest raw materials, workers, and environmental standards in order to produce the fastest growth. Maybe, instead of being cynics, we’ll become activists in forging a corporate environment that measures success, as Ben and Jerry’s did, in more than money.
Time will tell.
Jamal
Where are you taking the reader. ?Your earlier post has an essense of condradiction to the current one.
Anand S
The author merely expresses anxiety over the future of a business that has steadfastly maintained its values while doing business. It is not a cry against change. You should note that the earlier entry merely echoes the sentiments that people commonly have in the throes of change and upheaval. In fact the author does not offer evidence that he is averse to change. Yes change is unsettling and can be detrimental sometimes.. Therefore I disagree with your observation that the author appears to be contradicting himself between the latest entry and the one before it