Fan Milk’s gradual spread across the West African coast was not the result of a predefined business model for expansion; it evolved over the years according to the varying stability of the region and at different speeds depending on markets, some of which developed faster than others. Each market was allowed to operate autonomously because it was simply not possible to closely control a company located in West Africa from headquarters in Denmark and furthermore, it was believed that the companies/markets would be most successful if they were managed by people locally. The drawback of such autonomously run companies/markets was that each one was allowed to develop in its own direction with few corporate guidelines on how the brand should be developed and hardly any uniform branding strategy across the markets. When Fan Milk finally adopted a strategy to develop a combined head and hip box to match the bicycle design, which had been identical in all markets from the beginning, it was faced with the challenge of reaching consensus on a uniform design in the different markets.
