PREMIUM COLA

Premium wants to present and spread a fair, ecological and socially sustainable economic model with high quality.

Sunday 11 June 2017

0 inspired

A. The main facts about the activities of the company.

Premium-Cola is a soft drink company founded in 2001 in Hamburg, Germany, by a collective of fans of the German brand Afri-Cola, that at some point in time changed its recipe. Although it is part of the capitalist market, Premium-Cola works in a very different way from usual and has intrinsic differences with their competitors.
The firm produces and sells Cola to Germany, Switzerland and Austria. They define themselves as an ecological, fair, high quality and socially sustainable company.

B. The Ethical challenges this company is addressing.

• The first ethical challenge this company faced, and the main reason it was created, was the fact that many companies don’t actually listen to their consumers and they prioritize profits to them. The founder once noticed that the taste of his favorite Cola was not the same, and after asking to the company what did they change, they turned their back to him. Instead of giving up and accepting the power companies had over him, he decided to challenge them by creating its own soda brand with the original taste he liked along with other unsatisfied customers.
• The company also challenged the mistrust model this society is made, where each individual has to gain their trust. Premium Cola decides to trust all of its customers, workers and collaborators until they prove the opposite, and in so, they refuse to use contracts.
• The company main goal is to show that is possible to work with equal rights, equal pay, honestly together and not against each other.

C. What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it?

Here are some facts that define the way our ethical company works:
• Their main objective is not to gain profits, not to do any marketing campaigns, as those are additional costs.
• The decision making process is not made by any individual. All the “collaborators” reach an agreement through a democratic process, leading to smarter, more social and more efficient choices.
• They only sell and provide their product to selected points that share the same values and philosophy as the firm, instead of selling to every bar and club.
• They take into account our planet and all of their actions are environmentally friendly.

Not only the challenges this company is facing and all those facts that prove this company is different from the rest are what have inspired us, but also this words from Elena Tzara, one of the team members of Premium-Cola, had a big impact on us and the way we see the business world:

“I want business and thus (large) companies NOT to decide about the paths we go as mankind. I personally would like to live in an economically, ecologically and socially sustainable world. I wish for a society in which money, power, and its own advantage play a subordinate role, and in which instead a ruthless and lasting behavior gets much more recognition.”

We trust this company because we have met the founder and he believed what he said, he is trying to create a new model of business.

D.The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

One of the main problems this company may face is that the soda market in which it operates is a declining industry, and may find trouble surviving on it during the following years. But Premium Cola is already facing those future challenges by launching new alternative drinks like beer, mate drinks and lemonade.

Another problem that concerns the members of Premium Cola is about the adequate level of growth the company needs to have, as Premium Cola wants to grow enough to keep surviving but not too much as a very large company is more difficult to control and may find trouble staying faithful to the firm’s values.

Bibliography

http://www.premium-cola.de/
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/jan-pfaff/die-gute-cola
https://www.degrowth.info/de/2016/11/premium-und-das-revolutionaer-utopische-firmenkonzept/

http://www.premium-cola.de/betriebssystem/system-geschichte

Location: Hamburg (Germany )

Sector: Wholesale and retail trade, Accommodation and food service activities

Official website: http://www.premium-cola.de/

Key figures:

Countries of operation: Germany, Switzerland, Austria

Nbr. visits: 1350