The Skruf Snus Brand

The Brand Takes Shape

With only a modest amount of money to realise their dreams, they started travelling around the country and did research on the Internet to see what they could learn. This resulted in awakening the interest of well-known Swedish marketing guru Michael Storåker and a researcher called Kenth Sändh. They jumped aboard with a small snus product they had been producing locally, in a place called Skruf, located in Småland. The brand had just been born.

From Lemonade to Cranberry Magic

They started to crank up operations at an old dairy factory in late 2003. They tried different formulas until they finally succeeded in making snus they could be extremely proud of. A snus that could go head-to-head with any quality snus already on the market. With a robust and high quality product behind them, fortune smiled on them again when they came across a forgotten 'forest fruits' lemonade bottle in the back of a cupboard. With some adjustments and recipe magic it became the catalyst for Skruf Tranbär.

This Is The Way To Enter A Market

So they had created a great product, but the question remained - how to tell people about it with the marketing restrictions on tobacco in Sweden? A great product needs a great package and something that separates it from the crowd. Most snus cans are traditionally in dark, earthy colours, so let's change that! The Skruf can was created and word-of-mouth marketing took it from there.

In spring of 2004 they launched in Norway and were featured on Norwegian prime time. The very next day 1 million Norwegians were hunting down the Skruf product. Market shares increased from 0% to 4% overnight.

After their successful entry to the Norwegian market the international players began to take notice. Here was a successful startup with potential and a great range of products aimed at a trendy and demanding group of consumers. Imperial Tobacco initiated talks and consequently bought into the Skruf phenomenon to further fuel international expansion and product growth.