11th Feb: What a day it was? My four classmates and I landed at the CPH airport at 11:30 AM and started immersing globally in the European context right from the start of our arrival in Copenhagen. Our first experience was with the hotel industry. Reached the hotel that we had booked for the first 2 nights via Expedia based on reviews. But when we checked in, we found that the hotel rooms were basically very small cabins and were too small to fit 3 persons (and of course their luggage). The rooms were equipped with anything that you would want in a hotel room but had those only for the namesake. A 14’’ TV and hardly 18’’x48’’ balcony, and the worst of all the attached washroom was even worse than the one we find on airplane (even smaller in size plus with hanging shower). What a grand-welcome of grossly jet-lagged students who were dying for sleep? Still 2 PM (5 AM in Vancouver) and instead of falling asleep, I was wrestling with Expedia customer care to cancel our existing booking and book us some other hotel. After 90 minutes I won a $200 off for new booking at a nearby hotel and 1 night cancellation on our existing booking. Finally, we reached the 2nd hotel that branded itself as ‘Europe’s largest hostel’ and as ‘the 5 star hostel’. I hadn’t heard any hostel of like that before.
The Global Immersion officially commenced on 12th Feb at the Design Museum. I had never been to any museum that was exclusively for designs. Design appeared to be an essential element in the Danish culture that Danes were proud of. All the designs in the museum were human centered and were driven by the social needs prevalent in the corresponding periods. Later, we had a session on the Danish business history that was quite thought provocative. We learnt that how 3 businessmen, in sequence over 100 years, strongly influenced the modern era Denmark right from the policy formulation to the development of infrastructure. It was something quite new for me who had never heard of dominance of only one businessman in my country. Later, we visited Maersk, and its business empire dumbfounded me. Maersk, the Danish conglomerate, is a value-based family owned company that has revenue of the order of $60 billion. Their office was quite large in size and the employees whom we met took great pride in being associated with Maersk. Apparently, I was quite surprised to know that how a company from such a small country was the world leader and truly global with their operations. This was truly in contrast to the businesses in my home country and also what I have seen in North America.
On 13th Feb, we commenced our 3 days trip to explore more Danish companies. We first visited Fritz Hansen, which is a renowned Danish furniture manufacturer. We were told about the history of the company and its guiding principles for the furniture design process. I was intrigued to know that so much emphasis was given on furniture design and in-fact the company had partnerships with some designers. Then we undertook the factory tour. The factory was quite automated but still a lot of activities were performed manually. On average, the factory produced 300 chairs a day. For a massive setup, I expected the price of the chairs produced to be high but not as high as close to 1000 Euro. Surely, the Danish design was truly valued and perceived to be of very high quality.
We resumed our journey and visited the Viking Museum where we cam to know more about Danish history. We then travelled to Gartneriet PKM, a plant manufacturing company. We were greeted with coffee and tea. The R&D manager at PKM told us about their business and future plans. I was fascinated by PKM’s turnover and client base that included IKEA. Its plant was spread across several acres and was hugely automated. I truly got a chance to see the benefits of automation and technology. Also surprising was to know about the CSR activities that PKM was involved into.
On 14th Feb, we visited Carlsberg where we got a chance to talk to the HR manager at Carlsberg and know about company’s history and future plans. It was overall a goo brand management session that we had over there. Afterwards, we visited Fredericia furniture, which unlike Fritz Hansen had more manual labor involved in manufacturing furniture. This company used ‘Made in Denmark’ as their competitive advantage and commanded premium pricing.
On 15th we visited Danfoss, which is again family owned company and market leader in its own arena. Their facility was highly automated and world class. Then we visited Arla, which is a huge cooperative dairy company. I was surprised to learn about their market share and their growth strategy. I never expected a cooperative company to operate business into FMCG at a global scale.
Overall, I learnt a lot visiting the Danish companies, which otherwise I would have missed. Their focus on values, human aspects, going global, and design, all impressed me very much.