Quality before growth

Most people think founder stories are about courage. More often, they’re about timing.

Petter Torvund and Vegard Gillebo met at Coca-Cola in 2005. They’ve worked closely together ever since.

The idea of starting something of their own came as early as 2014.

Back then we were in the settling-down phase, with families … we simply didn’t dare.Petter

It’s not an unusual story. Most people who dream of starting their own thing never do. And those who do rarely do it the moment the thought first strikes.

The turn

It started with a birthday greeting to a former colleague.

Petter and Vegard sent a note — probably a line on Facebook, maybe a text. Nothing strategic. Just the little bit of extra effort that makes people remember you when something big happens.

We really believe in that. Taking care of people, behaving well, keeping the path tidy and clean.Vegard

He replied. He’d heard rumours they were free on the market, and asked if they’d come work for him.

They had just made a deliberate choice to leave big organisations, so they answered, half-joking:

We can’t work for you — but we’d gladly sell your products.

He asked if they were serious.

It wasn’t a polite formality. It was a question carrying far more weight than they’d expected.

Petter and Vegard looked at each other. “Do we really want this?”

That was the moment GilTor came to be.

The deal with Reckitt — Finish, Vanish, the whole portfolio — was signed in the spring of 2022.

The first months

At Karenslyst Allé 49, Petter and Vegard sat alone for the first three to four months. A PC each, a small office, and a task that would make most people balk: building an ERP system, warehouse and logistics from scratch, while running a share issue to raise capital.

They stayed there for two and a half years. “No kitchen, no coffee, nothing.” A room about the size of a meeting room.

Lars-Erik Weberg became the third. He came from Coca-Cola, where he’d been responsible for planning and customer logistics across Norway, Sweden and Germany. At GilTor he took on logistics and the value chain.

We needed all-rounders, not necessarily specialists.Vegard

People who pitch in where they’re needed — not people who guard their own discipline.

Looking back, Petter is clear on one thing:

We’d gained the experience we needed through two fantastic companies, Coca-Cola and TINE. The timing was good.Petter

This isn’t the usual founder story — no young-founder pitch deck, no furious growth ambitions. It’s people who have seen an industry from the inside for twenty years, and used that knowledge to build something on their own terms.

Quality before growth

There’s one sentence Vegard keeps coming back to:

We’ve never put growth before quality. We grow by doing things right.Vegard

It’s not a new slogan. But at GilTor it’s practice. When the Vitamin Well portfolio — Barebells, NOCCO — came in, in 2026, Lars-Erik said this:

Had we taken this on in year two, I don’t think we’d have succeeded all that well.Lars-Erik

Today GilTor is the market leader for Barebells in Norway. NOCCO sits in fourth place in the Norwegian energy-drink market, behind Monster, Red Bull and Battery. Finish has gone from 17 to 34 percent market share. Vanish is by far the biggest stain remover.

What they build works. It works because they’re in no hurry.

Done MRP

GilTor was one of the first grocery distributors to adopt Done MRP. The EDI flow towards the retail chains had to be built together with them.

While Done MRP matured, GilTor ran an older system called Dagfinn in parallel. It kept the orders moving. Lars-Erik puts it plainly:

If we hadn’t had it, I’m not sure we’d be sitting here today.Lars-Erik

Then came Anders.

He became the developer GilTor needed in that phase — someone who understood grocery, EDI and what had to work at the packing-slip level. Suddenly the system started moving. Things that had been on hold were solved within weeks.

There was real development on your end, and yes, it took a long time. But towards the end we really picked up speed.Lars-Erik

In August 2025, GilTor went live on order flow in Done MRP. It’s been rolling ever since.

What stayed

We asked Petter why they stuck with it.

That’s perhaps not what Petter would have said about a typical supplier. But it’s what he said about Done MRP. We’ll hold on to that.

Today the orders run through the system. Lars-Erik still does a manual check on every single one — an inheritance from Coca-Cola and TINE he isn’t quite ready to let go of yet. The rest rolls automatically: out to the 3PL, picked, packed, invoiced.

The day-to-day holds.

But our systems — they work.Vegard

Solid as a rock.Petter

What we take with us from GilTor

After the interview, the conversation carried on for a long time. About AI. About how the market is changing. About what it takes to keep up.

What we’re left with isn’t that Done MRP was the perfect supplier from day one. We weren’t. What we’re left with is that GilTor and Done MRP share the same way of thinking about quality — and that it’s that connection that has made the relationship last.

In GilTor we see what we’re trying to be ourselves. A company that understands it can get better. That leans on people where it’s needed. That builds something it’s proud of, without being in a hurry.

Those are the kind of customers we want. And that’s how we want to be as a supplier. Not someone who shows up with a system and says “good luck.” Someone who stays, who learns alongside you, who gets it wrong alongside you — and figures it out.

What’s next?

Petter is unusually boring on this question:

The most important thing we’re doing now is to keep delivering on what we started with — on cleaning, with Reckitt’s portfolio — and then really get Vitamin Well’s brands up to speed.Petter

A boring answer, but that’s honestly it.Vegard

It’s the right answer. It’s also the answer you get from everyone who has actually built something that works.

We’re looking forward to building further with them.

GilTor distributes Reckitt (Finish, Vanish), Concept (laundry sheets) and the Vitamin Well Group (Barebells, NOCCO, Vitamin Well) in Norway. Done MRP has been their MRP partner since 2023.