A surprising story of the success of the founder of the coffee house "Starbucks"

Howard Schultz, thirty years ago, got into the coffee business, pursuing only one goal: to strengthen personal relationships between people over a cup of coffee. Now he is the CEO of Starbucks. However, the way to the top was not easy. How did Schultz, a guy from a poor working family, overcome all the difficulties and founded the largest network of coffee houses on Earth?

Some biographies

Schultz was born on July 19, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. His family was no different from the rest. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that he grew up in a microdistrict among poor people. So, as a boy, he immersed himself in the world of human inequality, experienced poverty at an early age. When Schultz was only 7 years old, his father, the truck driver, who was handling the diapers, injured his leg during the next voyage. At that time, there was no medical insurance and compensation, so the family was left without a basic income.

In high school, Schultz actively played football and received a sports scholarship from a university in northern Michigan. Then the young man entered college and, finally, decided for himself that he would not continue to play football. I had to pay for my studies, so the guy had to go to work. He started with a bartender, and sometimes even was a donor.

After graduating from the institute in 1975, Schulz worked for a year on a sports base in Michigan. He was invited to join Xerox, where he gained experience in communicating with clients. For a long time he did not survive there and a year later settled in a Swedish company connected with household utensils.

It was there that Schulz built a career and became first a general manager and then a vice president. He ran a team of sales people in an office in New York. It was in this company that he first encountered the Starbucks brand: his attention was attracted by a large number of drip coffee makers. Interested Howard decided to visit Seattle, in advance appointing a meeting to the owners of the coffee shop: Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker.

Getting to know Starbucks

A year later, another 29-year-old Baldwin (the founder of Starbucks) finally invited Schulz to work, offering him the post of director of retail operations and marketing. Then "Starbucks" had only three stores, in which they sold weight coffee for home use. The first Starbucks store still exists and is on the Pike Place market in Seattle.

Fateful trip to Milan

The fate of Schulz changed dramatically when he was sent to Milan for the show. Walking around the city, the young man drew attention to espresso bars in which the owners knew all their customers by name and served them various coffee drinks, whether it was cappuccino or latte. Schultz realized that it was personal relationships that would help sell coffee.

In 1985, Howard left Starbucks after the founders did not adopt his Italian idea. Soon he decided to found his own company Il Giornale (translated from Italian means "daily"). In order to redeem the premises for the coffee house, Schultz needed to collect more than $ 1.6 million. He did not work for a year at Strackers, trying to open his network of coffee houses in the Italian image.

In August 1987, Schulz was offered the position of CEO of Starbucks, which already counted six coffee houses.

The popularity of the Starbucks chain

America quickly became imbued with sympathy for this company. In 1992, the Starbucks network entered the stock exchange Nasdaq. The firm had already 165 open points, the revenue was $ 93 million for the year. So, by 2000, Starbucks had become a global network, opened more than 3,500 coffee houses and received $ 2.2 billion in annual revenue. Schulz became one of the most influential people in America.

"Starbucks" was not always on top, there were also failures. So, in 2008 Schultz temporarily closed more than one hundred coffee houses to teach the barman to cook the perfect espresso.

As part of the reform, Schultz announced that Starbucks is seeking to recruit former military personnel. Last year, the company confirmed rumors that it would pay for the training of its employees in the college.

During his work at Starbucks, Schulz always paid high priority to his employees, whom he calls partners. He offers everyone full medical care and insurance, perhaps, this was influenced by the case with his father.

Schulz released an unusual book "Pour your heart into it: how the cup for a cup was built by Starbucks".

Starbucks continues to grow, now it has annual sales of more than $ 16 billion, so Schultz has a wealthy fortune. His own capital is estimated at $ 3 billion - a true billionaire.