SKIM celebrates 45 years: From a start-up to an international consultancy

22 January 2025 Consultancy.eu

Marketing consultancy SKIM is celebrating its 45th anniversary, having grown from a humble startup to a global firm. In light of the milestone, we spoke with co-CEOs Karin Lieshout and Joris Huisman on the firm’s growth and ambitions, and how its teams worldwide help their clients make an impact.

With more than 300 employees across 11 offices on 4 continents, SKIM offers consulting services in the areas of branding, pricing, communication, and innovation strategies. The firm has since its inception grown into a trusted partner for decision makers at leading companies around the world.

“Expertise has always underpinned what we do at SKIM,” says Huisman. “We started as methodological experts, then market experts and today we add value as business experts too. By combining these areas of expertise, we can support companies looking to elevate their marketing strategies with greater precision and certainty.”

A few of SKIM’s recent client success stories include a project with Philips to optimize the company’s electric toothbrush portfolio and develop a successful channel strategy. In another project, SKIM helped Unilever better connect with customers by improving the brand’s claims and visuals.

But it is not just the consumer goods industry: SKIM collaborated with top British newspaper the Financial Times in a project to optimize promotion strategies for long-term return on investment. The process involved helping the Financial Times better understand consumer preferences and then simulate promotion outcomes.

“I am especially proud of the strategic work we do more and more often for decision-makers in leading companies,” notes Lieshout.

SKIM celebrates 45 years: From a start-up to an international consultancy

Karin Lieshout and Joris Huisman are co-CEO’s of SKIM

Better decisions

In today’s world of constant change, decisions need to be made faster, but also with greater precision and certainty, given there is so much data available to base decisions on. “Business wargaming is a great way to achieve that: It’s agile, data-driven, cross-functional, and designed to make collective decisions,” Lieshout emphasizes.

Wargaming, a specialty of SKIM, is a collaborative process where teams simulate competitive scenarios to stress-test business decisions. This approach enables agile, low-risk decision-making and fosters alignment across teams. The idea is to model market dynamics and potential competitor actions.

Other projects that SKIM has led have focused on pricing and revenue management, with the goal of helping companies to become more profitable and to foster sustainable growth.

“In close collaboration with commercial and insights leaders at L’Oreal we have realized a hybrid Revenue Management practice where SKIM and L'Oreal professional seamlessly work together and provide data driven confidence for commercial teams that is rooted in the behavior and desires of their consumers,” says Huisman.

Above all, for the past 45 years, SKIM has worked hard to navigate difficult business challenges, providing guidance on tough strategic and tactical issues.

“Our success is built on the strong relationships we’ve cultivated over the years, and we value that loyalty and partnership above all else. We are equally thankful for our team, whose expertise, passion and critical thinking help drive our growth,” notes Lieshout.