July 20, 1841: On this date, Lewis Tappan founded The Mercantile Agency to collect business information such as sales estimates and bill paying ability. In 1859, the company was sold to Robert Graham Dun and incorporated under a new name, R. G. Dun & Company. And in 1933, Dun & Co. merged with Bradstreet Company, a Read More …
July 17, 1955: On a sunny Anaheim, California Sunday afternoon, Walt Disney opens his first theme park, Disneyland. Offering 5 theme lands with 18 attractions, the park took more than twenty years to plan and cost $17 million to build. Disney’s financial advisers were skeptical of his plan, suggesting that it would be a disaster, but Read More …
February 15, 2010: February is an auspicious month for the company Warby Parker. In February 2008, 4 MBA students at the Wharton School of Business started developing their business plan to start an online eyewear company. According to Neil Blumenthal, one of the students (the others are Dave Gilboa, Andy Hunt, and Jeff Raider), the Read More …
July 2, 1962: Sam Walton opens his first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas at the age of 44. Sam Walton was no stranger to retail by this time. He worked for the J.C. Penney Company after college, which at that time was a relatively small retailer. After serving in World War II, where he was captain of Read More …
June 1, 1999: The world’s first peer-to-peer music sharing site, Napster, launched on this date. Before Napster, music lovers were limited to purchasing music as hard copies on CDs, vinyl, or cassettes. Napster enabled users to share music files in MP3 format, initiating a massive disruption in the music industry. Within just a year of Read More …
April 23, 1985: It was just 35 years ago today, April 23, 1985, when Coca-Cola officially launched New Coke to the world, stating that it was “smoother, rounder, yet bolder—a more harmonious flavor.” Marketers are still debating the many reasons why New Coke failed, but one reason has been attributed to the fact that the company made Read More …
June 16, 1933: Following the failure of nearly five thousand banks in 1929, which promulgated the Great Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act was signed into law. As a provision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was established to protect bank customers’ deposits in the event of future bank failures. Source: The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, Read More …
June 1, 1980: With only 1.7 million viewers, the first 24-hour news cycle channel CNN was launched right here in Atlanta. The low viewership did not stop Ted Turner’s vision, and within three years, CNN gained over 33 million viewers. Now, CNN reaches hundreds of millions of households worldwide, not to mention passengers at every single Read More …
May 20, 1873: Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss, both immigrants to the United States, were granted U.S. patent number 139,121 for Davis’ innovative design using rivets to reinforce stress points in pants. Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, regularly bought fabric from Strauss’s dry goods store in San Francisco and had reached out to him in a Read More …
May 14 1998: Last episode of Seinfeld airs on NBC. Commercials are offered at $2M for 30 seconds. Seinfeld was slow to gain a following when it first aired on NBC July 5, 1989 but by its sixth season it was number one in the Nielsen ratings. It ran for nine seasons; the final episode was Read More …
