How Oatly's audacious rebranding turned it into a global retail giant

It's not just about the oats. It's about what the oats stand for. (Part 1 of the Oatly Trilogy)

Summary

• A brief history of the invention of oat milk

• How the brilliant rebranding by Toni Petersson and John Schoolcraft propelled Oatly into the mainstream consciousness

• Controversies from selling animal feed to having Blackstone as a shareholder and suing Glebe Farm’s PureOaty brand

Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash

Born in a Swedish university lab

“Milk has been a natural part of Swedes’ diet and culture for over a century — it’s in the Swedes’ souls” - Rosanna Hagald, producer of produced the “Milk is milk” campaign for Arla

Although oat milk seems a fairly recent phenomenon, it was actually born in a Swedish university lab in 1994. To look into Oatly’s origin, we need to start with cow’s milk, which plays a huge part in the Swedish diet. According to Our World in Data, Sweden consumed almost 50% more milk per capita than the US and the UK in the 1990s.

Prior to creating Oatly, Rickard Öste had examined lactose intolerance for many years as a research scientist of food chemistry at the University of Lund. Looking for a milk alternative for the lactose-intolerant, Rickard first developed a prototype of oat milk with his colleagues at the university in 1994.

Bjorn Öste, Richard’s brother, joined the team too in 1997 to take oat milk further as a commercial product. Before teaming up with his brother, Bjorn was already a very successful entrepreneur, having co-founded and sold a computer security systems company to RSA Security. The brothers’ partnership marked the beginning of Oatly.

Given the high milk consumption of Sweden, there was definitely a large enough serviceable available market for Oatly, should they succeed in disrupting the dairy industry. Nonetheless, according to Rickard, when he “tried to sell it to the milk industry, they basically laughed me out of the room”.

In the first 18 years, Oatly grew into a 50-people company with successful product launches in the supermarkets. Unfortunately, it had an indistinguishable brand and marketed its products just like every other drink on a supermarket shelf. Even by 2012, Oatly would seem an unlikely champion in global retail.

Then there came Toni

In 2012, the Oatly board wanted someone to shape an entirely new vision for the company. Importantly, Oatly looked for someone without a background in the food industry, so they could start with a totally fresh perspective.

In November, Oatly appointed Toni Petersson as the new CEO. At this stage, It was certainly anyone’s guess how things at Oatly could end up.

According to Toni’s Linkedin, he was a busy serial entrepreneur before joining Oatly, founding several ventures that were seemingly unrelated to each other - for example, a wine distribution company in Scandinavia, a lifestyle brand with kitchenware, and a real estate company in Sweden. Toni’s profile on Meaningful Business suggested that he even built a Japanese-style restaurant, Izakaya Koi, with his brother. Toni also enjoyed a 3-year stint as the CEO of Boblbee, a protective backpack designer with some pretty cool designs.

Toni would prove to be a game-changer.