The IPO
The headline “Tony's makes its way to the stock exchange” appears online within 11 minutes. “That's fast!” , we fell off our chairs. In fact, we had serious doubts whether the press release would be picked up at all and now it is online without verification. Within the hour, the lion's share of online news sites and newspapers adopted it. High fives clapped, bursts of laughter rang out in amazement.
The IPO. A look at our chocolate kitchen.
Tuesday morning 8:30 am.
“Send”
The headline “Tony's makes its way to the stock exchange” appears online within 11 minutes.
“Wow, that's fast!” , we fell off our chairs. In fact, we had serious doubts whether the press release would be picked up at all and now it is online without verification. Within the hour, the lion's share of online news sites and newspapers adopted it. High fives clapped, bursts of laughter rang out in amazement.
We have been working hard for months on the 'slave-free participation platform' and three projects in the Beurs van Berlage. The opening of the new Tony's Brandstore, the BITTER Chocolate Stories exhibition and Tony's FAIR. Or as we often say to each other: 'Tony's is going to the stock exchange'.
We said it so often to each other that someone suddenly noticed, 'hey...we need to do something with that!'.
After decades, we are bringing the cocoa trade back to the Beurs van Berlage and, more importantly, we plan to make an impact through the capital market. Not to raise money through the stock exchange, but to spend it. We want to accelerate our mission, among other things, by participating in cocoa multinationals. So… Tony's is going public. Not a word of a lie.
And so the idea arose to announce our decision to go public. With a short press release stating that we are exploring going public and we want to use the capital market to make an impact. Tony's is idiosyncratic, critical, enterprising and we do things with... a little fun along the way. We didn't think that our 'Stock Exchange News' would be widely received.
10am-4pm.
Our telephone is now ringing off the hook. Henk Jan Beltman, our chief chocolate officer, will crawl under his desk until lunch because lying is not an option and explaining the press release would only lead to debunking. Ultimately, Henk Jan only speaks to ANP and RTL Z and provides answers in line with our press release. While we are busy developing our real press release 'that we are going to the stock exchange. Van Berlage, that is, to prepare a video and put it online early.
Some journalists are angry. On us. And maybe also a little in itself.
Should we have done this? Should we have come out with our real message sooner? We are very happy with all the attention, but in retrospect we should certainly have come out with the unveiling earlier. Too much bad boy blood.
We hope to see you soon in the Beurs van Berlage. Come to the exhibition, the new brand store and to our FAIR. Here we explain all the plans to change the industry together with Big Choco.
It's Serious Business, in the Beurs (van Berlage).