{"id":41422,"date":"2023-10-20T15:13:50","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/how-acting-like-a-startup-led-to-a-nz-snack-company-being-sold-for-641-million-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:13:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:13:50","slug":"how-acting-like-a-startup-led-to-a-nz-snack-company-being-sold-for-641-million-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/how-acting-like-a-startup-led-to-a-nz-snack-company-being-sold-for-641-million-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"How acting like a startup led to a NZ snack company being sold for $641 million – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Griffin\u2019s Food, New Zealand\u2019s biggest snack food company, utilised lean startup methodologies to quickly and effectively launch a new product in China, eventually leading to a NZ$700 million ($641 million) acquisition.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The director of customer engagement startup Quantify<\/a>,<\/span> Alan Gourdie, used this as an example of how these principles can be used by big, traditional companies as well as high-growth tech startups.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Speaking at the Lean15 conference in Wellington, New Zealand, Gourdie talked about working with the large corporation and showing them how to work like a startup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He said Griffin\u2019s Foods was put up for sale in 2014 and wanted to launch in the south-east Asia market to improve its prospects. Due to the impending sale, speed was of the essence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThey realised the cost of failure was going to be extremely high and they couldn\u2019t have the normal risks associated with product-market fit,\u201d Gourdie said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThey decided they would use the lean startup methodology to improve and de-risk the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In contrast to what many other large corporations would do, Gourdie said Griffin\u2019s researched the market and discovered a gap before actually developing a new product.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the main idea: do nothing until you\u2019ve found a problem worth solving,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThey tested a number of markets before creating a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MVP ASAP<\/b><\/h2>\n

After identifying some problems, the company then took another route often travelled by startups, developing ten new snacks in a rapid fire manner to get it to consumers as quick as possible, while many businesses would wait until the product was \u2018perfect\u2019 until testing it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDevelop a product that is simply the cheapest way possible to get the proposition in front of consumers as fast as possible,\u201d Gourdie said<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t spend months naval gazing – take on the learnings and go again.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bear-shaped cookies were eventually the winner, and were out in the general China market within six months.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was something Griffin\u2019s hadn\u2019t done before, they weren\u2019t used to these quick turnarounds,\u201d Gourdie said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This would have been even quicker if the traditional structure of the corporation hadn\u2019t held it back, he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe gravitational pull of the mothership started to gradually change the practices in the company, usually detrimentally.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lessons for all startups<\/b><\/h2>\n

Thanks in part to the quick success in China, Griffin\u2019s Food was acquired by Universal Robina last year for NZ$700 million.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a testament to the effectiveness of these startup methods, Robina then tested the company\u2019s products in the Philippines, and the newly developed cookies were in the most popular, above others that took much longer to gain traction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Although most startups aren\u2019t in the bear-shaped cookie game, the success of Griffin\u2019s offers some lessons for all founders and entrepreneurs, Gourdie said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t spend months and hundreds and thousands of dollars doing quantitative and qualitative research to get that problem defined,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cGet these development products in front of likely consumers then move into your MVP.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019ll give you real answers from real people about what you\u2019re really going to provide customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

StartupSmart attended Lean15 as a guest of Positively Wellington Tourism.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Griffin\u2019s Food, New Zealand\u2019s biggest snack food company, utilised lean startup methodologies to quickly and effectively launch a new product<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}