Edelw'ice
A company that does not exist, and that is exactly what makes it useful.
Edelw'ice makes artisan ice cream in Lausanne. It has a founder, a lab, shops, an ERP that grinds and meetings that go off the rails. It does not exist.
A real case always raises the same problem: either the company agrees to be named, and then the figures, the names and the disagreement that made the case interesting have to come out; or it refuses, and all that is left is an anonymous example nobody recognises. Either way, what disappears is exactly what you need: the moment two people do not agree, and what that costs.
Edelw'ice solves that. Because it is invented, its case can be complete — the figures, the trade-offs, the dead ends — and it can carry on from one volume to the next.You learn the setting once. After that, you only read the technique.
The company
- Sector — premium artisan ice cream
- Head office — Lausanne, Switzerland
- Founded in — 1983, with a food truck on the shore of Lake Geneva
- Founder — Heidi, still at the helm
- Stated values — authenticity, innovation, sustainability, transparency
- Where the story stands — 2024: an e-commerce rebuild and an ERP project running in parallel
Forty years in eleven dates
Every technique in the collection is tied to a precise moment in this story. It is not scenery: it is what gives a case a before and an after.
- 1983 — the food truck. Heidi is 26 and has a recipe.
- 1988 — first shop in town. Michael joins the adventure.
- 1990 — three shops, and an R&D lab. Anna takes over creation.
- 1995 — logistics get organised: stock, cold chain.
- 2000 — services arrive: workshops, birthdays, events.
- 2008 — first website. A shop window, nothing to sell on it.
- 2010 — transactional e-commerce. Mixed success, logistics suffers.
- 2012 — mass retail. Industrialise without selling out.
- 2015 — the vegan, lactose-free and gluten-free ranges.
- 2018 — New York and Tokyo.
- 2024 — everything has to be rebuilt at once: the site, the ERP, and the way decisions are made.
The pair you follow
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Abby
Senior Business Analyst. Rigour, traceability, frameworks.
« You cannot solve a problem you do not understand. » -
Lexie
Business Analyst, experience and field. She reads the room, tests, adjusts.
« We are not going to write a 50-page doc, we are going to run a test. »
They are not two sides of the same character. They embody the tension that runs through the whole profession — structure or move — and every technique reads from both angles. Neither of them decides: it is the Edelw'ice teams who settle it.
Who you meet at Edelw'ice
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Heidi
Founder and CEO. Decides on instinct, and owns it.
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Anna
Head of creation, R&D. Distrusts anything that standardises.
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Michael
Co-founder, operations and cold chain. Sees the risk before the opportunity.
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Monika
Communications. Launched the digital side, and is often ignored.
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Jérôme
Logistics and stock. Cartesian, short on patience for the abstract.
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Nina
UX. Carries the customer's voice, and regularly runs into IT.
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Olivier
CIO. Sceptical by trade, insists on documentation.
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Elisabeth
Product manager. Follows the trends, sometimes a little too closely.
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Thomas
Marketing. Full of ideas, writes none of them down.
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Nora
Project manager. Arbitrates under pressure, and knows it.
Each of them has a strength and a bias. That is deliberate: a scene where everyone agrees teaches nothing.
The five recurring tensions
From one volume to the next the setting changes, but the underlying conflict belongs to one of these five families. You will recognise them where you work.
- Instinct versus structure — « I can feel it » against « show me what you are basing that on ».
- Growth versus control — going faster without breaking what holds.
- Tradition versus innovation — changing the product without losing what built its reputation.
- Local versus international — the same brand, markets that do not expect the same thing.
- Customer experience versus efficiency — what pleases costs, what pays disappoints.
What this changes for you
You can open any volume without having read the others: each one recalls what you need to know. But if you read several, you will see the same company from different angles, with the same people and the same flaws — and that is where the techniques stop being a list and become a craft.