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A man for all seasons

A Danish organic farmer delivers his produce door to door.

Thomas Harttung, co-founder of the Danish sustainable organic farm corporation Aarstiderne.

Photo: Palle Peter Skov

Thomas Harttung, co-founder of the Danish sustainable organic farm corporation Aarstiderne, calls himself a “free radical.” It was certainly his free, radical thinking that helped his firm grow from about 200 members in 1996 to some 45,000 subscribers across Denmark and Sweden today. Aarstiderne, which means “The Seasons” in Danish, delivers fresh organic produce and recipes in returnable wooden boxes to its members’ front doors each week. The business has “grown historically by something like 20 percent per year since starting out,” Harttung says. “We see what’s happened as a result of us putting ourselves out there into this great idea, and from our willingness to see where it would take us.”

What Harttung calls his “semi-amateurish approach” has taken Aarstiderne and its 120 employees to annual revenues of some $55 million. Aarstiderne has achieved that growth by staying small and personal. “Transparency allows you to develop a certain level of trust between the customers and the suppliers,” explains Harttung, who grew up in the city but steeped himself in forestry and organic farming. That trust is so complete, Harttung says, that there hasn’t been a single incident of a box of produce or an expensive bottle of organic wine being pilfered from someone’s doorstep. “There’s an aura of goodness around this business,” he says. “Everyone, not only our customers, knows we’re a group of good ideas and good people.”