Mike Wells

Wells Enterprises is a company that has been around for 110 years. Currently they have 4000 employees, 70+ product lines, and produce roughly 1 billion pounds of ice cream a year. Wells produces 20% of all ice cream in north America. Blue Bunny is the #2 sold Ice cream cones in the US, Bomb pop is the #2 sold water Ice, and Halo Top is the #1 in better for you points.

Wells originally had no premium offerings for Ice Cream. This is how the Halo Top Acquisition came about. Halo Top was struggling in sales, and they were on a decline. Wells found this company and decided that they can make use of it, so they acquired it in 2019 and their sales went up over $500 Million that year. 

Mike Wells Is a Morningside graduate, 3^rd generation CEO of Wells Enterprises. He became CEO of the company in 2008 during the recession. Wells Enterprises was going through a drought. They were in a tough spot and weren’t making much revenue, so they decided that they needed to redo the family structure in the business (originally it was the oldest sibling had the highest job). Once Mike became CEO, A lot of changes happened for the better.

Mike pioneered the idea that since wells is a family business, there should be some outsiders working to keep the family in line and united. So, for instance if a family member was a CEO, then the board president would be an outsider, or if the board president was a family member, then the CEO would be outsider. This worked for them because it helped them continue the family business, but also enhance their brands to be sold across America. 

In 2013, Mike and his team decided to outsource their marketing to a third party since they felt like their internal marketing was not succeeding very well. They were not doing a very good job of understanding trends and how to market with those. In 2014 Mike and his team hired a new COO who did understand marketing and how to incorporate and adapt to trends. Mike mentioned that ‘Marketing is How you drive a business.” If you don’t have the awareness needed to sell a product it won’t sell. With Ice cream,

Mike’s goal was to give them characteristics that fit with the tastes and feelings of eating it. This gave Blue Bunny a way to remarket their products by informing consumers that the ice cream related with different products that give you different feelings. By adding the personal aspect to the ice cream, It really drove business for them and helped them grow even bigger.