Swedish candy darling BonBon is entering its big-box era

FastCompany: BonBon, a New York City-based Swedish candy brand, is about to hit Target’s shelves. It’s the exact kind of mass retail move that usually flattens a cult brand’s specificity into something generic and uninteresting. But at BonBon, the founding creative team is betting on the opposite: that the brand’s design discipline, run almost entirely through one artist’s hand, is what allows the company to scale without diluting the brand’s authentic tether to Swedish candy culture. [Photo: BonBon] BonBon was founded in 2017 by three Swedish transplants—Robert Persson, Selim Adira and Leo Schaltz—who had moved to New York City around the same time.

The friends often lamented how much they missed the quality, texture, and flavor of candy back home. As hospitality veterans, they thought they could bring Swedish candy to New York. In 2018, the founders opened a jewel box shop on the Lower East Side, followed in fall 2020 by BonBon’s first original candy (Sour Strawberry Fish) and a second shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (which never stopped operating during the pandemic, leading to burgeoning third-party delivery for the brand).

Target represents its first entry into big-box retail; this will be followed by an experiential retail activation launch at FAO Schwarz in midtown Manhattan in early November. From the start, BonBon wasn’t just about selling candy. The founders wanted to translate Swedish candy culture and nostalgia into an American retail experience. “We are really building through joy,” says Persson. “We are not just looking through a business lens.” The stores and the packaging feel less bodega candy aisle and more Scandinavian design shop.

That’s the work of Simon Dahlgren Strååt, who is based in Stockholm and splits his time between working as a fine artist in oil painting at the Royal Institute of Art there and as the creative director for BonBon . [Photo: BonBon] Strååt, who is a first cousin of Schaltz (their mothers are nonidentical twins), was immediately pulled into the BonBon launch to build the brand identity . “Out of everyone working for BonBon, I am the one living and working in Sweden full-time,” says Strååt. “I surround myself with art exhibitions, museum visits, literature for all ages, film, fashion, architecture, and friends from various creative backgrounds.

‘For the heart, life is simple,’ [the Norwegian author] Karl Ove Knausgård wrote, but my cousin Leo and I know our grandmother said it first. And I believe it’s true. Everything we do well, we do with joy, curiosity, and instinctive effort.” That’s exactly the sentiment Schaltz was hoping for with Strååt’s artistic eye shaping the brand. “As a Swede in New York, you’re only one or two handshakes away from a Swedish friend,” says Schaltz. “We founders knew each other for years before we started BonBon. And we were fortunate to work with Simon. He has a fundamental grasp of nostalgia and what makes old-time Sweden as authentic as it is.

His eye and his background; immediately, he understood the brand identity.” The pick and mix candy at BonBon––collected in a standup tin tie light pink bag with a whimsical blue script font––is a window into the love the BonBon founders share for the culture they grew up with: Saturday candy, or Lördagsgodis. The tradition represents the Swedes’ practice of perpetually balancing modesty with simple, joyful rituals around connection to oneself and each other.

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BonBon's strategic shift into big-box retail with a focus on maintaining brand authenticity is significant for the industry, especially for brands navigating similar expansions, making it highly relevant and moderately novel.