Grupo Bimbo
Introduction
In early 2007 Daniel Servitje, CEO of Mexico-based Crupo Bimbo, sat at his desk eating one of many sweet bread products his company produced and which he had learned to love while working in one of the family owned plants as a boy. He looked out his window toward a growing business district just outside of Mexico City, and wondered how far he could take his dream of one day leading the premier baking company in the world in terms of both size and quality. He had recently told a group of business students interested in Latin America that"our company might have a funnysounding name in English, but it is an icon brand in Latin America and is starting to become one in the U.s. toO."1 He thought about whether it made sense to become one of the first Latin American consumer product companies in any industry to set up a large production business in China and try to dominate the emerging Chinese consumer market for industrial-made breads and sweet goods.
He also thought about his company's decade-long attempt to become both large and highly profitable in the U.S. market. The U.s. business, through a series of operational improvements, had only recently become profitable. He wondered what further strategic changes were needed to become highly profitable in the world's largest bread market. How to make these two global strategy initiatives succeed in the U.S. and China were the focus as he sought to implement his company's
Vision 2010-to make Crupo Bimbo the world leader in the baking