Karl Fazer originally dreamed of becoming a forest ranger, so that he could engage in his favourite pastimes of hiking and hunting, but ended up becoming a pastry chef. After completing his training in St. Petersburg, Berlin and Paris, on 17 September 1891 he opened a French-Russian Café at Kluuvikatu 3 in the heart of Helsinki.
Karl Fazer’s father, Eduard Fazer, migrated from Switzerland to the Russian Grand Principality of Finland in 1844. He built up a thriving furrier business, started a family and purchased the property on Kluuvikatu, among other things. Eduard was not overly pleased by his son’s choice of vocation. In Finland of the late 1800s, pastry chefs were neither generally respected nor well liked.
But Karl Fazer had an ambition to satisfy — and even surpass — the customers’ expectations.
The people of Helsinki were amazed that he could sell such delicious pastries for only 10 penni each. When asked, he is said to have replied "Well, I sell each pastry at a loss, but because of the large volume I still end up making a profit.”
Three years later he began making chocolate at the factory on Pursimiehenkatu and later continued at Tehtaankatu in Helsinki. By the turn of the century, Karl Fazer’s company was the country’s largest in its line of business and had 203 employees.
Flagship was launched
In 1922 he launched that which was to become the company’s flagship product, Fazer Blue milk chocolate. Den blue colour on the wrapper was a symbol of patriotism – Finland had earned its independence only a few years earlier.
Karl Fazer owes part of his success to his wife Berta, who attended business school in Helsinki and was generally considered a "good catch". As a young wife her dream was to sit and do needlework, but she had hardly got comfortable on the sofa before her young husband came rushing home, looked at her in surprise and blurted out "You don’t have time for the now! Come down and help me at the café. You can sit at the cash register and take care of the accounts, you who went to business school". The fine English embroidery was set aside and from that day forward Berta Fazer worked for the company, where she won renown for Kluuvikatu’s lovely window displays.
Industrialisation
Karl Fazer died in 1932 and a few years later his son Sven Fazer initiated the company’s industrialisation phase. In the mid-1950s the company outgrew the factory at Tehtaankatu and Sven decided to move the business from Helsinki to Vaarala in Vaanta, a veritable hinterland back then. At that time the business consisted of pastries, bread and biscuits. Little did Sven suspect how conveniently the factory would be located when the business went international some years later. Today it takes only 15 minutes by taxi from the Vaanta factory to Helsinki-Vaanta airport.
Internationalisering
Sven Fazer’s son Peter Fazer took over as Managing Director in 1965 and set out to internationalise the company in earnest. In 1967 Karl Fazer AB was established in Sweden and in 1975 Fazer purchased Mazetti’s Malmö-based confectionery factory, from which the Dumle and Ögonkakao brands originated. In 1993 Fazer Konfektyr acquired Chymos Ab, bringing not only well known brands like Marianne and Pantteri into Fazer Konfektyr’s possession, but also the factory in Lappeenranta where Cloetta Fazer currently manufactures the majority of its sugar confectionery products.