After graduating, Schultz worked as a salesperson for
Xerox Corporation and was quickly promoted to a full sales representative.[9] In
1979 he became a general manager for
Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer, Hammarplast,[8] where he became responsible for their
U.S. operations with a staff of twenty.[9] In
1981, Schultz visited a client of Hammarplast, a fledgling coffee-bean shop called
Starbucks Coffee Company in
Seattle, curious as to why it ordered so many plastic cone filters.[9] He was impressed with the company's knowledge of coffee and kept in contact over the next year, expressing interest in working with them. A year later, he joined
Starbucks as the
Director of Marketing.[11] On a buying trip to
Milan, Italy for Starbucks, Schultz noted that coffee bars existed on practically every street. He learned that they not only served excellent espresso, they also served as meeting places or public squares; they were a big part of
Italy's societal glue, and there were
200,
000 of them in the country.
On his return, he tried to persuade the owners (including
Jerry Baldwin) to offer traditional espresso beverages in addition to the whole bean coffee, leaf teas and spices they had long offered. After a successful pilot of the cafe concept, the owners refused to roll it out company-wide, saying they didn't want to get into the restaurant business. Frustrated, Schultz decided to leave Starbucks in
1985. He needed $400,000 to open the first store and start the business. He simply did not have the money and his wife was pregnant with their first baby. Jerry Baldwin and
Gordon Bowker offered to help. Schultz also received $
100,000 from a doctor who was impressed by Schultz’s energy to “take a gamble”.[12] By
1986, he raised all the money he needed to open the first store '
Il Giornale' after the
Milanese newspaper. Two years later, the original Starbucks management decided to focus on
Peet's Coffee & Tea and sold its Starbucks retail unit to Schultz and Il Giornale for $3.8 million.
Schultz renamed Il Giornale with the Starbucks name, and aggressively expanded its reach across the
United States. Schultz's keen insight in real estate and his hard-line focus on growth drove him to expand the company rapidly. Schultz did not believe in franchising, and made a
point of having Starbucks retain ownership of every domestic outlet.
On 26 June
1992, Starbucks had its initial public offering and trading of its common stock under the stock ticker NASDAQ-NMS:
SBUX. The offering was done by
Alex, Brown & Sons Inc. and
Wertheim Schroder & Co. Inc.[13]
Schultz authored the book Pour Your
Heart Into It: How Starbucks
Built a
Company One Cup at a
Time with
Dori Jones Yang in
1997. His second book
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its
Life Without Losing Its
Soul with Joanne
Gordon, was published in
2011.
On January 8, 2008 Schultz returned as
CEO of Starbucks after an eight-year hiatus.[14] At this time, Schultz was earning a total compensation of $9,740,471, which included a base salary of $1,190,000, and options granted of $7,786,105.[15] Schultz is a significant stakeholder in
Jamba Juice.[16]
On the first of
November 2013, it was announced that Schultz had stepped down from the board of
Square, to be replaced by former
Goldman Sachs executive
David Viniar.
Schultz is the former owner of the
NBA's
Seattle SuperSonics. During his tenure as team owner, he was criticized for his naïveté and propensity to run the franchise as a business rather than a sports team.[18] Schultz feuded with player
Gary Payton, feeling that Payton disrespected him and the team by not showing up to the first day of training camp in
2002.[19] On July 18,
2006, Schultz sold the team to
Clayton Bennett, chairman of the
Professional Basketball Club LLC, an
Oklahoma City ownership group, for $350 million, after having failed to convince the city of Seattle to provide public funding to build a new arena in the
Greater Seattle area to replace KeyArena. At the time of the team's sale, it was speculated that the new owners would move the team to their city some time after the 2006–
2007 NBA season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Schultz
- published: 09 Nov 2015
- views: 63