HISTORY OF BUSINESS

Brief History of Payment Cards

2009-10-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

Brief History of Payment Cards
The practice of buying things on credit is not new. It is thousands of years old.

Sellers sold their goods and services on credit, maintaining customer accounts in their books often without a collateral or guarantee.

Customers pay when they have the means to do so. However, credit cards developed not just because people did not have any money to pay for purchases but people did not want to carry wads of hard cash with them all the time.

It is a lot of convenience and safer to be billed later for purchases then having to carry cash in pocket. Convenience is the primary value proposition for payment cards.

Realizing this, some establishment in the early part of the twentieth century started giving account cards to their trusted customer. This was particularly suitable for companies that had multiple and dispersed outlets such as oil companies.

A motorist could purchase fuel at any station belonging to a particular oil company. The General Petroleum Corporation of California, later Mobil Oil, issued cards to employees and customers in 1914 that could only be used the company’s sales outlets. This was the first store cards.

Towards the middles of the century banks began to think of creative ways to tap this growing market. The Flatbush National Bank in New York introduced a ‘Charge It’ plan in 1947 and a few years later Franklin National Bank was the first to issue credit cards.

But the banking sector in general was slow in developing the new product. Other companies were quicker in realizing the immerse possibilities.

Dinners Club, according to company lore, was the brainchild of two visionaries Frank McNamara and Ralph Schneider. They were dine at a New York restaurant sometime in the year 1950 when to their embarrassment they discovered they did not have any cash.

It is unclear how they resolved the problem but it made a lasting impression on them, and gave birth to a well organized club of friends and colleagues.

About the same time, a New York based travel company called American Express was so impressed that it started its own club. Its merchant base also consisted mainly of restaurant, hotels, transport company, and selected store. In time, American Express outstripped its rival to lay the foundations of a global business that still flourishes to this day.
Brief History of Payment Cards

Colonel Sanders of KFC

2009-10-25T18:08:00.001-07:00

Colonel Sanders of KFC
KFC story began at the turn of last century, when a young boy, Harland Sanders, became an accomplished cook through ‘family necessity’.

He spent considerable years doing casual work and serving in the United States Army, where he received the title ‘Colonel.’

Anyway, at age forty, Colonel Sanders purchased a service station, motel and café in a small town in Kentucky.

Over the next ten years he tried different seasonings to flavor his chicken.

From this experimentation evolved ‘his secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices and the basic cooking technique which is still used today’.

He sold the business when the town was bypassed by a highway.

He then travelled the United States by car, cooking chicken for restaurant owners and their employees.

If the reaction was favorable Sanders entered into a handshake agreement in a deal which stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold.

By the age of sixty five the Colonel had 600 Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise outlets dotted across the United States and Canada.

This as 1964, the year is which he sold the American business for $2 million , leading to another rags to riches story.
Colonel Sanders of KFC

History of Boeing Company

2009-10-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

History of Boeing Company
Shortly after the Wright brother’s famous flight, William Boeing assembled his first seaplane and established the Boeing B&W Seaplane Company in 1916.

On May 9, 1917, the company became the “Boeing Airplane Company.”

In the 1930s and 1940s Boeing manufactured bombers and aircraft for commercial transport.

In 1954 the company developed the first prototype of 707, which ultimately revolutionized our travel around the world.

In 1967 McDonnell Douglas was formed by a merger of two separate companies, McDonnell and Douglas.

The merged company continued to manufacturer commercial aircraft, combat aircraft and space vehicles.

McDonnell Douglas introduced the DC-3, which became so popular that 90 percent of the world’s air travelers flew on them.

North American Aviation Inc. was first established in 1928.

In the beginning the company focused its business primarily on small, single engine to avoid competing with manufacturer of large, multi-engine aircraft.

During the late 1930s the company also began to make military aircraft. According to the company, between the years 1939 – 67 the company built more military aircraft than nay other aircraft manufacturer in the United States.

McDonnell Douglas developed Mercury and Gemini, the manned space flights in the early 1960s. In 1968 Boeing introduced its jumbo jet, the 747, to meet the growing demand for air travel and MacDonnell Doulas developed the F-4 Phantom II fighter aircraft.

The business interests of Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and North American began to intersect in the 1960s when they became partners on the NASA Apollo Program, followed by the International Space Station.

The three companies finally merged in December 1996 to become the New Boeing.

A prime motive for the merger was to compete more effectively with rivals.
History of Boeing Company

The History of Carrefour

2009-09-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

The History of Carrefour
The origins of Carrefour date back to 1959 when the company was established in France by the Fournier and Defforey families.

The shops were all located on thoroughfares; hence the name “Carrefour.” In other words, the name signifies that is convenient to shop there.

Carrefour opened its first supermarket in Annecy, Haute-Savoie, and at the same time, the LLC Promodis, the forerunner of Promodes, was created.

The company was formed through a merger of two wholesaler families from Normandy, managed by Paul Auguste Halley and Leonor Duval Lemonnier.

In 1963, Carrefour invented a new concept; the hypermarket. The first Carrefour hypermarket opened in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, with a sales area of 2,500 m square, twelve check out and 400 parking spaces.

Fournier Badin and Defforey attended Bernado Trujillo’s seminars in Dayton (Ohio) at the end of the 1950s, and were much influenced by what they heard.

Just a few years later the Promodes supermarkets adopted the Champion retail brand name.

Carrefour opened its first hypermarket outside France in Belgium and the first outside Europe, in Brazil.

In 1972, Promodes hypermarkets adopted the Continent retail brand and convenience stores operated under the Shopi brand.

Carrefour introduced “produit libres” (generic as an early of store brand), which are unbranded products but “just as good and cheaper” and started the development of hard discounting.

The company created the Ed chain in France and Promodes in Spain.

Meanwhile, Promodes branched out into franchising with Champion supermarket.

In 1980s, Carrefour store brand products were introduced. In the 1990s, the internationalization of the company started to increase and new store were opened all over the world.

With a presence in about 30 countries more than half of its sales are generated outside France.

This makes it one of the most international of all food retailers. The group concentrated mainly in three continents: Europe, Latin America and Asia.
The History of Carrefour

Mercedes Benz

2009-09-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

Mercedes Benz
In January 1886, Karl Benz, a 41 year old German engineer, patented the world’s first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine.

Karl Benz was born in Pfaffenrot, Germanys, in 1844. After graduated, he got job at a nearby locomotive factory which eventually promoted him to draftsman.

There he learned to design engines and bridges.

Benz left his job to start his own machine shop in Mannheim, Germany. At first, Benz struggled, for he was an engineer, not a business man. He then forms another company in October 1883 and called it Benz & Company.

A year before patented his new engine his fellow German, Gottlieb Daimler, had built the first land vehicle ever to use an internal combustion engine – a motorcycle.

In 1886, Daimler topped Benz’s achievement by building the first four wheeled automobile (Benz’s vehicle had been a three wheeler).

Although the two men were only about 70 miles apart, they never met to work together on their inventions.

In 1899, Emil Jellinek, a wealthy Austrian businessman and diplomat saw a Daimler Phoenix win a race in Nice, France.

The car so impressed him that he approached Daimler with a business proposition. Jellinek would purchase 36 cars if Daimler built a new, more powerful model. Jellinek suggested that the new model be called Mercedes, named after Jellinek’s daughter. Daimler agreed to the business deal.

Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) – Daimler’s company – introduced the first Mercedes in 1901.

Forty years later, the companies both men set up – Daimler’s Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft and Benz’s Benz & Co – would merge.

The resultant brand of cars, Mercedes Benz has become the most well known prestige brand in the world.

In 2002 the new Mercedes Benz E-Class became the market leader partly due to to innovations such as an elector –hydraulic braking system, patented ‘sensotronic’ brake control and an ‘Electronic Stability Program’ that ensured better handling in emergency situations.
Mercedes Benz

Brief History of Shell

2009-08-13T09:06:00.001-07:00

Brief History of Shell
Shell was born in the early days of the oil boom and started out in the shadow of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard oil monopoly, which was able to drive many emerging rival oil companies out of business by undercutting their prices and taking over their shares of the market.

Royal Dutch/Shell was the result of a merger in 1907 between the British-based Shell Transport and Trading Company, which pioneered the used of seagoing oil tankers and the Royal Dutch Petroleum company, which made its fortune developing new oil fields in Borneo and Sumatra.

During the Civil War, when some of the slaves from the Trepagnier Plantation were joining Union forces to fight the Confederacy in Louisiana, a British Jew from the East End of London was setting up as a merchant on the Docks in that great city.

Marcus Samuel was an enterprising fellow who decided to greet ships returning to England from India, Japan, Africa, and the Middle East and offer to buy any trinkets and curious that sailors had collected abroad. Before long, word spreading among sailors that they could augment their wages by selling to Samuel.

Marcus had two sons, Marcus Samuel the younger and Samuel Samuel the elder died, his sons took his fortune and expanded their father’s import/export business, opening offices in Japan and London.

In the 1890s, the French Rothchild family decided to go into business exploiting the oil fields opening up in Baku in Russia. Needing a partner to help them transport and sell the oil, they turned to Marcus Samuel the younger.

After a brief trip to the Caucasus, Marcus Samuel deiced that the only way to take on the near monopoly grip that Standard Oil held was to radically reduce oil transportation costs.

At the tome kerosene was transported in crates of tin containers. Loading the fuel into these relatively small containers, crating them, and loading them onto ship as time consuming, expensive and inefficient, Samuel argued. It would be much preferable to just pipe the oil into a tanker ship.

In 1907, Sir Marcus Samuel and Henri Deterding merged the Shell Transport and Trading Company with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company to create Royal Dutch/Shell.

The company is 40 percent owned by the Shell Transport and Trading Company and 60 percent owned by Royal Dutch Petroleum.
Brief History of Shell

The Blues Are Born

2009-07-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

The Blues Are Born
In March 1853, the youngest member of the firm of J. Strauss Brother & Co. of New York City stepped off a steamship and onto one of San Francisco’s many wharves.

He was one of the city’s newest entrepreneurs, the proprietor of the West Coast branch of the family business, but he gave this new enterprise his own name: Levi Straus.

Born in Bavaria in 1829, Levi immigrated to New York with his mother and sisters around 1847.

Brothers Louis and Jonas had a dry goods wholesaling business there and Levi joined the family firm. By the early 1850, the Gold Rush had turned San Francisco into a humming metropolis, and Levi was sent to California to represent J. Strauss Brother & Co. on the West Coast.

His first wholesale warehouse was on the north side of California Street between Sansome and Battery Streets.

On May 1853, the clipper ship Oriental arrived in the city form New York with his first shipment of dry goods and six more ships arrived with merchandise for Levi before the year ended. The firm of “Levi Strauss” soon had retail customers throughout the West.

He did not build his business alone. Around 1856, his sister Fanny her husband David Stern and their son Jacob arrived in San Francisco from New York, and brother Louis joined the firm a year later.

Levi moved his warehouse to a succession of larger quarters and by 1864, he was living with Fanny and David’s growing family.

In 1866, the company moved to spacious headquarters at 14-16 Battery Street, and the corporate name was now “Levi Strauss & Co.”

In January, the wife of a local laborer asked Jacob, a tailor to make a pair of sturdy pants for her husband. Using a heavy white fabric called cotton duck Jacob fashioned the trousers as usual.

He wanted to make the pants last longer, so he used a few metal rivets to fasten the pockets and presented the finished product to his customer, who paid him $3.

Within a few moths, Jacob was making so many pairs he decided to patent the process and look for a business partner to help him mass produce the pants.

Enter Levi Strauss, his fabric supplier, Jacob wrote to Levi sometime in 1872, and in July of that year the two men applied for a patent on the new invention.

Their correspondence was lost in 1906, so it is not known what kind of agreement they forged, but what is known is the important thing: on May 20, 1873, the US patent and Trademark Office granted Levi Strauss & Co. and Jacob Davis patent No. 139, 121 for an “Improvement in Fastening Pocket Opening” on men’s work pants: the first blue jeans.
The Blues Are Born

Early History of BMW

2009-07-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

Early History of BMW
BMW formally recognizes its birthday as March 7, 1916 the day Gustav Otto’s fledgling aircraft company morphed into a new company just as he handed off ownership to others.

That perhaps sounds like an inauspicious beginning but Otto is nevertheless considered a reluctant father of the company know today as BMW.

That is because the Bavarian Aircraft Works would not have spawned the eventual BMW aircraft company, which in turn led to the auto company, without Otto’s mechanical genius, love of flying family pride, and dedication to building some of the most sought after aircraft engines of the time.

Otto’s father, Nikolaus August Otto who died in 1891, invented the “Otto” combustion engine which first viable internal combustion engine featuring the correct timing of ignition and combustion.

Starting up about the same time as the Otto aircraft firm, the Karl Rapp Motorwerke in 1913 began producing aircraft engines that could win altitude and speed competitions and therefore military contracts.

As the dogs of war began howling in 1914, Rapp had precious production capacity and quickly won contracts from Prussia and Austro-Hungary to produce 25 large V12 aircraft engines.

Rapp’s company began buying four cylinder water cooled aircraft engines from the Gustav Otto company whose operations it absorbed.

By 1916, Rapp Motor Works was employing 370 people and more than 100 machine tools.

An Austrian engineer, Franz Josef Popp largely directed Rapp’s business affairs including securing the all important military contracts.

Popp arrived at Rapp at the direction of the Imperial Austro-Hungary War Ministry to oversee production of 10 million Reichsmarks worth of airplane engines.

On the strength of this new business, Popp transformed the Rapp company into Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH.

In 1917, BMW brought a new product to market that would boost its aircraft reputation, the Type IIIa, water cooled, six cylinder designed by chief engineer Max Friz – a grand engineering mind who would dominate BMW’s product development culture on into the 1960s.

In 1921, Friz developed a motorcycle engine that turn out to be one of the great engines of the decade. It was sold as the Bayern Kleinmotor (Bavarian Small Engine).

An improved Kleinmotor would next power the first motorcycle sold under BMW’s own brand.
Early History of BMW

Kraft Foods

2009-06-20T00:06:00.000-07:00

Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods is the second largest food and beverage company in the world.
Chicago businessman name James L. Kraft started the company in 1903 by pioneering innovations in the wholesale distribution of cheese.

His four brothers joined him in 1909, and they incorporated the fledging business as J. L. Kraft & Bros.

Who is James Lewis Kraft?
James Lewis Kraft was born on a dairy farm near Stevensville, Ontario, Canada on 11 December 1874. He was the second of eleven children. His parents were Mennonites, carrying on the tradition of his father, Jacob Boehm (ca. 1693-1781). James was educated locally and worked nearby at Ferguson’s general store in Fort Erie starting at the age of eighteen.

James Kraft moved to Buffalo, where he invested in a cheese company. Later, he moved to Chicago, IL to manage a branch of the company and while there, his partners eased him out of the business. Stranded in Chicago with only $65. in capital, he obtained a horse and wagon and he purchased cheese wholesale each day and then resold the cheese to local merchants.

The new venture was successful and by 1909, several of his brothers had joined the company as permanent employees (Charles H., John H., Fred, and Norman). In that year, the business was incorporated under the name of J. L. Kraft & Bros. Co., with James L. Kraft as the president.

Kraft developed a revolutionary process, patented in 1916, for pasteurizing cheese so that it would resist spoilage and could be shipped long distances. The company grew quickly, expanding into Canada in 1919. Over the years, Kraft introduced many innovative products and used progressive marketing techniques to make his company one of North America’s leading food producers.

James Kraft was also noted for his philanthropic contributions. He helped create one of the first major television programs, the “Kraft Television Theater,” which ran from 1947 until 1958. He also supported the Baptist Church and was a strong proponent of religious education for young people. He gave a large portion of his wealth to religious organizations over the years and he was once quoted as saying, “The only investment I ever made which has paid consistently increasing dividends is the money I have given to the Lord.”

Business
Kraft used innovative and aggressive advertising techniques to promote his line of 31 varieties of cheese, becoming of the first food companies to use color advertisements in national magazines.

The company opened its first cheese factory in 1914.

Until Kraft entered the business, cheese was produced in large wheels and had a tendency to spoil quickly when cut because most grocers and consumers had no access to refrigeration.

Thus problem inspired Kraft in 1915 to produce a blended, pasteurized cheese that he marketed in metal containers as “process cheese.”

The sale of six million pounds of cheese to the US Army during World War 1 insured the fortunes of the company.

The company changed its name to Kraft Cheese Company in the 1900s soon after merging with the Phenix Cheese Corporation, the maker of Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese (introduced in the United States in 1872).

In 1928 the company introduced Velveeta pasteurized processed cheese spread and Miracle Whip salad processing, adding Kraft caramels in 1933.

Kraft now famous macaroni and cheese dinner was introduced in 1937 and Parkay margarine entered the limelight in 1940.

Once again, the company benefited when it became a major food supplier to the Army during World War 11.

Cheez Whiz was launched in 1952, individually wrapped cheese slices in 1965, and Light n’ Lively yoghurt in 1969.

New Phase

Because of a shrinking tobacco market, the Phillip Morris purchased General Foods in 1985. Kraft was added to its corporate holdings in 1988 followed by the purchase of Nabisco in 2000.

Despite being the country’s largest packaged food company, with hundred of brands analysts say that Kraft has failed in recent years to introduced innovative and successful products.

To reduce the bureaucracy and streamline the food company, Kraft has eliminated thousands of jobs and closed numerous plants and it is divesting itself of brands such as Life Savers, Altoids mints and Milk Bone Dog Snacks.

In 2006 Irene B, Rosenfeld, chairwoman and chief executive of Frito Lay North America, was hired as chief executive.

Upon assuming her position, she announced a new executive team to build a Kraft that is more aggressive, agile and imaginative and that will focus more intensely on consumers’ evolving food and beverage needs.

Kraft Foods

Chevron Corporation

2009-05-09T05:46:00.001-07:00

Chevron Corporation
Chevron Corporation is one of the world’s largest integrated petroleum companies.

It is involved in every aspect of the industry, from exploration and production to transportation, refining and retail marketing, as well as chemical manufacturing and sales.

It operates in more than ninety countries and employs about 28 000 people worldwide.

The company turns crude oil into a variety of products, including motor gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels, lubricants, asphalt and chemicals.

Chevron Corporation started business in Los Angeles in 1879 as the Pacific Coasts Oil Company.

In 1900, the thriving company was acquired by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the company began investing in international exploration and made the first major discoveries in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

In 1936, in partnership with Texaco, it formed Caltex, bringing in new markets in Asia, Africa and Europe.

After the Second World War, continued expansion led to major discoveries in Indonesia, Australia, the UK North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1984, the company nearly doubled its size by acquiring Gulf Oil Corporation in what then was the largest corporate merger in US history.

That same year, Standard also changed its name to Chevron, the well-known brand name of many of its products.

In 1993, Chevron achieved another milestone when it joined the Republic of Kazakhstan in the largest joint venture between a Western company and a member of the former Soviet Union.

A new company, Tengizchevroil, was formed to develop the Tengiz oil field the largest discovery in past thirty years.

By 1999 Chevron’s net income was $2.070 billion (up to 55 percent from 1998), and opening earnings were $2.3 billion (up from $1.9 billion in 1998).
Chevron Corporation

Brief History of IBM

2009-04-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Brief History of IBM
In 1911 IBM was first incorporated in New York as the Computing-Tabulating-Recoding Company.

The company’s history, however, can be traced back to 1890, when the United States was receiving waves of immigrants.

To meet the needs of measuring population the US Census Bureau sponsored a contest to find the most efficient means of tabulating census data.

The contest was won by German immigrant and Census Bureau statistician, Herman Hollerith. Hollerith formed the Punch Card Tabulating Machine Co. in 1896.

In 1911 Hollerith’s company merged with Computing Scale Co. of America and International Time Recording Co. to form Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co.

The company manufactured and sold products ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorder to meat and cheese slicers, tabulators and punch cards.

In the beginning the company operated in New York City only. Within a short period of time, however, it quickly expanded its office and plants to other parts of New York State, Washington, DC, Ohio, Michigan and Toronto, Canada.

In 1914 Thomas J. Watson joined the company and became the president of the company within eleven months. Under his leadership the company continued to expand its products and services.

At that time the company focused on producing large scales custom built tabulating solutions for businesses.

Within ten years Watson had expanded the company’s business operations to Europe, South America, Asia and Australia and in 1924 the company was renamed International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) to reflect the firm’s worldwide expansion.

IBM refers to the decades between 1939 and 1963 as the ‘Era of Innovation’. During this period the company’s product line expanded significantly.

In 1891 IBM introduced personal computers (PCs) for small businesses, schools and homes. For first time, IBM collaborated with Intel and Microsoft to produce PCs.

In 1985 IBM introduced local area networks (LAN), which permitted PC users to exchange information and share printers and files within a building or complex.

IBM established a foundation for network computing and numerous applications of PCs.

In 1993 Louis V. Gerstner, Jr, a former executive at American Express, Nabisco and McKinsey & Co., joined IBM as CEO. Gerstner emphasized the need to provide integrated solutions for the company’s customers.

He also decided to keep company, together instead of splitting it into separate independent companies.

Today IBM’s strength lies in its combined expertise in solutions, services, products and technologies.
Brief History of IBM

The Google Story

2009-03-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

The Google Story
Google was founded by two Ph.D. computer science students at Stanford University in California – Larry Page and Sergey Brin. When Page and Brin began their hero’s journey, they didn’t know exactly where they were headed.

Larry Page was born in 1973 in Lansing. Both of his parents were computer scientists. His father was a university professor and a leader in the field of artificial intelligence, while his mother was a teacher of computer programming.

Meanwhile, Sergey Brin was also born in 1973, in Moscow, Russia, the son of a Russian mathematician and economist. His entire family fled the Soviet Union in 1979 under the threat of growing anti-Semitism and began their new lives as immigrants in the United States.

According to Brin, the research behind Google began in 1995. The first prototype was actually called BackRub. A couple of years later, they had a search engine that worked considerably better than the others available did at the time.

Within the next few years, the prototype system had been converted into progressively improved versions, and these were substantially more effective than any other search engine then available.

As the buzz about their project spread, more and more people began to use it. Soon they were reporting that there were 10,000 searches per day at on their system.

They named their successor search engine Google, in a whimsical analogy to the mathematical term googol, which is the immense large number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Google Inc. opened its door as a business entity in September 1998, operating out of modest facilities in a Menlo Park, California garage.

Google was also in the process of developing a unique company culture. It operated in an informal atmosphere that facilitated both collegiality and an easy exchange of ideas.

By the end of 2000, Google was handling more than 100 million searches each day. Shortly thereafter, Google began to deliver new innovations and establish new partnerships to enter the burgeoning field of mobile wireless computer.

By expanding into this field, Google continued to pursue its strategy of putting search into hands of as many as possible.
The Google Story

History of Mitsubishi

2009-02-11T23:34:00.000-08:00

History of Mitsubishi
The first Mitsubishi Company was a shipping firm established by Yataro Iwasaki (1834–1885) in 1870. In 1873, its name was changed to Mitsubishi Shokai.

The company bought into coal mining in 1881 by acquiring the Takashima mine and Hashima Island in 1890, using the produce to fuel their extensive steamship fleet.

They also diversified into shipbuilding, banking, insurance, warehousing, and trade. Later diversification carried the organization into such sectors as paper, steel, glass, electrical equipment, aircraft, oil, and real estate.

During the Second World War, Mitsubishi manufactured aircraft, under the direction of Jiro Horikoshi. The Mitsubishi Zero was a primary Japanese naval fighter in World War II.

As well as building prominent fighters, Mitsubishi also built many of Japan's most famous bombers of the war, such as the G3M, the G4M, the Ki-21, and the Ki-67.

During the 1930s, Mitsubishi had also built the single-engine Ki-35.

At the end of the Second World War Japans large industrial groups were dismantled by order of the Allied powers and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was split into three regional companies, each with an involvement in motor vehicle development.

By the beginning of the 1960s, Japans economy was gearing up: wages were rising and the idea of family motoring was taking off.

It was decided that the company should create a single operation to focus on the automotive industry and, in 1970 the Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (MMC) was formed.

In 1970, the company signed an LNG purchase and sale agreement in Brunei, marking the start of the global development of an investment-based business model transcending simple trading company activities.

Together with its over 500 group companies, Mitsubishi employs a multinational workforce of approximately 54,000 people. Mitsubishi has long been engaged in business with customers around the world in many industries, including energy, metals, machinery, chemicals, food and general merchandise.
History of Mitsubishi

History of Ford Motor

2009-01-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

History of Ford Motor
Henry Ford (1863 – 1947) stands alone as a lone visionary personally responsible for the creation of the automobile industry in America.

A self trained mechanic with a lifelong disdain of experts with university degrees, Ford built his firsts automobile in 1893, and a decade later he founded the Ford Motor Company.

He intended to produce “the car for the great attitude,” and to do he had to harmonies mass production with mass consumption. Ford was not the first manufacturer to use interchangeable parts or to run an assembly line, but in his quest to produce an inexpensive and standardized product he perfected assembly line production techniques.

The result proved dramatic. In 1908, before he introduced the assembly line, Ford made 10,607 Model Ts – the “Tin Lizzie” – which he sold for $850 each. He shifted to an assembly line in 1913, and production quickly rose to 300,000 cars a year.

In 1916 he sold 730,041 Model Ts for $360 each, and in 1924 he produced two million of the cars retailing at $290 each. A total of fifteen million Model Ts rolled out of Ford plants before production ceased in 1927.

Prior to Ford, it took over twelve hours to assemble a car. By contrast his first assembly line turned out a model T every 93 minutes, and by 1927 Ford was making a Model T every 24 seconds.

The Ford Motor Company became not only the word’s largest automobile manufacturer but the world’s largest industrial enterprise.
History of Ford Motor

The Creation of General Electric

2009-01-10T01:52:00.000-08:00

The Creation of General Electric
Before the creation of General Electric, a series of mergers in the late 1880s created three giant corporations. The several Edison companies and the Sprague Electric Railway Company merged, incorporating officially in January 1889, to become Edison General Electric.

At the same time Westinghouse acquired three small companies: Consolidated Electric Company (1887), the United Electric Lighting Company (1890) and the Waterhouse Electric and Manufacturing Company (1888).

Another company the Thompson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, acquired seven competitors between 1888 and 1890 and emerged with the majority of the arc lighting business, a clutch of key patents, and a large pool of skilled personnel.

Thus in 1890 there were three large corporations in the electrical industry: Edison General Electric, Westinghouse and Thompson-Houston.

After many mergers of the late 1880s the patent positions of the three corporations remained extremely confused in many respects. In particular the Thompson-Houston Company held weak patents in incandescent lighting, and Edison General Electric had few patents in the alternating current field.

Equally important problems bedeviled the electric street railway business, where each had some patents; similar conflicts prevailed through every products line in the industry. Merger promised an end to these potential conflicts; competition virtually ensured many legal expenses and price wars, not to mention the possibility of exclusion from new markets.

All three competitors considered mergers with each other two before the Edison General Electric Company and the Thompson-Houston Company joined in 1892.

They became General Electric. With their merger the entire electrical industry was reduced from fifteen competitors to a duopoly in just five years. Westinghouse and General Electric completed this rationalization in 1895 by signing a patent sharing agreement, effectively removing the last barrier to market control.
The Creation of General Electric

Shell Company: The Early Stage

2008-12-22T20:52:00.000-08:00

Shell Company: The Early Stage
Shell was born in the early days of the oil boom and started out in the shadow of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, which was able to drive many emerging rival oil companies out of business by undercutting their price and taking over their shares of the market.

Royal Dutch/Shell was the result of a merger in 1907 between the British-based Shell Transport and Trading Company, which pioneered the used of seagoing oil tankers, and the Royal Dutch Petroleum company, which made its fortune developing and exploiting new oil fields in Borneo and Sumatra.

During the Civil War, when some of the slaves from Trepagnier Plantation were joining Union forces to fight the Confederacy in Louisiana, a British Jew from the East End of London was setting up as a merchant on the docks in that great city. Marcus Samuel was an enterprising fellow who decided to greet ships returning to England from India, Japan, Africa and the Middle east and offer to buy any trinkets and curious that sailors had collected abroad. Before long, word spread among sailors that they could augment their wages by selling to Samuel. With business thriving, Samuel opened large warehouses on the docks to collect these items and resell them. Among the items he purchased were exotic shells, which he had glued onto wooden jewelry boxes. Those boxes were sold to young women who came to the beach for a holiday.

His grandson later took his fortune and expanded import/export business, opening offices in Japan and London.

In the 1890s, the French Rothschild family decided to go into business exploiting the oil fields opening in Baku in Russia. Needing a partner to help them transport and sell the oil, they turned to Marcus Samuel.

In 1907, Sir Marcus Samuel and Henry Deterding merged the Shell Transport and Trading Company with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company to create Royal Dutch/Shell. Today Royal Dutch/Shell is the world second largest oil company. The company is 40 percent owned by Shell Transport and Trading Company and 60 percent owned by Royal Dutch Petroleum. Deterding then bought Shell ashore in the United States in Washington and Louisiana to take on Standard Oil on its home turf. John D. Rockefeller tried to buy out Riyal Dutch/Shell with an offer of $100 million in 1910, but the deal was turn down.
Shell Company: The Early Stage

General Motors

2008-12-11T00:05:00.000-08:00

General Motors
William Durant was the man who designed and built General Motors. About 1908, Durant began to buy small, successful automobile companies – Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Chevrolet – and merged them into his new General Motors Corporation.

In an era of fierce competition among numerous small, fledging automakers, the idea of grouping together different automobile companies had been discussed by numerous investors in the early 1900s. After Durant, a major shareholder in Buick Motor Car Company, failed to convince Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds to join him in such an organization, Durant decided to form his own holding company, General Motors in the fall 1908.

In 1916, he set up a separate subsidiary called United Motors to buy small, successful parts companies. His first acquisitions included Delco, which held Charles Kettering’s patents to the automotive self starter.

Durant ultimately bought about 20 supplier companies; his last acquisitions – in 1919, the year before he was ousted as GM’s CEO – was Fisher Body.

General Motors ushered in the age of mass consumerism with its installment buying and credit programs for car buyers in the 1920s. Coupled with its expansive lineup of cars – from humble Chevrolet to the mighty Cadillac – and yearly style changes, GM’s approach to selling cars was adapted throughout the industry as the standard for mass marketing durable goods to the U.S consumer.

From the start, Durant’s vision was clear: in contrast to Henry Ford’s approach of developing one leading automobile, GM would offer a spectrum of cars at different price levels.

Although GM suffered a downturn during the Great depression, it nevertheless enlarged its market share and after 1930 was ranked as the nation’s largest car maker, ahead of rival Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation.
General Motors

History of General Dynamics

2008-11-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

History of General Dynamics
General Dynamics traces its ancestry to John Philip Holland's Holland Torpedo Boat Company. This company was responsible for developing the U.S. Navy's first submarines built at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard, located in Elizabethport, New Jersey.

John Philip Holland (29 February 1840 –12 August 1914) was an engineer who developed the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the U.S. Navy.

Due to the lengthy and expensive process of introducing the world's first practical submarines, and due to other lesser-known events that occurred at the time, Holland had to part with his company and sell his interest to financier Isaac Leopold Rice, renaming the new firm as the Electric Boat Company on 7 February 1899.

The first submarine that this shipyard built was (originally) named the Holland VI, later to be known as USS Holland [SS-1]. This was the first submarine to be purchased and commissioned into United States naval service on 11 April 1900.

Electric Boat gained a reputation for unscrupulous arms dealing in 1904-05, when it sold submarines to Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy and Russia's Imperial Russian Navy, who were then at war.

General Dynamics was officially established on April 24, 1952, when the shareholders of Electric Boat Corporation, a company based in Washington and New York States, followed the recommendation of its president and chief executive officer, John Jay Hopkins, and voted to change the company's name. Hopkins felt the name change was necessary because Electric Boat was no longer only a shipbuilder and had diversified its business after World War II.

By 1984, General Dynamics had four divisions: Convair in San Diego, General Dynamics-Fort Worth, General Dynamics-Pomona, and General Dynamics-Electronics. In 1985 reorganization created the Space Systems Division from the Convair Space division. In 1985, GD also acquired Cessna.

In late 1987, teamed with McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics received the contract for the stealth A-12 naval strike aircraft. The A-12 had a fixed $4.8-billion development budget and a strict timetable. The program experienced serious delays and development was canceled in January 1991.

In 2001, General Dynamics Aerospace Division produces the Gulfstream V, V-SP, G200, and G100 and provides aviation services in avionics, airframes, engines, and refurbishments.

In 2008, General dynamics make a deal to buy AxleTech International. AxleTech makes axles, suspensions, brakes and aftermarket parts for military vehicles, trucks and off-highway machines. The company provides service and support to customers around the world through an extensive network of reliable partners in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South America and Australia. Post acquisition, AxleTech and its 1,000 employees worldwide will become part of Charlotte-based General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products.
History of General Dynamics

History of Microsoft Excel

2008-11-24T17:38:00.000-08:00

History of Microsoft Excel
The first spreadsheet on a personal computer was called VisiCalc (short for visible calculator) and was created by Daniel Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1978. Bricklin, a Harvard Business School student, was looking for an easier way to conduct a case study. He envisioned “an electronic blackboard and electronic chalk in a classroom”. He recruited Frankston to help him write the code. VisiCalc was an instant success and was one of the first “killer apps”.

By early 1980s, Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet. Lotus had bought and then discontinued VisiCalc. Borland’s Quattro Pro was another well-known product at that time.

In 1985, Microsoft Corporation came up with Excel for the Macintosh computer. This product was remarkable for its use pull down-menus and a point and click device called a mouse. Other spreadsheets use a command line interface that required knowledge of cryptic DOS command.

When Microsoft named its spreadsheet software “Excel,” it apparently did not now that Manufacturers Hanover Trust already had an automated banking program called Excel. As part of the settlement for trademark infringement, Microsoft agreed to refer always to its product as Microsoft Excel.
History of Microsoft Excel

Apple Computer

2008-11-05T05:20:00.000-08:00

Apple Computer
On April 1, 1976, two college dropouts, Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, founded the Apple Computer Company. They began operating out of garage building the Apple I, which some claim to be the first personal computer to be sold as a fully assembled package.

In the early 1970s, before the introduction of the Apple I, the personal computing products available in the market had limited appeal. They were generally sold by small electronics firms and individual hobbyists through clubs. In many ways, Wozniak’s Apple I still typified the early merchandise. It consisted of an unpacked circuit board wired by Wozniak so that a purchaser could hook it up to a power supply. Within a few years, however astonishing advances in integrated circuitry provided the critical raw materials needed. And programmers began writing software to make the machines appealing to people.

In 1977, Wozniak and Jobs introduced the Apple II. In stark contrast to the Apple I, fundamentally a kit computer with limited appeal though creatively priced at $666, the $1298 Apple II is considered by many to be the first personal computer designed for the mass market. Market appeal came form its attractive physical design, and the fact that it came fully assembled with a standard keyboard, integrated power supply, and color graphics capability.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan awarded both Wozniak and Jobs the national Medal of technology, the highest honor bestowed on America’s leading innovators, for their achievement at Apple Computer and their contributions in bringing the power of personal computing to the general public.

The success of the Macintosh put Apple Computer in the map. It also resulted in Microsoft recognizing the importance of GUI to future sales. Eventually, the personal relationship between Jobs and Bill Gates led to a period of cooperation, where Microsoft learned the basics of GUI technology, allowing Microsoft to begin its own project: Windows.
Apple Computer

Business History of Nokia

2008-10-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

Business History of Nokia
Nokia is a Finnish company that since 1995 has become a global leader in the production of cellular phone.

Traditional images of Finnish industry are associated with timber forest products, furniture, ships and Valco (a government television picture tube company). The importance of the forest industry was evident in the slogan Nokia used during 70s, “Finland lives from its forest”.

Nokia is an old Finnish industry; it origin are traced to 1865 when an engineer named Fredrik Idestam built a pulp mill on a river in southwest Finland to produce paper. A small town eventually grew up around this mill site, and a company formed and achieved success in the production of paper and cardboard products.

In 1966 Nokia entered the electronics field. Initially it employed only 460 people and it was the country’s fourth largest employer in electronics. 1966 was also the year that Nokia’s three industries – forest products, rubber, and cable – merged. Thus when Nokia entered the production of consumer electronics and later, mobile phone, it was already a familiar industrial name to Finns.

Nokia was involved in eleven different industrial fields during the 1980, and difficult for foreign investors to understand the corporation. Nokia’s entry into high technology filed began in the 1980s, when the CEO Kari Kairamo took the helm. He favored an active foreign policy for Finland, and as early as 1987 supported the country’s entry into European Union.

During the 1970s and 1980d, Nokia pursued an active acquisition policy and sought a refashion itself ion several ways. The company’s strategy sought to develop a corporate structure modeled after General Electric. One of these was the purchase of Luxor, television maker.

Telecommunications has always been a strong industry in Scandinavia. Nokia’s particular success came as it acquired the technology for producing cellular phones from a joint venture that it initiated. International success finally came in 1984, when the Mobira Talkman, a portable cellular phone, came on the market and captured attention as a result of its innovativeness.

In 1992, Nokia decided on a new radical strategy. Nokia would become a mobile-phone pure play and sell off all other nonmobile phone assets, Nokia’s core business would henceforth be technology, not paper products, and not even computer or television technologies. This decision came as Nokia launched its 2100 series GSM cell phone, which was an incredible success. Nokia manufactured and sold 20 million.
Business History of Nokia

History of Nescafe

2008-09-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

History of Nescafe
The beginnings of Nescafe can be traced all the way back to 1930, when the Brazilian government, first approached Nestlé. The agency, Brazilian Coffee Institute seeks Nestle to preserve the huge coffee surpluses, by develop coffee that was soluble in hot water.
Coffee guru, Max Morgenthaler, and his team set out immediately to find a way of producing a quality cup of coffee that could be made simply by adding water, yet would retain the coffee’s natural flavor.

After seven long years of research in Nestle Swiss laboratories, they found the answer. The new product was named Nescafe – a combination of Nestlé and café. Nestle introduced Nescafe, the first commercially successful soluble coffee, in Switzerland, on April 1st, 1938. The company applied the technology at its Hayes factory, west London.

Instant coffee processing was not a new idea; it was invented by a Japanese chemist in 1901 and had been marketed and sold by other companies without success. Nestle revolutionized the way instant coffee was made. Nestle developed a new process for dehydrating the concentrated coffee which vastly improved the quality. In entailed spraying a fine mist of the solution into a heated tower where the droplets turned to powder almost instantly.

For the first half of the next decade, however, World War II hindered its success in Europe.
Nescafé was soon exported to France, Great Britain and the USA. Its popularity grew rapidly through the rest of the decade. It was so popular that the entire production of its US plant was reserved for military use.

By the 1950s, coffee had become the beverage of choice for teenagers, who were flocking to coffeehouses to hear the new rock ’n’ roll music.

Over the years the company has kept the emphasis on innovation, introducing pure soluble coffee (1952) solely using roast coffee beans, freeze dried soluble coffee (1965) and coffee granules (1967). In 1994 Nestle invented the full aroma process, which improved the quality of instant coffee. Such innovations have made sure that Nescafe has remained the world’s leading coffee. It is also the third most valuable brand in the entire drinks sector.
History of Nescafe

History of Quaker Oats Company

2008-09-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

History of Quaker Oats Company
The Quaker Oats Company has been around for over 120 years producing many different products and cereals. It all started with The Quaker Mills Company in Ravenna, Ohio when Henry D. Seymour and William Heston registered the Quaker trademark in 1877. Later Henry Crowell purchased the company and quickly gained acceptance from the public in part because of his method of packaging the oats in a two pound paper package with cooking directions. This is understandable as the method of packaging by his rivals were in the not-so-handy 180 lb barrels. He was called a cereal tycoon at that time.

It is unclear exactly how many different companies were involved in the late 1880s, but others involved in the formation of Quaker Oats, include Ferdinand Schumacher known as “The Oatmeal King” (American Oatmeal Company), John Stuart, his son Robert and George from cereal mills of Cedar Rapids.

Another on was Rob Lewis & Co. American Oats and Barley Oatmeal Corporation.

Over the years many different premiums were given out to promote the Quaker man, starting with trade cards and puzzles in 1900 era, to cookie jars in 1997. The most popular premium in the 1950's was Sgt Preston of the Yukon Promotion with free deeds for one square inch of land in the Yukon Territory.

The symbol of a man in Quaker dress was registered as a trademark in 1877 by forerunner of the Quaker Oats Company. This symbol was chosen because it was considered that Quakers represented an image of purity and honesty. This move was seminal, because Quaker Oats was the first cereal to be marketed as a brand rather than a commodity.

Further more, in 1886 Quaker oats pioneered the retail sale of cereals in packages. These developments helped to establish oatmeal as the most popular breakfast item in the United States and as a significant ingredient in many ready to eat cereals and other food products.

In August 2001, after one hundred years a publicly traded company, Quaker Oats Company merged with PepsiCo, Inc.
History of Quaker Oats Company

History of Pizza Hut

2008-08-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

History of Pizza Hut
The history of Pizza hut began in 1958, when what is now the world's largest pizza franchise was born. Pizza Hut is the world's largest pizza restaurant chain and is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., whose restaurants total approximately 34,000 restaurants.

The whole history of pizza hut has been achieved through innovation, but the history of pizza hut really took off with amalgamation into the Pepsi Company and more aggressive marketing techniques especially in the take out market.

It was founded in 1958 by Dan and Frank Carney. Their friend suggested opening a pizza parlor they agreed with the idea that it could prove successful, so that they borrowed $600 form their mother to start a business. At that time the original Pizza hut was at Wichita State University with 25 seats.

When making the sign for the restaurant they only had enough room for nine letters and because they made pizza's they wanted pizza in the name, that only left 3 letters and because the restaurant looked like a hut they named it Pizza Hut.

Their first franchise was opened in 1959 in Topeka, Kansas. In 1977, Pizza Hut was acquired by Pepsico.

On April 1, 2008, Pizza Hut sent emails to customers advertising that they now offer pasta items on their menu. The email (and similar advertising on the company's website) stated "Pasta so good we've changed our name to 'Pasta Hut'."
History of Pizza Hut

History of Pepsi Cola

2008-08-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

History of Pepsi Cola
Summer 1898, the weather was hot and humid. In New Bern, North Carolina pharmacist named Caleb Bradham began experimenting with combinations of spices, juices, and syrups trying to create a refreshing new drink to serve his customers. He invented the beverage known around the world as Pepsi-Cola.

His creation, a unique mixture of kola nut extract, vanilla and rare oils, became so popular his customers named it "Brad's Drink." Caleb decided to rename it "Pepsi-Cola," and advertised his new soft drink. People responded, and sales of Pepsi-Cola started to grow, convincing him that he should form a company to market the new beverage. In 1902, he launched the Pepsi-Cola Company in the back room of his pharmacy, and applied to the U.S. Patent Office for a trademark.

At first, he mixed the syrup himself and sold it exclusively through soda fountains. But soon Caleb recognized that a greater opportunity existed to bottle Pepsi so that people could drink it anywhere. The business began to grow, and on June 16, 1903, "Pepsi-Cola" was officially registered with the U.S. Patent Office. That year, Caleb sold 7,968 gallons of syrup, using the theme line "Exhilarating, Invigorating, Aids Digestion." He also began awarding franchises to bottle Pepsi to independent investors, whose number grew from just two in 1905, in the cities of Charlotte and Durham, North Carolina, to 15 the following year, and 40 by 1907. By the end of 1910, there were Pepsi-Cola franchises in 24 states.

Building a strong franchise system was one of Caleb's greatest achievements. Local Pepsi-Cola bottlers, entrepreneurial in spirit and dedicated to the product's success, provided a sturdy foundation. They were the cornerstone of the Pepsi-Cola enterprise. By 1907, the new company was selling more than 100,000 gallons of syrup per year.

Growth was phenomenal, and in 1909 Caleb erected a headquarters so spectacular that the town of New Bern pictured it on a postcard. The previous year, Pepsi had been one of the first companies in the United States to switch from horse-drawn transport to motor vehicles, and Caleb's business expertise captured widespread attention.

Pepsi-Cola enjoyed 17 unbroken years of success. Caleb now promoted Pepsi sales with the slogan, "Drink Pepsi-Cola. It will satisfy you." Then came World War I, and the cost of doing business increased drastically. Sugar prices see sawed between record highs and disastrous lows, and so did the price of producing Pepsi-Cola.

Caleb was forced into a series of business gambles just to survive, until finally, after three exhausting years, his luck ran out and he was bankrupted. By 1921, only two plants remained open. It wasn't until a successful candy manufacturer, Charles G. Guth, appeared on the scene that the future of Pepsi-Cola was assured. Guth was president of Loft Incorporated, a large chain of candy stores and soda fountains along the eastern seaboard. He saw Pepsi-Cola as an opportunity to discontinue an unsatisfactory business relationship with the Coca-Cola Company, and at the same time to add an attractive drawing card to Loft's soda fountains. He was right.

After five owners and 15 unprofitable years, Pepsi-Cola was once again a thriving national brand. One oddity of the time, for a number of years, all of Pepsi-Cola's sales were actually administered from a Baltimore building apparently owned by Coca-Cola, and named for its president.

Within two years, Pepsi would earn $1 million for its new owner. With the resurgence came new confidence, a rarity in those days because the nation was in the early stages of a severe economic decline that came to be known as the Great Depression.
History of Pepsi Cola