Lindt & Sprüngli: where innovation meets tradition

Every year the beginning of spring brings with it clear skies, the year’s first flowers, and green tree buds. It’s also the time when you’ll find the much-lovedLindtGold Bunny in store shelves. The iconic chocolate rabbit with a red bow and golden bell has become synonymous with Easter over the last 70 years, but theLindt & Sprünglisuccess story goes back way beyond that. It all began in a small pastry shop in Zurich’s old town in 1845.

Going from there to manufacturing fine chocolate at eleven production sites across Europe and the United States and selling it in over 120 countries around the world has meant adapting to change quickly and effectively.

So what’s behind Lindt & Sprüngli’s sustained growth over 177 years? How does the company approach digitization and what role do state-of-the-art technologies and payments play? Find out more about the company’s success story and its long-standing partnership with Adyen here.

The scene that captures the very essence of traditional chocolate crafting at Lindt & Sprüngli looks something like this: the door of the pastry shop swings open, the scent of chocolate fills the air and you see a maître chocolatier in a white apron skillfully decorating a beautiful praline. This simple backdrop is what defines the chocolatier’s legacy.

But even as tradition forms the heart and soul of the company’s success story, it has always gone hand in hand with innovation. It was the company’s founder, Rodolphe Lindt, who developed the conching process in 1879 which revolutionized chocolate production. The innovative technique is still used by Lindt and other chocolate manufacturers all over the world today.

The mingling of innovation and traditional craftsmanship forms an important part of Lindt & Sprüngli. It is one of the few chocolatiers that does everything in-house, from the selection, blending and roasting of high-quality cocoa beans to conching chocolate and packaging products.

Innovation at any company now goes beyond the manufacturing process, playing an integral role in sales and distribution. In an effort to deliver the best to its customers, Lindt & Sprüngli uses the latest technologies and developments in retail. And as the company sells its chocolate online and in stores everywhere, ensuring smoothsales across multiple channelshas become an essential element in its growth story.

“A big challenge facing companies today is the ever-increasing digitization and merging of the individual sales channels into one omnichannel. Offering a customer a personalized and consistent shopping experience at every touchpoint is becoming a non-negotiable – online or at one of our more than 500 retail stores worldwide," says Marcel Grabbe, Business Development Manager at Lindt & Sprüngli.

For Lindt & Sprüngli, partnering with Adyen has been pivotal in addressing this and is a testament to how the company prioritizes customers’ evolving needs and desires. “Adyen’s vast coverage and wide scope of global and local payment methods along with its fast and reliable service were key to our decision,” Grabbe says.

Lindt & Sprüngli saw early on that meeting individual local payment needs is critical to sustainable global growth. However, implementing this isn’t easy as each country has its ownpayment preferences, regulations, and fraud risks.

“Adyen currently represents us in 10 countries. This is set to double by the end of the year,” says Grabbe. “Our international contract with Adyen has helped bundle our global transaction volumes, enabling us to significantly reduce the operational complexities of payments processing. It’s also markedly more cost-effective than using local partners in each country.”

Additionally, as Lindt & Sprüngli grapples with the impact of the global chipset shortage and the resulting lack of terminal availability, its partnership with Adyen has stood it in good stead. "Working with Adyen has consistently allowed us to solve this challenge in a timely and seamless manner across our markets,” he added. “And our partnership enables us to further our development plans in a targeted manner.”

More than 175 years into its history, Lindt & Sprüngli continues to seek out new ways to delight and surprise its customers.

The company believes the use of modern technology is an opportunity to forge deeper and long-lasting relationships with customers. For instance, the partnership with Adyen has helped it uncover the potential of payments data in understanding purchasing behaviors and patterns to improve the customer experience.

With reliable payments data, companies get to take a closer look at the performance of their sales channels and buying behaviors of their customers. Merchants that use payments data can identify popular products, manage their inventory accordingly, and create personalized marketing campaigns, enabling data-driven decisions based on buyer needs.

“Going forward, we plan to make further use of payments data. We are excited to see the outcome of the ongoing integration of anonymous Adyen payment data into our global business intelligence tool,” says Grabbe.

There are very few companies that can claim to have achieved such sustained growth over 177 years without losing touch with tradition. As a flexible technology partner, Adyen is proud to support Lindt & Sprüngli in its endeavor to deliver traditional craftsmanship in an innovative way to customers in every corner of the world.