Challenging ‘Impossible’: How Tony’s Chocolonely Proved Ethical Business Can Win, According to Da…

In a recent LinkedIn post, Dan Sherrard-Smith highlights the remarkable story of Tony’s Chocolonely’s founder, Teun van de Keuken, as a powerful case study for challenging industry excuses about profitability and ethics. Sherrard-Smith uses this narrative to illustrate how bold action and a commitment to core values can overcome deeply entrenched problems, even when major players claim solutions are impossible.

The story, as detailed by Sherrard-Smith, begins with van de Keuken’s frustration as a journalist in 2003. After exposing child slavery in West African cocoa production through his reporting, he grew disillusioned with the lack of tangible progress. This frustration led him to a radical act: intentionally consuming chocolate produced with slave labor, thereby making himself complicit under Dutch law. Sherrard-Smith recounts this pivotal moment:

“He’d knowingly eaten chocolate made with slave labour. Under Dutch law, knowingly buying the proceeds of a crime makes you part of it. So in 2005 he turned himself in and demanded to be prosecuted.”

Even after this dramatic public stand, which included bringing enslaved individuals to testify, the industry largely maintained that a fully slave-free supply chain was an unattainable ideal. Sherrard-Smith emphasizes this widespread industry resistance:

“Every big chocolate company said the same thing: A fully slave-free supply chain was impossible.”

From Journalist to Chocolate Entrepreneur

Rather than accept this verdict, van de Keuken decided to actively disprove it. As Sherrard-Smith explains, he founded his own chocolate company, Tony’s Chocolonely. The name itself reflects his feeling of being alone in his mission to eradicate slavery from the chocolate industry. The company’s distinctive chocolate bar, with its deliberately unequal segments, serves as a visual metaphor for the unfair distribution of profits within the cocoa trade.

Proof of Concept: Ethical Business Can Be Profitable

The success of Tony’s Chocolonely, as presented by Sherrard-Smith, serves as undeniable proof against the industry’s long-standing excuse. The company not only became one of the largest chocolate brands in the Netherlands, surpassing giants like Nestlé and Mars, but also achieved significant financial success, reportedly turning over more than $160 million annually.

Sherrard-Smith distills the core lesson from this success:

“The industry’s excuse for doing the wrong thing is almost always ‘it isn’t commercially viable to do the right thing.’ But that’s a challenge, not a fact. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can build isn’t a product. It’s proof that the excuse was never true.”

This perspective challenges businesses to re-evaluate their own industry’s accepted limitations. Sherrard-Smith prompts readers to consider what seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their own fields might simply be excuses waiting to be disproven by innovative and ethically-driven action.

The narrative powerfully advocates for the idea that doing the right thing and achieving commercial success are not mutually exclusive. By founding Tony’s Chocolonely, van de Keuken didn’t just create a successful business; he created a compelling argument against the pervasive notion that ethical practices are a commercial liability.