7 posts tagged “entrepreneur”

Here comes an inspiring story of a person who hails from labour background yet eventually ended up as an entrepreneur ....just amazing journey..wow! its just given ghoosebumps all over the body...it reminded me what's my goal...what's my ambition and inspired me for my current battle with CAT! yeap, i needed this badly...its very right time absolutely! thanks to god...he knows this boy is fit for something very big things..:-) yeap indeed! that's the reason why he always makes me alert by showing and creating these kinda stories in my neighbourhood...Thank you god! 

Oops! i forgot....well anyway, here i'll share one of the  inspiring story who made his first million..in his life!

 

here it goes...

 

RATNAKAR Gutte may not have read Jeffrey Archer's As The Crow Flies, but anyone who listens to him talking about his career cannot help but compare him with Charlie Trumper, the protagonist of the novel. Though unlike Trumper, Gutte, CMD of Sunil Hitech Engineers Ltd. (SHEL), a Rs 300-crore company, is in the business of erection and maintenance of thermal power plants. But the striking similarity lies in both Gutte and Trumper starting it from scratch, and making it big without formal education.
   Gutte, after passing 10th standard from Daithanaghat, a small village in Beed District in Maharashtra, joined a contractor's firm as a labourer. "The salary that I earned was Rs 5 per day at that time," says Gutte, who was soon promoted to the position of welder and his salary doubled to Rs 10 per day. About a year later, Gutte was made chief foreman and was transferred to MP, where he was heading a 40-member team. "Soon after, I took up a job for BIW, a Bhuswal-based firm which was taking up contracts for Bhuswal thermal power plant," says Gutte. Now Gutte considered him self lucky as he earned Rs 1,200 per month.

 

                                                                     

                                                               RATNAKAR GUTTE CMD, Sunil Hitech Engineers

 

   Like every Sunday in 1984, Gutte had gone to watch a film with his wife, when opportunity knocked on his door. "I still remember watching Vishwanathwhen Shatrughan Sinha delivered his famous dialogue when the screen went blank and my name was announced. I was surprised that the owner of the firm that I worked in, Vinod Jain, had come to meet me," recalls Gutte. Jain proposed something to which Gutte could not deny. An opportunity to become a contractor for the firm, with a guarantee that if Gutte makes losses, it would be borne by the company. "This was the first contract I took up for the thermal power plant, after which I kept getting small contracts and my salary now touched around Rs 3,000 per month," recalls Gutte. He then started a small company called Sunil Engineering Works (SEW), which started taking small contracts. Later in 2005, it was incorporated in SHEL.
   However, it was not till 1994 that Gutte says he made his first million. "A top official from BHEL called me for a meeting. I came to know that I was awarded a Rs 2.85 crore contract to create a structure for the company in Vidharbha district, and then I never looked back," says Gutte.
   Post 1995, Gutte started bidding for national tenders floated by NTPC and BHEL and erected NTPC's thermal power plants at Vindhyachal, Suratgarh, Panipat and Khapadkheda. "I was one of the top subcontractors for BHEL and NTPC," he claims. SHEL, which is now an ISO 9001:2000 company, specialises in putting up high-precision thermal power plants and have also forayed into infrastructure development for the steel industry and hydro-power projects. "Hard work is the only key to my success, but often I feel, had I been little more educated, I would have been able to achieve much more. That is why I made it sure that both my sons are given proper opportunity for education," he says.
   Gutte's elder son Sunil is an engineer, while younger son Vijay is an MBA and both of them are now part of SEW's management. The company, which has about 1,200 employees, gives an additional Rs 300 to all employees so that they can support their children's education. The company is believed to be in talks with an Oman-based company for a major order. If it gets through, this would be the first order for SEW from outside India. But the story does not end here for Gutte. He says, "We have just come half way, there is a long way to go. We would be closing around Rs 500 crore as our turnover for this year, and are aiming to become a Rs 2,000-crore company by 2010."

i hope after reading this story you too might felt why can't we doit...Yes, We Can doit! and We Will!

*This particular story has been taken  from one of the leading news paper.

The Billionaire Broker: The Early Years of Charles Schwab

 

Charles Schwab always had difficulty in school, but he never knew why. Today, he has become one of the most famous – and successful – dyslexics in the world. From using comic books to help him pass English literature classes to heading up the largest discount brokerage in the U.S., Schwab’s current fortune of $5.5 billion ranks him as the 57th richest person in the country.

 

Charles Robert Schwab, Jr. was born on July 29, 1937 in Sacramento, California. His childhood was a difficult one, with his small-town lawyer father constantly turning family dinner conversations into talks about “how limited resources were.” As a result, Schwab was put to work early on. “I did as much as I could: raising chickens, pushing an ice-cream cart, bagging walnuts, driving a tractor on a beet farm, working on the railroad,” he says. “I think this eclectic career helped me a lot in life.”

 

Schwab went to school in Woodland, where he quickly discovered he had a problem. He could not read or understand English as well as the rest of the students. Knowing little about dyslexia at the time, Schwab’s teachers simply thought he was a slow student. He did not tell anyone about his problem for years to come, but he knew he would have to work hard to overcome it. He turned to the Classic Comic Book versions of the likes of “Ivanhoe” and “A Tale of Two Cities” to help him through his reading assignments.

 

“I bluffed my way through much of it, I’m sure,” says Schwab. “Fortunately, I have a pretty ‘up’ personality, and that helped me all the way through. I tried hard and I had pretty good communication skills, so I could persuade my teachers that I was a pretty good kid.”

 

After graduating from high school in 1959, Schwab was accepted into Stanford University, thanks in large part to his high grades in economics and his strong golf game. There, he earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA. All the while, however, he continued to suffer from dyslexia. As a freshman, Schwab admits to having been “completely buried,” and he failed both French and English. “To sit down with a blank piece of paper and write was the most traumatic thing that had ever faced me in life,” he says. “I had ideas in my head, but I could not get the stuff down. It was a crushing time.”

 

As a result, Schwab finally turned to economics; numbers were the one thing he could understand. “I never perceived of myself as stupid; I can’t explain why,” he says. “I just thought that if I worked harder, maybe something would happen.”

 

After receiving his MBA, Schwab became a mutual fund manager and excelled. But a few years in, he was craving for more. In 1963, Schwab launched Investment Indicator with two other partners. It was an investment advisory newsletter that quickly grew to have over 3,000 subscribers. At a cost of $84 per annual subscription, Schwab was making a handsome income on the side. But still, he wanted more.

 

Finding Success in Stocks: Schwab Launches His Company

 

 Schwab was ten years into his career when he decided to venture off onto his own and start his own company. He had a vision for a business that would shatter the investing world. Schwab wanted to break down the barriers to Wall Street and make it easier for the average American to invest. How could he do that? Schwab had figured out how to lower the fees for buying and selling stock.

 

Schwab approached his uncle Bill, a fellow entrepreneur, who agreed to finance his nephew’s dreams. With a $100,000 loan, Schwab founded First Commander Corporation, whose philosophy was that the stock market should be open and accessible to everyone. After its first two successful years in business, Schwab bought out his partners, assumed all of the company’s debt, and changed its name to Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.

 

The young company quickly began to make a name for itself, especially in 1974, when the SEC initiated a 13-month trial period for the deregulation of certain brokerage transactions. While other brokers were using the time to raise commissions, Schwab decided to go the opposite route. He would create a discount brokerage firm. When the trial period was over, the SEC officially approved negotiated commissions, and the discount brokerage industry was born.

 

With that, Schwab branched out of San Francisco and opened an office in Sacramento. Advertisements began running across the country, portraying Schwab as a working class broker. By 1979, the company boasted over 33,000 customers. From there, Schwab began to introduce new features, including a 24-hour weekday quote service, and a state of the art computer system.

 

In 1981, Schwab made two prominent acquisitions and opened its first office in Manhattan. Two years later, the company was bought by the Bank of America for $57 million and celebrated its 500,000th customer account. Schwab continued to improve its services with the introduction of new online products like The Equalizer, and the touch-tone quote system SchwabQuotes. But in 1987, Schwab managed to buy back his company for $280 million and promptly went public. Its IPO of eight million shares sold for $16.50 each.

 

By 1994, Schwab had reached over $1 billion in revenues and $100 billion in customer assets. Its further growth was the result of an early focus on online technologies. Schwab launched Internet trading in 1996, and in just two years, it had gained over 1.8 million online accounts.

 

The collapse of the market would hit Schwab hard. Between 2000 and 2002, profits fell from $718 million to $109 million. In response, the company, which was under different management then, cut some 6,500 jobs. Then, after it did not bounce back as expected, the company called back its founder.

 

In 2004, Schwab returned as CEO to the company he had founded. Schwab hired outside consultants to assess the situation. After agreeing with their findings, he decided to cut $600 million in expenses and another 2,000 jobs. He also reduced fees and commissions, and closed down divisions that diverted attention away from the company’s original goal of serving individual investors. International offices were also closed.

 

Schwab wanted his company to shift away from being solely dependent on commissions to being a full-service broker. “We brought prices down, down, down so they are now essentially commodities,” says Schwab. “So if we want to succeed in this business, we have to move in a direction of adding other value to the relationship with our clients. And so where I might have said 15 years ago, 'We want to be the best discount brokerage,' today I want to be the best 'relationship company' in financial services.”

 

The company bounced back. Client assets rose from $942 billion in 2004 to $1.2 trillion just two years later. And now, Schwab wants to do it all again.

My First Million: I am not a conformist

As i said in my earlier post, i wanted to post all the successful entrepreneur's stories for inspiration.

*Its a story of Grocery retail in India got a facelift, thanks to Subramanian, the man behind the Subhiksha chain.

AN opportunity to work as an investment banker with Citibank could have been anybody’s dream job, but this man gave it up to pursue his own ambitions. And definitely for the better. “I am grateful I didn’t have to work for a typical nine-to-six job for long,” says R Subramanian, the mastermind behind Subhiksha, India’s largest grocery and pharmacy retail chain.

 

An IIT-IIM graduate—and a topper of his batch—Subramanian barely worked with Citibank for a couple of weeks before realising that his passion lay elsewhere. The year was 1989. “I was always a conformist and wanted to do different things in life,” says this 41-year-old entrepreneur.
After Citibank, Subramanian joined Royal Enfield in Chennai as one of its general managers. However, that too couldn’t hold him back for long. Two years later he finally decided to venture out on his own. Hailing from a service background—his father was an officer in the Reserve Bank of India—entrepreneurship was an unusual choice for Subramanian. However, that did not deter him from treading into the world of business.
   Within a few months, he established his own outfit, Vishwapriya Financial Services and Securities that introduced IPO financing in in 1994. “While the question of capital grips several wouldbe entrepreneurs, I gathered an initial fund of Rs 50 lakh from angel investors,” he says. Launched with just two people, this Chennai-based company has today grown to be a Rs 250-crore entity with a headcount of 120 people across India.
   And that’s not all. Riding on the success of his first company, Subramanian decided to get into discount retailing. “In the mid-nineties, our finance business was doing well and we were planning to diversify. We studied two options, retail and software, and eventually zeroed in on the former,” he recalls. “I approached angel investors once again for an initial investment of Rs 50 lakh by the help of which I established my first outlet along with 10 people in a basement in Adyar, Chennai in 1997,” says Subramanian. Needless to mention, it became huge hit. Today, the chain has over 1,000 outlets nationally spread over 90 cities, with a turnover of Rs 2,300 crore.
   With Subhiksha, Subramanian changed the way groceries in India were sold. “We studied the Indian model of retail and combined it with the convenience of neigh bourhood retail with the benefit of discounts available from hypermarkets thereby creating a supply chain that could make the kirana operate cost efficiently,” he says.
   The model has been well received across the country, says Subramanian: “It gives me a huge kick to see that our model is not only being studied by management gurus here but is also being copied by global retailers who want to foray into the Indian market. Subramanian’s first million came in the first year of retailing operations in 1997. Now he has much grander plans. “We will continue to grow and be India‘s largest retailer in every segment,” he says, adding, “We plan to increase our presence in existing markets and selectively enter other markets as well.” However, the journey has not been all that simple. The biggest issue Subramanian says he faced was opposition to his pharma retail model from drug distribution cartels. “We sell medicines at a discounted rate of 10% and got into a spat with drug companies and distributors. However, the issue was resolved when we dragged them to court,” Subramanian reminisces.

Well, i wanna post all the great entrepreneur's successful stories...how they buit their business ventures and how these guy's earned their first Million Dollors...I'm sure this will be inspiring for anybody who has dream to become budding entrepreneur...put it like this who wanna be Millionaire..J

My First Million:  How Career Launcher spread his business

 

*Career Launcher is one of the reputed CAT coaching institute in India.

 

He first dropped education to pursue a career in cricket and then cricket to pursue education. “It was when I feared failing, I thought of securing my future by studying further,” says Career Launcher group chairman Satya Narayanan.

This self-effacing alumnus from IIM-Bangalore started his business from his New Delhi home with an initial investment of Rs 360, a table and four chairs for a classroom.

Hailing from a lower-middle class family, Narayanan did his initial education in Hyderabad, and then shifted to Meerut along with his family. “It was then that my father brought me a pair of slippers, as north India was known for chilly winters. I went barefoot to school in Hyderabad,” he reminisces.

When his family later shifted to Delhi, his passion for cricket took over and Narayanan dropped his Class 12 exams to participate in an under-15 cricket tournament. But soon enough, he realised that reaching the pinnacle of the game could be a very long and risky journey. Narayanan eventually took his class 12 exams and sailed through with 90% marks. That got him through St Stephen’s College in Delhi where he opted for a degree in computer science.

The next stop was IIM-Bangalore, where he was hired by pharmaceutical major Ranbaxy on campus. It was here that Narayanan’s interest in training began taking shape. “I used to find ways of getting into training. I realised that it was something that interests me and decided to start Career Launcher,” he says. He began with a post-CAT personality development programme (PDP), and found a helpful assistant in James, a student of DCAC College at Delhi University, who got posters and pamphlets for the programme printed and distributed.

Finally, in January 1995, Narayanan quit to start full time training of PDP batches from his home. The numbers began to swell and with 80 students enrolling into the programme, he approached his IIM and non-IIM friends for assistance. “Initially, they scoffed at the idea. But I finally convinced them to conduct classes in their flats. I used to buy them beer during weekends to compensate for the trouble they took for me,” says Narayanan.

Those days, mock-tests for CAT had just been started by St Stephen’s, SRCC, IIT and the Delhi college of Engineering. Narayanan proposed to these institutions a common mock CAT for Delhi students. This clicked, and 425 students took the common test in the first year. Thereafter, he also managed to convince other institutes across India for a national mock-test.

“We roped in a leading magazine and tied-up with a watch brand to give away watches to the top 25 test rankers. I also took into confidence bus drivers who delivered our material to smaller towns,” says Narayanan.

In the second year, close to 4,000 students across 22 cities took the mock-test and 300 students enrolled into his PDPs. “I made my first million in 1996. My friends and I went on a holiday to Nimrana, Alwar and Bharatpur Sanctuary. That was a remuneration to my friends for helping me so much,” he says.

Career Launcher is now a Rs 70-crore company with a presence in the US and the Middle East and an expanded portfolio including school, higher education and overseas test preparation services. And Narayanan is aiming higher too, “We are expecting a turnover of Rs 100 crore this fiscal,” he says.

The important role of motivational books was cited by nearly all the comeback small business owners interviewed for "The Great Comeback." (At least one, Dave Ramsey, is a best-selling author himself.) To see what magic they unlock, My Business columnist Harvey King spent a weekend sampling some of the genre's best-known titles. Here is some of what he discovered:

If you think misery loves company, forget it. Misery loves the company of someone who's left misery far behind. At least that appears to be the secret of successful success books.

Together these books contain dozens of lists of steps, habits, guidelines and principles for reaching business and personal goals. Synthesized, their collective philosophy of fulfillment boils down to this Top 10 list of truths:

1. Despite your defeats, you are not defeated until you believe you are.

2. You are not lazy, you are uninspired.

3. Whether you think you are going to succeed or fail, you will.

4. Too many people with far greater limitations than you have proven wrong the reasons you accept for why you can't succeed.

5. Be honest and admit you know what you really want, then put that specific goal down in writing and develop a plan to achieve it.

6. Never forget your written goal. Each day, remind yourself of it and renew your commitment to it.

7. Anything worth having (or being or doing) will come only as the result of hard work, persistence, continuous learning and, likely, specialization.

8. Follow the Golden Rule (the real one, not: "He who has the gold, rules.")

9. Passion is the key to fulfillment. Other required traits are flexibility, confidence, optimism, commitment and persistence.

10. Start right now.

Despite their similarities, each book has a unique twist--a secret sauce that helps differentiate it from the sea of other books in the genre. Except for Who Moved My Cheese, the books are neatly divided into a series of lessons or essays easily read in daily chunks. (Cheese is so short, it's already a one-chunk--or slice--read.) Each book depends upon a unique metaphor demonstrating that success, achievement and fulfillment do not result from passivity, but require active journeys up steps, down highways or through mazes.

Each, in its own way, brings hope and inspires action. Each, in a strange and inexplicable way, seems based on the movie Rudy.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Steven Covey
Simon & Schuster
(June, 1989), $25.00*

Who Moved My Cheese?
Johnson and Blanchard
Putnam Publishing Group
(September, 1998), $19.95*

See You at the Top
Zig Ziglar
Pelican Publishing Co
(June, 1982), $22.00*

Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill
Renaissance Books
(October, 2001), $28.95*

What Should I Do With My Life?
Po Bronson
Random House
(December 24, 2002), $24.95*

*price of hardback edition

This article originally appeared in the April/May 2003 issue of My Business magazine.

This is really great...from HP guys....somuch inspirational....yes, indeed..it gives me somuch motivation...i'm sure oneday i'll become entreprenuer..:)

 

HP  the Pioneer in IT reveloution's Saga....goes like this.....

 

The Early Years of Technology Giants Hewlett and Packard:

 

“Here we were with about $500 in capital trying whatever someone thought we might be able to do,” recalled Bill Hewlett. “So we got into this thing not by design but because it worked out that way.”

Hewlett and his fellow Stanford pal, Dave Packard, might not have planned for their success, but the two friends would go on to create what is today the largest information technology company in the world. From their days tinkering with gadgets in Packard’s one-car garage, to becoming two of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley, Hewlett and Packard have left a company – and a legacy – that has stood the test of time.

William Redington Hewlett was born on May 20, 1913 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The family relocated to San Francisco when he was three years old. While attending Lowell High School, Hewlett’s father died of a brain tumor. After the tragic event, Hewlett decided to enroll in Stanford University to study electrical engineering. “I'd always been interested in scientific things, but my father – who died when I was 12 – was a greatly beloved doctor, and I did not want to compete with his image,” recalled Hewlett, “so instead of getting interested in medicine I invested a lot of hours disassembling door locks and things like that. My mother just called it mischief.”
Hewlett would receive his Bachelor’s degree in 1934, and follow that up with a Master’s degree from MIT in 1936 and another Electrical Engineer degree from Stanford in 1949.

David Packard was born on September 7, 1912 in Pueblo, Colorado to a lawyer father and high school teacher mother. “I remember that while quite young I got a thrill from looking at pictures of railroads, bridges, motors, generators, and other mechanical and electrical equipment,” said Packard. “I tried to simulate some of these devices with small-scale models in our backyard.”

Following high school, Packard decided to move to San Francisco and pursue a degree in electrical engineering from Stanford. It was there that he would meet Bill Hewlett. Both students were studying under Frederick Terman, a pioneer in the field of radio engineering. After noticing how much the two had in common, Terman encouraged them to go into business together and start an electronics company.

“When I talked to business schools occasionally, the professor of management is devastated when I say we didn’t have any plans when we started,” said Hewlett. They did not have a plan, nor did they have much money – just $538 to their names. But with that, and Packard’s one-car garage, they figured they had enough to get going. Hewlett rented a cottage behind Packard’s house and the two began working away in the garage.

The two college buddies did not have a specific plan, but they envisioned creating a global company from day one. Today, that garage – now called the birthplace of Silicon Valley – is a California state historical landmark which hints at the things that were to come.

Taking the Garage Global: HP Steps it Up

 

As soon as Hewlett and Packard began working away in their garage, they decided to create a set of rules to live by. Rule number one was “Believe you can change the world.”

Hewlett and Packard now had their company, they had a lab of sorts to work from, and they had the inspiration to achieve big things. What they did not have was a product. And so, Hewlett went back to look at his graduate thesis from Stanford. It focused on practical applications for electrical engineering technology of negative feedback, and it would be the inspiration for HP’s first product.

Together, Hewlett and Packard created an audio oscillator. It was in fact the first practical, low-cost method of generating high-quality audio frequencies that were needed in a wide range of industries, including defense and medicine. Hoping to impress the idea that the company had been around for awhile, they named their product 200A. “We really didn't know if this oscillator was any good,” said Hewlett. “We simply put one together that worked pretty well, sent a letter out to universities and others, got three or four orders, and tried it again.”

One of those first orders was from Walt Disney Studios, who wanted eight oscillators for their upcoming movie, “Fantasia.” From there, the two patented their product and began working on the next one. Because of the success of 200A, each subsequent and improved version would take on the suffixes ‘B’ through ‘E’.

In 1940, the two were finally able to move from their garage to a rented office building in Palo Alto, California. They expanded their line of products to include signal generators, voltmeters, oscilloscopes, counters, and more. While Hewlett provided many of the company’s early technical innovations, Packard easily took on the role of administrator. Soon, they had moved on to producing calculators, computers and printers.

Over the next few decades, with Hewlett and Packard still at the helm, the company continued to innovate and expand. A partnership with Sony and Yokogawa Electric in Japan, as well as a small spin-off company called Dymec, did not prove too successful and both were eventually brought back into HP. But a number of the company’s products would be revolutionary, including the HP 800 and HP 250 series of computers, which were nearly a decade ahead of the PC. In fact, Wired magazine called the HP 9100A the world’s first PC. HP was also responsible for the world’s first handheld scientific electronic calculator.

From 1947 to 1964, Packard served as the company’s president. After that, he became chairman of the board for various years until 1993. Three years after he left HP behind for good, Packard passed away. By the time of his death, his stake in the company was more than $1 billion. Meanwhile, Hewlett served as the company’s president from 1964 to 1977, as well as CEO from 1968 until 1978. He then served as vice chairman of the board until 1987.

Today, HP continues to reign as the world’s leading IT superpower. With a reputation for innovative and reliable products, it now earns revenues in excess of $104 billion.

It's story of one of the world's most outstanding entrepreneuer 'King Gillette'.

very much inspirational....

 

 

 here it goes....

  

The Makings of a King: The Early Years of King Gillette

 

He had spent his entire life tinkering with ideas, most of which the rest of the world would call him crazy for. It was not until King Gillette was in his 40s that he would patent and begin to sell his disposable safety razor. It was an invention that made him a household name and revolutionized the shaving industry in the process. Today, Global Gillette continues to rank as one of the most dominant brands in the industry.

King Camp Gillette was born on January 6, 1855 in the small central Wisconsin town of Fond du Lac. He had three older brothers and two sisters. His parents, George Wolcott Gillette and Fanny Lemira Camp were both inventors in their own rights. As a result, the Gillette kids were encouraged to be inquisitive, to be hands on, and to take things apart to learn how they work.

When Gillette was four years old his family moved to Chicago, Illinois in the hopes of achieving a better life. His father opened up a hardware store, but its promise was soon destroyed. In 1871, the great Chicago fire devastated the business and forced the Gillette family to move once again.

This time, they chose New York City, where Gillette? s father became a patent agent. Conversations around the Gillette family?s dinner table always revolved around the various inventions that had come across his desk during the day. With each passing year, the young Gillette was growing more and more inspired to invent something of his own.

At 17 years old, Gillette left school and began making his living as a traveling salesman. Although it was a far cry from his dream job, it provided a steady income and also allowed him to flex his inventor?s muscle; with each product that Gillette sold door-to-door, he tried his hand at improving them in some way.

By 1890, Gillette had become increasingly disappointed with his life. He had four patents to his name but none had achieved much success. ? They made money for others, but seldom for myself, for I was unfortunately situated not having much time and little money with which to promote my inventions,? He said. On top of that was the dissatisfaction of knowing his parents were much more successful than him. His mother had even published the? White House Cookbook? A compilation of her own recipes which remains in print to this day.

Gillette?s disappointment was such that in 1894, at the age of 39, he published a book called ?The Human Drift.? It was an anti-capitalist rant in which Gillette set out to criticize big business and competition as the root of all evil. As an alternative, he outlined his own ideal of a utopian, socialistic society.

By his own admission, Gillette was at rock bottom. He needed a new idea, something that would make him the success he had always dreamed of. But what, he wondered. At 40 years old, what single idea could take him to the top?

 

On The Cutting Edge: Gillette Gets An Idea For A Business

 

In 1895, Gillette decided it was time to return home. Moving back to Fond du Lac in Wisconsin, he took up work as a salesman for the Crown Cork & Seal Co. The company’s founder, William Painter, had invented the cork-lined bottle cap and turned it into a profitable business. Still, at 40 years old, Gillette wanted some of that success for himself.

Painter could sense Gillette’s disappointment, and he understood his hunger for invention. One day, he decided to approach Gillette and offer him some valuable advice. “Why don’t you try to think of something like the Crown Cork, which when once used is thrown away, and the customer keeps coming back for more?” The idea stuck in Gillette’s head, but still his mind ran blank. “It is easy to give that kind of advice,” he said, “but how many things are like corks, pins, and needles?”

Gillette could not get Painter’s advice out of his mind for days after. “I applied the thought to every material need, but nothing came of it,” he said. That all changed, however, on one spring morning in 1895.

As he was getting ready to go to work that day, Gillette became frustrated with his razor. Its blades were dull – so much so that the razor was practically unworkable. As he tried to sharpen it, Gillette realized that it was so worn out it could not be used again. Suddenly, as his irritation with the razor grew, a light bulb went off in Gillette’s head.

What about a razor that would not need sharpening to work? What about disposable razor blades that could be thrown away when they were dull? What about a razor that was safe and did not cause nicks and cuts? Gillette rushed back to his room and penned a quick note to his wife. “I’ve got it,” it read. “Our fortune is made.”

Success did not come as easily as Gillette had imagined it would. Time after time, his idea was turned down for its impractical nature. That is, until William Nickerson came along. Nickerson was a chemist who agreed to try and help Gillette manufacture his razor. With a $5,000 loan from investors, Nickerson set off to work. That same year, the Gillette Safety Razor Co. was formed.

The first Gillette razors were on the market by 1903, but not before the company was already $12,000 in debt. As a result, Gillette was forced to sell an investor much of his own stock in order to get some cash infusions; he was now a minority stakeholder in his own company. The first razors were priced at $5 each, with a pack of $20 blades costing $1. In that first year, only 51 razors and 168 blades were sold. But positive customer reviews were pouring in.

Meanwhile, Gillette was still working for Crown Cork and hating every minute of it. “I urged the razor company to make a salaried position for me,” said Gillette, “but those in control refused to meet my wishes, giving as a reason the need of every dollar for development of the business.”

Gillette resigned as president and set sail for London. But when he got wind of the company’s proposal to license its international rights for ongoing royalties, Gillette rushed back to the U.S. and tried to stop the move. Eventually, he succeeded and even won himself a salaried position.

By time Gillette was 55, his company dominated the razor industry. He had achieved his dreams of becoming a millionaire. The stock market crash of 1929, however, took most of that away from him. He was also removed from power by the board of his own company.

Until his death at the age of 77, despite his own financial losses, Gillette could sit back and watch proudly as the company he founded continued to blossom. A century later, it still sells five times as many razor blades as any other company.