Advice from the Front Lines of Sustainability: You Have to Take the Stairs, There is No Elevator, A Conversation with Daniela Suter, The Migros Group of Switzerland

Abstract

Executive InterviewExecutive SummaryHeadquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the Migros Corporation was founded in 1925 and is one of Switzerland's largest corporations and biggest employers. Today, the company makes 25 billion CHF per year in annual revenue (1 CHF or Franc = about $1.09 USD), attains 659 million CHF in operating income, and counts more than 2 million households as members of its cooperative (representing more than 60 percent of the Swiss population). Migros employs about 86,000 individuals. The Migros Group is primarily a retail organization and is known for its grocery stores, department stores, and discount stores. It has business operations in food, household products, clothing, furniture, restaurants, sports, and electronics. The Group also has business operations in a variety of other areas such as banks, schools, insurance offices, gas stations, recreation parks, and hotels.Gottlieb Duttweiler was the founder of Migros and remained at its helm until his death in 1962. His original mission was founded on the notion that a business should be run to benefit the broader society and culture while also providing high quality products that customers can trust. Today, the business is run as a cooperative with a broad set of environmental and social objectives. Individuals can purchase a share in the business, which gives them voting rights. Profits are then put back into the corporation to help support their other business units, like the Klubschule (club school) for example, which would operate at a loss if it were not for the infusion of funds from the corporation. The Klubschule is the educational division of the company - it offers low-cost classes in languages, health and fitness, new media, and other work-related skills for the 21st Century.Daniela Suter is the Head of Sustainability for the non-food part of the business. This includes such business units as sports, tools & equipment, electronics, furniture, garden, personal care, clothing, toys, and household products. In other words, as Suter puts it, anything you can't eat or shouldn't eat. This portion of the business accounts for 4 Billion CHF in annual turnover. Ms. Suter started her career in international logistics, working for fashion and textilebased companies and selling household fabrics and textile supplies to customers around the world. Later, she worked as a garment buyer and when she visited places like India, she saw things that she didn't like; things she didn't want to see. In the 18 years since coming to Migros, she has developed a strong sense of how business operations could critically impact global cultures and systems. During this time, she came to believe that transparency and verification of the supply chain are of critical importance to an organization's success.At the same time she was developing this expertise, the Migros Corporation was making a strong commitment to the concept of sustainability. In 1970, the corporation created the Migros Sano Initiative, an effort to provide more healthy and humanely sourced products to consumers. Throughout the 1970s, Migros implemented a variety of ecological programs and energy conservation programs throughout its far-reaching operations. At the time, this was a courageous, innovative, and risky move. To put this into perspective, these decisions were made in an era when business leaders and the public had not even heard of the concept of sustainability. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962, the first Earth Day had just occurred in April 1970, and the UN was still more than a decade away from issuing its definition of sustainability (this happened in 1986). Thus, although some ardent environmentalists had started discussing the importance of protecting the Earth's natural resources, the issue of sustainability and its implications for business were still at least 30 years away from becoming a normal part of today's business lexicon. …