Our cases

ZEEMAN is a Dutch textile retailer focused on low-priced products with good quality and surprising variety. It has expanded over the years to become one of the largest textile retailers with over 1,300 stores in 7 countries. ZEEMAN has set first steps towards ecommerce but now wanted to professionalize this by setting an omnichannel vision and ambition as well as forming a plan on how to reach this.

The Accell Group wanted to perform a detailed technical and commercial due diligence on one of its online platforms. Specifically, they wanted to know if the platform held certain valuable assets that Accell could use to accelerate its overall digital ambitions.

THOMY is a Swiss condiment brand belonging to Nestlé. THOMY wants to remain the front runner in its category and fully 'run' like a digital business. To realize this, THOMY asked SparkOptimus to support in offering increasingly better consumer experiences through digitally enabled, seamless journeys, and a high learning velocity.

Henkel Beauty Care is active in the branded consumer goods and professional hair salon business with their products being available in 150 countries worldwide. Driven by their recent acquisition of a D2C scale-up active in hair coloration, HBC asked SparkOptimus to accelerate this venture towards sustainable growth and identify further growth opportunities to reach their D2C ambition.

HEINEKEN is the world’s most international brewer, with revenues of over €27bn, brands present in over 180 countries and operations in more than 75 markets. Heineken is a proud and independent global industry leader, with a strong brand portfolio and an extensive sales & distribution network across the globe. Understanding that digitisation is driving a seismic shift in how people connect, consume media and consume products, HEINEKEN launched a broad set of digital initiatives across functions and markets throughout the world, with a view to ‘staying in the game’ and learning along the way.

Acknowledging this promising start, SparkOptimus urged HEINEKEN to fundamentally elevate and accelerate its digital transformation. Committed to accelerating growth in a rapidly changing competitive playing field and driven by the ambition to become the clear winner in beer & cider in a digital age, HEINEKEN asked for SparkOptimus’ support in co-developing a shared vision, strategy, and execution plan with HEINEKEN’s key decision makers: the Executive Team and MDs of HEINEKEN’s largest global Operating Companies.

Together with the Executive Team and key local leadership teams, we co-created a shared vision, strategy and 3-horizon plan for accelerating growth in a digitised world. We also defined what was required to realise this ambition across the globe. After formulating the 3-horizon strategy and plan, HEINEKEN asked SparkOptimus for support with achieving the core components of the plan. As part of that support, HEINEKEN and SparkOptimus jointly embarked on an ambitious, multi-year programme to drive the most exciting, most rewarding but also the most complex ‘pillar’ of the three-horizon plan: digitising HEINEKEN’s B2B Route-to-Market to outlets across the globe (scope of this case study). This represented a significant challenge given HEINEKEN’s decentralised governance model and the large variety of routes-to-market and digital maturities present across different markets.

Our client, a notable private equity firm, was looking at a specific investment opportunity in a digital business to expand their portfolio. They asked SparkOptimus to support them in assessing this opportunity, from both a value and a strategic perspective.

Shell is taking the next step to become a consumer-centric and data-driven organization. For the Retail Marketing team this translates to an ambition to shift from top-down marketing to more bottom-up, consumer-insights driven marketing. To get there, Shell needed a dot on the horizon for the management to define what good looks like, and a push for the operational teams to start building key digital and data capabilities.

2500 educators use Stories that Move, a multi-lingual online learning tool made by the Anne Frank House with partners from seven countries. The tool encourages students to think about inclusiveness, diversity, and discrimination and to reflect on their own views and choices in relation to these themes. The team realised they could use help in setting clear priorities in how to continuously improve the tool. The aim: a growing number of users and sessions, leading to a greater social impact.

Colgate-Palmolive Europe (CP EU) is a leading oral, personal, and household care producer with sales in Europe of over $2.4Bn. In recent years, sales of CP products have started to transition towards online through ‘clicks & bricks’, online drugstores, and online marketplaces. Recognizing the potential for online sales to grow further and being aware of the potential for improvement in digital and & e-commerce, CP EU has asked SparkOptimus to refine its digital & e-commerce strategy, including implications for the operating model, develop the resulting roadmap, and support implementation of the strategy.

HEINEKEN asked SparkOptimus to help them better leverage shop data in emerging markets, in order to make better, data-driven decisions on investments in shops and in parallel learn to become more data-driven.

Coca-Cola wanted to strengthen its retailer collaboration in e-commerce, increasing the level of sophistication of its digital strategy before engaging with customers. It believed that retailer collaboration in e-commerce would accelerate the roll-out of this digital strategy by providing a direct link to sales growth.

New players are increasingly taking market share from large CPGs with digital-native brands. In this dynamic, Reckitt (formerly known as Reckitt Benckiser or RB) asked SparkOptimus to design a brand incubator in which Reckitt combines its core CPG strengths with digital-native DNA to develop and launch a pipeline of new brands through an online-first test-and-learn go-to-market approach.

In this vendor due diligence, our client asked SparkOptimus to support them in reviewing plans and drafting reports that would enable them to raise additional capital or equity in a sale process.

eBay Classifieds Group (eCG) is a world leader in classifieds. They provide platforms that “help people find whatever they’re looking for in their local communities”, operating under ten brands that span the globe. Recognizing the potential for impact and opportunities from the continuously changing digital landscape, eBay Classifieds Group asked SparkOptimus to create quarterly reports on the latest trends in the digital world.

SHV Energy asked SparkOptimus to help assess and accelerate one of their ventures: Chama Technologies. Chama aims to be the partner of choice for Brazilian households for purchasing gas bottles, by matching supply from dealers with demand from consumers through a digital platform. We helped Chama & SHV-Energy on three topics, (i) re-evaluating Chama’s role in the value chain, (ii) exploring and validating changes in the current model, and (iii) creating an elaborate, bottom-up growth strategy.

HEINEKEN South Africa (HSA) is a young, fast-growing company that sees data as catalyst to its growth ambitions. It has connected the key data sources in its ecosystem to deepen understanding of tavern and consumer behaviour. The next step was to organize commercial operations accordingly. HSA asked us to facilitate this transformation of sales and marketing into a data-driven growth engine.

HEINEKEN wanted to play into the consumer trends of discovering & enjoying specialty beers and driving sales through a combination of traditional and digital channels and approached SparkOptimus to support them.

ING is a global financial institution with a European base serving customers in over 40 countries. With over 8 million customers ING is the largest consumer bank in the Netherlands. Given the rapid change of customer expectations and the focus of the bank on digital, ING wanted to develop a future-proof design of the omnichannel branch.

IKEA Netherlands has ambitious growth plans for its omnichannel proposition, aiming to provide the consumer with a seamless experience across every channel. IKEA identified optimizing its current delivery fee structure as a key opportunity to grow sales. Realizing the need for a thorough check of its current proposition, IKEA asked SparkOptimus for support to develop an omnichannel delivery fee structure.

Walvis Participaties is a venture capitalist that invests in Dutch internet technology companies. Walvis Fund III focusses on companies in (early) growth stages and with global ambitions. They received a funding request for a minority equity stake in a Dutch online platform that wants to expand their proposition globally. Walvis asked SparkOptimus to conduct a commercial due diligence to evaluate this proposition.