In 1981, Howard Schultz, the general manager of Hammarplast, a major buyer of coffee machines, noticed that a customer was purchasing more machines than many well-known companies. This customer was Starbucks, located in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, which captivated him with the aroma of coffee and sold coffee beans sourced from around the world. A year later, Schultz joined Starbucks as the Director of Operations and Marketing after convincing the partners to hire him, despite his family’s reluctance to understand why he would leave a well-paying job for a lesser-known company.
In 1983, Schultz traveled to Milan for business and was deeply impressed by the Italian espresso bars where locals would stop by, enjoy various coffees, and where baristas knew everyone’s drink by heart. Returning to Seattle, he was inspired to introduce a similar concept in Starbucks stores, but his partners disagreed. Schultz resigned and opened his own coffee shop under the Il Giornale brand, which initially struggled but eventually gained a steady clientele and began to spread by word of mouth. While seeking capital for new stores, Schultz learned that his former partners were selling Starbucks. Convinced he had to buy it, he struggled to raise the $4 million required but managed to convince investors, including Bill Gates. On August 18, 1987, Starbucks began to flourish under Schultz and his investors.
Today, Starbucks, with over 23,000 stores in 71 countries, is beloved for four main emotional benefits, as Schultz believes:
– A romantic taste: People visit Starbucks to take a break from daily life, enjoy coffee beans from Sumatra, Kenya, or Costa Rica, taste various coffee types, and escape with music like Kenny G.
– Accessible luxury: Starbucks’ pricing allows people from different socio-economic backgrounds to enjoy the same coffee in the same space, from students to business people.
– An oasis: Amid the hustle of city life, entering Starbucks allows you to focus on yourself and your thoughts, with staff quickly preparing what you want and leaving you to relax.
– A social space: Starbucks serves as a third place between home and work where people read, work on laptops, conduct meetings, meet friends, and engage through community boards.
If Schultz had not entered that store out of curiosity, touched the coffee beans, and dreamed of a brand; if he hadn’t been persistent in realizing that dream and worked so hard, we might still have learned about double shot espressos or enjoyed delicious carrot cakes elsewhere… But the green-white-mermaid trio wouldn’t evoke a brand, leaving a gap in the story told in marketing classes about a consumer experience-driven global brand.