Oatly Used Many Strategies to Succeed in the U.S., but a Marketing Department Wasn't One of Them

Inside the unlikely rise of the quirky Swedish oat-milk brand

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As the president of Mattson, a food and beverage consultancy based in Silicon Valley, Barb Stuckey is perennially on the lookout for new brands that consumers can eat or drink. That’s why she vividly recalls a recent trip to Manhattan. Making the rounds of the borough’s independent coffee shops, Stuckey was struck by something new that all of them had in common: At the barista station was a carton of Oatly, the dairy-milk alternative made, as the name suggests, from the husks of oats.

“It was at every single coffee shop,” Stuckey says, still sounding surprised.

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This story first appeared in the June 17, 2019, issue of Brandweek.