Businesspeople Who Expanded a Local Company Internationally

Freddy Heineken was the founder's grandson, not the founder, and he bought back family control in the 1950s after spending time in New York learning American advertising. He treated the beer as an export brand first: the green bottle, red star and smiling lowercase e were designed to travel, and the American importer Leo van Munching built the US trade that made Heineken a premium import there. Owning the brand and licensing or acquiring local brewers became the template for its spread.

His father created the gummy bear in Bonn; Hans Riegel took over Haribo after returning from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1946 and ran it for more than sixty years. He grew it from a German sweet maker into an international one by buying local confectioners and building factories close to new markets rather than shipping from Germany, while keeping the bear and the jingle constant. He kept the company private and family-owned throughout, which let him expand at his own pace.

Pietro Ferrero founded the business in a pastry shop in Alba; his son Michele made it international. He opened a factory in Germany in 1956, launched Nutella in 1964 and went on to create Kinder, Tic Tac and Ferrero Rocher, each designed to be sold in many countries with little change. Making locally and controlling quality obsessively let him compete with much larger groups, and he famously avoided the press. The family still owns the company.

Servitje co-founded Bimbo in Mexico City in 1945, selling wrapped sliced bread off a fleet of delivery vans when most bread was bought loose. That direct store delivery network was the core skill, and Bimbo exported it by buying established bakers abroad, most heavily in the United States, where acquisitions of Weston's and Sara Lee's bakery businesses made it the country's largest baker. His son Daniel led much of that later buying, but the delivery-first model was his.

Erling Persson opened the first Hennes women's clothing shop in Västerås in 1947; his son Stefan, chief executive from 1982 and later chairman until 2020, turned H&M into a chain across Europe and then the United States from 2000. The adaptations were about scale and speed: buying from many independent suppliers rather than owning factories, opening big stores in prime streets, and from 2004 designer collaborations, starting with Karl Lagerfeld, that drew crowds in every new market.

The founder's grandson ran Lego from 1979 to 2004 and is the reason a toymaker from Billund became truly global, with themed ranges like Castle and Space, the Legoland parks and production abroad. He also presided over the overreach that followed, when too many new products and businesses nearly broke the company in the early 2000s. His decision to hand day-to-day control to an outsider, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, in 2004 is part of why it recovered, and the family still owns three quarters of it.

Samsung was founded by his father, Lee Byung-chul, as a trading company. Lee Kun-hee took over in 1987 and, in a 1993 speech in Frankfurt, told managers to change everything except their wives and children, demanding quality fit for global buyers rather than cheap volume for Korea. Staff famously burned a pile of defective phones in 1995. Under him Samsung became a world leader in memory chips, televisions and phones, though he was also twice convicted of financial crimes and pardoned both times.

Zambrano, grandson of a founder of Cemex in Monterrey, ran it from 1985 until his death in 2014 and turned a regional Mexican cement maker into one of the world's largest. He bought two big Spanish producers in 1992, then plants across Latin America, the US and Britain, and used satellite tracking and dispatch software so ready-mixed concrete trucks could deliver within a narrow window. The 2007 purchase of Australia's Rinker loaded the company with debt just before the financial crisis, which it took years to work off.

Jamsetji Tata founded the group in the nineteenth century; Ratan Tata, chairman from 1991 to 2012, took it abroad through acquisition. Tetley in 2000, the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 and Jaguar Land Rover from Ford in 2008 made an Indian conglomerate a big employer in Britain. The results split sharply: JLR, given investment and freedom to develop new models, recovered strongly, while Corus became a long drain. He died in October 2024.

Murthy and six colleagues founded Infosys in Pune in 1981 with borrowed money, and its international growth rested on a specific adaptation: the global delivery model, in which a small team works at the client's site in America or Europe while most of the software is written in India, round the clock across time zones. In 1999 it became the first Indian company listed on Nasdaq. Co-founders including Nandan Nilekani and Kris Gopalakrishnan later ran it in turn.

Red Bull began as Krating Daeng, a Thai tonic drink made by Chaleo Yoovidhya. Mateschitz, an Austrian toothpaste marketer, partnered with him in 1984, and the adaptation is the whole story: carbonated, less sweet, in a slim silver-blue can, launched in Austria in 1987 and then country by country through student brand managers, clubs and extreme sports rather than conventional advertising. The Yoovidhya family kept the majority stake, a fact often lost in the Mateschitz legend.

Ortega founded Zara in A Coruña in 1975 with his then wife Rosalía Mera, and its international reach rests on a supply chain few rivals copied: design, much of the manufacturing and distribution kept close to Galicia, so new stock reaches stores in weeks and shops in every country get the same fresh drops. The first foreign store opened in Porto in 1988. He stepped down as Inditex chairman in 2011, and professional managers such as Pablo Isla oversaw much of the later global growth.

Yanai inherited his father's menswear shop in Ube and opened the first Uniqlo in Hiroshima in 1984. His first big overseas push, into Britain in 2001, opened too many stores too fast and most were closed within two years. He came back with fewer, larger flagship stores in major cities and a focus on technical basics developed with the fabric maker Toray, such as Heattech, and Uniqlo now earns more abroad than in Japan. He is still chairman, president and chief executive of Fast Retailing.

Starbucks was founded in Seattle in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker as a bean shop; Schultz joined later, borrowed the Italian espresso bar idea after a trip to Milan and bought the company in 1987. Its first store outside North America opened in Tokyo in 1996 through a joint venture with the retailer Sazaby, and local partners, menus and store designs carried it into China and beyond. He left the board in 2023 after three spells as chief executive.

Tony Tan Caktiong opened an ice cream parlour in Manila in 1975 that became Jollibee, the chain that beat McDonald's in the Philippines by cooking for Filipino taste: sweet spaghetti, fried Chickenjoy and rice with burgers. Abroad it first followed Filipinos working overseas, in Hong Kong, the Gulf and the United States, then bought brands that travel without it, including Smashburger, Tim Ho Wan and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. He remains chairman of the group.

Mittal left his family's steel business in India to run a small mill in Indonesia in 1976, then built a global company by buying struggling state-owned plants that others avoided, in Trinidad, Mexico, Kazakhstan and eastern Europe, and turning them round with tight cost control. The hostile takeover of Arcelor in 2006 created the world's largest steelmaker. He remains executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, with his son Aditya as chief executive.

Ibrahim, a telecoms engineer, founded Celtel in 1998 and won mobile licences in country after country across Africa when large operators thought the continent too risky. Prepaid cards for customers without bank accounts, and a stated refusal to pay bribes, shaped how it grew; by 2005 it had millions of subscribers in over a dozen countries and he sold it to Kuwait's MTC for about 3.4 billion dollars. His later foundation rates African governance.

Dangote began as a commodity trader in Lagos and moved into making what he had been importing, above all cement. He then built or bought cement plants in around ten other African countries, from Senegal to Ethiopia, so local markets were supplied from local quarries rather than shipped clinker. His newest bet, the huge oil refinery near Lagos, is aimed at ending Nigeria's dependence on imported fuel, and its operations and disputes with regulators are still unfolding.

Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in Stockholm in 2006, and expansion was a licensing problem before it was a technical one: every country needed deals with record labels and publishers, which is why the service reached the United States only in 2011. Free, ad-supported listening as a route to paid subscriptions persuaded labels it could beat piracy. Ek stepped down as chief executive at the start of 2026 and is now executive chairman, with Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström as co-chief executives.