August 22, 1966: In St. Paul, Minnesota, a small store called Sound of Music opened its doors to customers in late August of 1966. Fifty years later, Best Buy (the company changed its name in 1983) is a multinational retailer with nearly $40 billion in annual revenue. Source: Company Website Read more from the Goizueta Read More …
August 3, 1811: It’s the birthday of Elisha Graves Otis, born 205 years ago in Halifax, Vt. who found his inspiration while working in a Yonkers, N.Y., factory that needed to move heavy equipment to its upper floor. Using a hoist came with the risk of equipment crashing to the ground if the cable broke, so Read More …
July 31, 1912: Milton Friedman is born in Brooklyn, NY. Friedman, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics, is best known for his scholarship on the free market economy and monetary policy, namely the quantity theory of money which states that the amount of money in circulation has a direct and proportional relationship to prices. Sources: Milton Friedman: A Read More …
July 23, 1903: The freshly incorporated Ford Motor Company sells its very first Model A, ushering in a new era of transportation for Americans. Having spent nearly all of its initial cash investment of $28,000 prior to its first sale, in less than two months, the company profited $37,000. Source: Ford Motor Company Website Read Read More …
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 …
