Category Big Business

          It was the 1850s and the Californian Gold Rush drew people around the world to America. Levi Strauss too migrated to the US hoping to make a fortune. He started his business by selling dry goods to the miners under the name Levi Strauss & Co. In those days, miners were in need of durable pants to wear for work.

            To fill this gap, Levi hired a tailor to make durable pants out of tent canvas. Later, the tent canvas was substituted with more comfortable denim. His tailor Jacob Davis found out that if copper rivets were added to the stitching of pocket seams, the trousers will be more durable. The miners liked the new overalls that Levi produced and soon he got the patent for the new design. The demand increased and his design soon became one of the best-selling clothing items of the world.

             After the First World War, this work wear underwent transformation. In 1934, the company introduced jeans for women and two years later, they started using a Red Tab to the back pocket to distinguish Levi’s jeans from others. By the 1950s, it became more of a fashion statement than work wear. Apart from jeans, Levi Strauss started producing jackets, shirts, skirts, and belts. The company expanded to other countries and as a means of cutting down the costs, many of the factories in the US were closed down.

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               For fashion lovers, Gucci is a familiar name. Guccio Gucci was working as a hotel employee in Paris and London. He was always fascinated by the high quality luggage that his guests used to bring with them and visited H J Cave & Sons, a famous manufacturer to see how they were produced. He soon returned to Florence, his birth place to start a business of his own.

                By 1920, he established a shop that sold leather goods. His products were distinctly known for their fine leather work and classy styling. His business grew and he expanded his product line to include footwear, clothing and other accessories.

                By the 1950s, Gucci had established itself as a premier luxury brand. The brand continued to prosper through the 70s. Today, Gucci is the highest selling Italian fashion brand.

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          More than a hundred years ago, when a young Hans Wilsdorf began making watches, he was looking for making an impenetrable case that could fit all watch mechanisms. In those days, wrist watches were not so popular and his quest was seen as nearly impossible. But his hard work resulted in the production of some of the world’s finest watches known for their quality- Rolex.

          Hans’s efforts were funded by his brother-in-law Alfred Davis. In 1905, Hans brought out his first collection under the name Wilsdorf and Davis. Three years later, Hans came up with the name Rolex. The company was relocated from London to Switzerland due to wartime exigencies. Hans was obsessed with creating watches that withstood external forces and as a result, Rolex continued their innovations.

          In 1926, Rolex created the Oyster collection, the world’s first waterproof and dustproof watch. Years later in 1945, they launched Rolex Datejust, the first self-winding chronometer that indicated the date in a window on the dial. Rolex is also credited for the first wristwatch to display two time zones at once and the first wristwatch to earn chronometer certification.

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          Aviators of the US army played a major role during the war years. As the airmen flew at great heights, they started getting headaches and other ailments due to the intensity of the sky colours. US Army Air Corps Colonel John A. Macready commissioned a New York-based medical equipment manufacturer Bausch & Lomb, to create aviation sunglasses that would get rid of these problems.

          Bausch & Lomb developed a sunglass with plastic frame and green lenses that solved the problem without affecting visibility. It was known as Anti-Glare. This happened in 1929 and a year later, it was patented as Ray-Ban after redesigning it with a metal frame. Each model that was released later became popular in no time. After the war, these sunglasses were made available to the public. In 1999, Bausch & Lomb sold the brand to Luxottica Group, an Italian eyewear conglomerate.

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          Nine years after its establishment, Blue Ribbon Sports was renamed as Nike Inc., one of the most sought-after sports brands. This happened in 1971 and since then, Nike bears the Swoosh mark which makes it one of the most recognizable logos.

          The story of Nike starts in 1964. Bill Bowman was a track and field coach who was looking for ways to improve the performance of his students. Though he tried different ways to develop safe and comfortable shoes, he was not successful in his attempts. Around the same time, his former student Phil Knight suggested an idea to import shoes from Japan to compete with the well-established German brands. The duo started Blue Ribbon Sports, a retail shoe store that later grew to Nike Inc.

          As the sales increased, they decided to manufacture shoes instead of just retailing them. Along with constantly improving the quality and performance of their shoes, they took the help of celebrities like Roger Federer to promote the product. Nike also managed to acquire several small companies and that furthered their success. Slowly they began to expand to other areas like football, golf and clothing. Clever investments and effective marketing along with quality have made Nike one of the most valued sports brands.

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          Adidas earned global attention at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, when the American athlete Jesse Owens sprinted to the finishing line in a pair of Adidas track shoes. Owens won four medals that year, all wearing Adidas shoes.

          Adolph Dassler, the man behind the initial designs of Adidas was an avid football player who wanted to design a new shoe with better performance. His father was a cobbler. Combining his knowledge about the needs on the ground and the expertise of a cobbler, he came out with spiked shoes for track and field. This happened in 1920 and in 1924; he started a shoe company named Adidas T along with his brother Rudolph. Since then, Adidas showed a steady growth.

          Along with shoes, Adidas also brought a range of other sports goods like football and sports apparel. Things were not so good between the brothers after a few years and they split by 1948. Rudolph later went on to establish Puma.

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           Intel’s story is not similar to other technology giants. Neither did it begin in a garage by technology geeks, nor did it face a problem of funds. Intel’s founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore were reputed middle-aged techies with enough experience in the field. When Intel started in 1968, the company received a funding of $2.5 million from Arthur Rock, an American financier.

           Intel started business with memory chips. The company is credited with the world’s first metal oxide semiconductor, the 1101. Though it was not a hit, its successor dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chip did well in the market.

          DRAM was the first chip that could store a significant amount of information. Moreover, DRAM was cheaper. Soon, it became the standard memory device in computers worldwide.

          The company went public in 1971. Intel reached new heights with the launch of erasable programmable read-only memory chip-the EPROM.

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          The name IBM is a hundred years old. In 1911 The Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, and the Computing Scale Company of America, three successful 19th-century companies merged, giving shape to Computing Tabulating Recording Company. It was renamed as International Business Machines Corporation or IBM in 1924, after Thomas J Watson joined as the CEO.

          Watson just did not change the name of the company; his efforts made IBM one of the world’s leading computer manufacturers. Right from the beginning, IBM was regarded more for its research than its products. The company has a diverse product line, including anything from mainframe computers to personal computers.

          After their success with calculators, IBM started producing their own computers in the 1950s. The company also partnered with Microsoft and Intel for some of their major products. Automated teller machine (ATM), floppy disk, hard disk drive (HDD), and magnetic stripe card are some of the prominent inventions from the house of IBM.

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          When IBM was getting ready to release their first personal computer, the IBM PC, Microsoft was famous for Altair BASIC, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) approached Microsoft to produce an operating system for their new product. This happened in 1980.

          For IBM’s requirement, Microsoft purchased an existing operating system from another company. They modified and renamed it as MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System). The new operating system was released in 1981 and met with enormous success. Thereafter, most manufacturers of personal computers licensed MS-DOS as their operating system. Microsoft generated large revenue and never stopped growing thereafter.

          The jewel in their crown, The Microsoft Windows operating system was released in 1983. This new product made Gates a billionaire at the age of 31. With the introduction of Surface tablets that ran Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro in 2012, they started the manufacture of computing hardware.

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          Bill Gates and Paul Allen were best of friends from childhood. Both shared a passion for computers. In those days, computers were not easily accessible for kids as they are today. They used to skip classes to spend time in the school computer room to understand its programming.

          After school, Gates went to Harvard to study law, while Allen started to work as a programmer in Boston. Not long after, Gates returned to work on computers. Around the same time, Altair 8800, a new micro-computer hit the market, Gates and Allen worked to improve its programming language; they worked on BASIC and came up with Altair BASIC.

          This incident inspired the friends to start a company of their own. The result was Microsoft, one of the world’s largest developers of personal-computer software systems and applications.

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