I found the first half of the book really interesting, as the two entrepreneurs struggled in a myriad of ways to get their business off the ground. The latter half delves more into the corporate side, where the focus turns to corporate social responsibility and succession planning and other less interesting things, at least to me.

The most fascinating thing I learned was about their main competitor in the super-premium niche: HÄAGEN-DAZS. This European-sounding brand was created by a born and bred New Yorker who realized some Americans would drop extra money on ice cream if they thought it was made in some hoity-toity foreign country. They placed a map of Denmark on their packaging, used a name that doesn’t mean anything, and put umlauts (those two dots over the “A”) in the name even though the Danish language has no umlauts in it. I’d find this insulting as a customer if I knew this, but people either didn’t know or didn’t care as this brand became the leader in its niche and led to a bunch of copycats.

I recommend the book to anyone interested in entrepreneurship and/or in premium brand positioning.