Because his stepmother and sister are not good at business, the specific management falls into the hands of Kubenbach.

Although Kubenbach was a mediocre business, he made Mars Candy popular in the United States by sponsoring popular TV shows.

On the other hand, Forrester, who expanded his territory in Europe, also founded his own Forrest Mars Food Manufacturing Company, and the new product "Mars Bar" was very popular in Europe, and in a very short time, he earned the total income of his father's life.

Although the company had established itself in Europe, Forrester was not satisfied and looked elsewhere.

At that time, there was no professional pet food, and cats and dogs usually only ate human leftovers, and in 1934, Forrester realized that this was a huge business opportunity, and acquired a food factory that produced and filled minced meat for cats and dogs, Chappel Bros.

Through mergers and acquisitions and restructuring, Boro Dog Food and Weijia Cat Food were born in 1935.

With no competitors, he quickly became a market leader.

With the outbreak of World War II, Forrester handed over the factory to his cronies and returned to the ugly country himself, this time with his own plans.

War has brought casualties, but also great business opportunities.

As early as the First World War, he had seen a kind of chocolate that was not easy to melt and easy to carry, as a reward for soldiers, and at present, this kind of chocolate must have a wider market.

However, due to Frank's short-sightedness at the time, Mars did not have its own supply chain, raw materials were controlled by others, and with the outbreak of war, chocolate was even more scarce.

Forrester found a former rival, Hershey, and wanted to establish a partnership, with him contributing 80% of the capital, Hershey's technology and the remaining 20% to jointly build the product.

In the face of eternal good, Hershey chooses to agree.

The two partners collaborated on the development of the non-melting, sugar-coated M&M's beans (Mars and Murrie), which made their way to Hershey's as a soldier necessity until the end of the war.

But Forrester was notoriously short-tempered, and as the cooperation deepened, Hershey's Maury found him more and more difficult to get along with, and eventually the two parted ways.

Morrie sold all of his shares back to Forrester, who removed Morrie's Hershey altogether.

Through these successful business operations, Forrester has shown Mars Board members his earning power and business value.

Faced with interests, some members began to waver and chose to turn to Forrester.

By 1943, he had won three of the nine seats on the board of directors.

However, in the face of Kubbenbach, who has the absolute right to speak, Forrester is still a drop in the bucket.

After the disappearance of military chocolate, M&M's beans need to return to the mass market.

After a series of studies, they targeted the child.

In order to dispel his parents' concerns about chocolate-stained clothes, Forrester invited advertising guru Birneback to shoot an advertisement, and the phrase "It doesn't dissolve in the hand, only in the mouth" made M&M's beans a household name.

M&M's beans were sold all over the world, with revenues exceeding $60 million in 1959.

At this point, more members of the Mars Board of Directors turned to Forrestal, and Kubenbach knew it was time for him to "retire".

Although he knew at the time that the company would only grow stronger in Forrester's hands, he did not do so, and instead handed over control of the group to his sister Patty's husband.

This is a man who is not good at business and likes to be short of pounds and pounds, and his method of controlling costs is to use less expensive materials, and Mars's revenue soon fell sharply.

Kubenbach, who has retired, seems to have seen the end and has chosen to sell all his shares.

Patty's husband returned the mess to Forrester after two years of running the group, along with the rest of his shares.

In 1964, Forrester Mars Foods merged with Mars Confectionery.

At this point, Forrester officially became the real head of Mars, and this 30-year revenge finally came to an end.

At this time, Forrestal, who had matured day by day, did not treat the family members badly, and the descendants of Kubenbach and Patti still enjoy huge dividends, but they no longer have any right to operate the company.

After coming to power, Forrester said:

"I'm not a candy maker, I want to build an empire."

Since he took office, Mars has undergone a sea change.

Although it is a family-owned business, the corporate culture is known to be harsh to the point of perversion.

Forrester gave each employee a time card, and all members of the Mars family, including himself, were required to clock in strictly.

Once, Forrester's son was punished for kneeling in the office to repent because he didn't get back to the company in time to celebrate his girlfriend's birthday.

The company implements flat management, and Forrester does everything himself.

He also cut out all the unnecessary and costly things, but he saved money and raised the salaries of his employees by 30%.

And for the sake of quality control, Forrester can do whatever it takes.

The processing area of the product and the quality of the product, he enforces strict standards, which make many workers miserable and can be called hell.

For example, a chocolate factory must thoroughly wash the floor every 45 minutes to ensure that the factory is kept clean and tidy, with exactly 15 peanuts on each Snickers bar.

Such requirements are stricter than those of the army, and the workers complained, but he ignored them, and did what he could, and left if he couldn't!

Another time, he found that the clarity of the letters on the packaging of a certain batch of M&M's beans was not uniform, and ordered all the products of this batch to be removed from the shelves.

Because of his strict style of management, employees "affectionately" call him "Martian Monster".

Under the influence of Forrester, every factory, every production line implements the concept of quality first:

"The customer is our boss, quality is what we should do, and value-for-money products are our goal."

To this day, Mars leases satellites to monitor the state of the climate and employs some of the world's best statisticians to accurately calculate the impact of the climate on agricultural products, all in order to maintain the quality of Mars products.

However, because of the corporate culture of being too obsessed with products, in Forest's business career, he has always insisted on developing his own products, and has also developed some products that do not meet the taste of the public.

At the same time, he opposed mergers and acquisitions to expand his candy territory, and his growth rate began to lag behind that of his rivals who were expanding wildly.

When Forrester retired in 1979, he handed over the business to his sons Forrester Jr., John, and daughter Jacqueline, and the third generation of the Mars family learned the lessons of the past and chose to be more open-minded.

In the same year, they developed a new candy - Skittles, through unique advertising and product positioning, this product became another popular candy around the world after M&M's beans and Snickers.

At the same time, in order to develop and expand faster, the three brothers and sisters started the road of "buying, buying, buying".

In 1986, Dove was acquired, and in October 2008, Mars acquired Wrigley, the world's No. 1 chewing gum, at a premium of 28% ($80 per share) above Wrigley's market price, for a transaction consideration of $23 billion.

This price corresponds to 18.5 times EV/EBITDA and 35 times PE, while the average PE multiple of listed companies in the same industry at that time was only 21 times.

The deal was strongly supported and brokered by Warren Buffett, with $11 billion in funds from Mars, senior debt from Goldman Sachs and others as advisers, and a total of $6.5 billion from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway

($4.4 billion in underdated debt + $2.1 billion in preferred stock; In October 2013, the inferior debt was redeemed at 115% par value, and in September 2016, the preferred shares were redeemed at 217% par value, with an annualized return of approximately 14.1%.

Before Mars acquired Wrigley at a high premium, Cadbury (with Eccorine, Holland, Viggo C, etc.) was the world's largest candy manufacturer (in addition, in 2002, Cadbury acquired Pfizer's Adams Candy Group for $4.2 billion, becoming the world's second largest chewing gum manufacturer and constantly encroaching on Wrigley's market share), Mars and Green Arrow ranked second.

After the acquisition, Mars has become the world's number one, and the new "Big Mac" confectioner is expected to have global sales of more than $27 billion and a global market share of 14.4%.

The ambitions of the three siblings do not stop there, in the field of pets, although it is already a leader in pet food.

However, in order to continue its position in the pet service field in the golden track, Mars also continued its merger and acquisition strategy, and in January 2017, Mars acquired VCA, the largest pet hospital chain in North America, for $93 per share, with an all-cash transaction consideration of $7.7 billion.

The price represents a 31% premium to the previous trading day's closing price, corresponding to about 18.4 times for EV/EBITDA and about 35 times for PE, while the average PE multiple for listed companies in the same industry at that time was 29 times.

So far, Mars has become a leader in the field of candy and pets.

As an acquirer, Mars is different from financial investors in that it values strategic value and synergy potential, and has a longer time to absorb the high premium paid.

In terms of mergers and acquisitions in the same industry, we will carry out strong integration to achieve complementarity, achieve significant revenue growth and cost reduction.

For example, in Wrigley's M&A case, the channels of the two are highly complementary; Mars has a strong presence in Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and is good at cooperating with large channel providers such as supermarkets.

Wrigley has a strong advantage in Eastern Europe, cooperating closely with small convenience stores and independent retail terminals;

In the mergers and acquisitions of non-peers, weak integration is carried out, and the original team is retained to operate completely independently in the form of a business department, and then gradually integrated in a timely manner.

This brings Mars to 250 locations worldwide, 151 factories in 67 countries, and annual revenues of $35 billion.

All processing links, adhere to their own production, refuse to outsource, firmly control the quality of each link, the number of employees worldwide more than 70,000.

It is this seeming harshness that has made Mars's "sweet road" go for a hundred years, and it is still evergreen, and the road ahead is full of possibilities.

However, while Mars is still firmly in the candy front, the challenges left for it are still enormous.

Mars' core products, processed chocolate products and confectionery, are all in the field of sugar and fat calorie concentration, which is not in line with the trend of people focusing on healthy living in the future.

In different regions, sales of some products have already declined.

But 100 years of Mars, always learning, maintaining humility, quickly adjusted the product strategy.

Almost instantly, it reversed the long-established image of Gao Cold, got closer to young people, and listened to the voice of the new era.

From a small chocolate to a 100 billion Mars company, from an obscure small company to today's industry leader, spanning three generations and going through 100 years, Mars has always maintained a low profile and mystery.

After getting nearly half of the shares of Kelly's toffee workshop, Li Yaoyang sent someone to contact Forrester as soon as possible.

However, he and his husband and wife Frank are in the honeymoon period of cooperation, and they don't seem to have the idea of changing their surnames.

Li Yaoyang was not discouraged, and while continuing to send people to maintain communication with the other party, he began to increase investment in the workshop.

Three months after receiving the shares, he proposed to increase capital and expand the production line.

Because the new whisky toffee is popular in the market, it has been enthusiastically pursued by alcoholics as soon as it is launched.

Being able to fill the mouth with the sweet aroma of wine at all times is something that every drunkard dreams of.

In the face of such a hot sales situation, the current production scale is definitely not enough, and expansion is inevitable.

Li Yaoyang took the opportunity to put forward a request for capital increase and share expansion, which became reasonable.

As a result, KK Toffee was transformed into Lee Confectionery, and in the spring of 1926, it became a large enterprise with nearly 1,000 employees.

After getting 75% of the company's equity, Li Yaoyang and the founding team had a difference of philosophy.

Lai wants to continue to expand his product line and enter the chocolate market.

However, the founding team led by Kelly's family believes that the expansion speed is too fast, which is not conducive to digestion.

In this regard, the two sides have a natural contradictory position.

The founding team had the idea of being a little rich, but Li Yaoyang felt that time was tight and wanted to accelerate the pace of expansion.

If Mars could have created Snickers first, there might not have been anything to Mars in the future.

Of course, the chocolate market itself is also very strong, and all kinds of sweets centered on chocolate are popular all over the world, and by that time, one hand of toffee and the other hand of Snickers are enough for Lee's candy to stand for a hundred years.

One toffee alone won't do that.

"Nine out of ten people love chocolate, and the rest are definitely lying."

It's not a joke.

Chocolate is probably one of the most popular delicacy in the world.

From the cultivation of cacao trees, the processing of cacao fruits, to the types, identification, tasting, and therapeutic effects of chocolate, to the pairing with tea, coffee, wine and other foods, as well as the cooking recipes of various chocolate feasts......

Lovers of chocolate are obsessed with everything about chocolate.

When you take a bite of a chocolate bar or let the praline melt in your mouth, your brain immediately receives a signal of pleasure that is stimulating and relaxing.

Let's call it indulgent indulgence, in which the senses are fully satisfied.

In later generations, chocolate was an everyday pleasure, easy to buy, and anyone could afford it.

This is not always the case, though.