Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I’m a reading junkie…love old and out-of-print books - this weekend I picked up a copy of Ideas that became Big Business, published in 1959. Two things immediately struck me.

1. How many of the companies that started as ideas way back (1800s) are still around. I’ve gotten so used to reading about death, dying and flameouts.

2. It’s easy to forget that all businesses started with an idea (or ideas - Hewlett’s and Packard’s first patent out of the garage was for a - ahem - self-flushing urinal.…a long way from their blockbuster printer business). And, those beginnings are often drastically different than today’s realities…and some have come back full circle to original core competencies. Libbys (now one of ConAgra’s brands), for example, started in 1868 with three men, $1,000 and six very unlucky cows a day. Arthur Libby, his brother Charles and Archibald McNeill were all working at Hancock’s slaughterhouse in Chicago when they decided to go into business for themselves, pooling their funds. They had just one product - corned beef in barrels. Every morning Libby would buy six heads of cattle and herd them to his small plant - from there the company grew into one of the world’s most diversified packer of canned and frozen foods. Yet, today, the top touted Libbys products on ConAgra’s web site are Vienna Sausages, Corned Beef, Corned Beef Hash and Potted Meat.