Giovanni Ferrero

The Ferreros: Nutella, Tic Tac and Kinder made Italy's richest family

Shaan's Billy of the Week is the Ferrero family, the secretive Italian dynasty behind Ferrero Rocher, Nutella, Tic Tac and Kinder. The family-owned company does roughly $20B a year in revenue, and the third-generation heir who runs it, worth about $32B, is the richest man in Italy.

“Turns out this family invented Nutella. They invented Tic Tacs. They invented like a whole bunch of Kinder, the Kinder bars and Kinder eggs. They invented like several of these like really big things. And now they own a whole bunch of other businesses. So I want to tell you the story of this, this company that's, it's one of the most secretive family-owned businesses in the world. They do like $20 billion a year in revenue. The founder is the, the, main guy, the, the heir, he runs the company and is the richest man in Italy.”

Compete on a different dimension: make the ugly utility product beautiful

Shaan links Ferrero Rocher's gold-wrapped packaging to Touchland, which he says sold for around $800M after turning hand sanitizer into a scented, perfume-like accessory. Instead of beating Purell on the functional spec (germs killed), it won on a dimension incumbents ignored: looks, scent and carry-ability.

“we've talked about Touchland Soap, this, this this woman who sold this company for, I think, $800 million or something recently. And what she did was she took Purell, like, hand sanitizer, this utilitarian, ugly product, and she made it look like women's perfume. And it came in different scents, and it was all hand sanitizer, but, you know, something small you'd want to carry in your, in your purse that looked cool, smelled great, and didn't have, like, you know, change of— just competed in a different dimension than hand sanitizer. Not trying to kill more germs per second, But say your hands aren't going to smell like ethanol at the end of this, right?”

Steal thisPick a utilitarian, ugly category and compete on look, feel and scent instead of the functional spec everyone else fights over.