Marks and Spencer
Mark and Spencer, which became a limited company in 1903 in Manchester, Britain, emerged as one of the world’s largest retail companies.
At the end of the twentieth century, it employed 68,000 people, had 286 stores, several factories producing for the stores in Britain and served 13 million shoppers with clothing, shoes, underwear, furniture and various homeware items and food, including 85 million sandwiches sold weekly in 2000.
Michael Marks, the son of a Jewish tailor in Grodno, escape from the bloody Russian pogroms of 1881, arrived in England the following year.
He became a peddler around Leeds. Since he did not speak a word of English, he put a sign in his tray: “Don’t ask price, everything is a penny.” This turned out to be the key to his success.
In a few years, he opened his first M. Marks Penny Bazaar, and soon he had a dozen market stall in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
He looked for a partner to enable him to expand and found Tom Spencer, who invested his savings into business and became a half owner.
The family lived above the store but by 1903, when company went public, they owned thirty six market bazaar and shops, including three in London.
In 1908, Tom Spencer had already retired, and Marks died at the age of forty seven.
Marks and Spencer
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Brief History of Payment Cards
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
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
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Colonel Sanders of KFC
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
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
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