8 Interesting Facts About Famous Businesses

Today I Found Out... www.todayifoundout.com 8 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT FAMOUS BUSINESSES Designed by Noreen Sequeira FOUNDED BY: TOm MONACHAN JAMES MONACHAN 50% the Ownership of of Domino's Pizza Was Once Traded for Volkswagen Beetle a Used The year was 1961, just a little under one year after brothers Tom and James Monaghan had purchased a pizza restaurant, DomiNick's, for $500. After eight months of running the Monaghan got the bright idea to trade his stake in the business to his brother, for a used Volkswagen Beetle. business as partnership, a James Fast-forward 38 years and Tom Monaghan decided retire and sell most of his stake in the company that to was now known as Domino's Pizza. the price of He got a bit more than a used Volkswagen Specifically, he sold 93% of his take for one billion dollars. Beetle though. One can only imagine the awkwardness at the Monaghan family gatherings. "Hey, so how's that Beetle running?" BEN & JERRY'S WAS ORIGINALLY GOING TO BE A BAGEL COMPANY BENSJERRY'S Cohen and Jerry Ben Greenfield ended up changing their minds when they found Lout how much it would cost to get all the needed equipment for making bagels. Instead, in |1978, they both took a $5 correspondence course from Pennsylvania State University on ice cream making. then took $12,000, $4000 of which was borrowed, and converted an old gas station in Burlington, Vermont into an ice cream parlor called Ben & Jerry's Homemade. Before opening the ice cream shop, Jerry Greenfield was a lab technician, in New York, who tried three times to get into medical school, failing each time. Ben Cohen attended various colleges, eventually |dropping out and settling on working as a crafts teacher for emotionally disturbed children in New York. They FOUNDED BY: BEN COHEN & JERRY GREENFIELD THE FOUNDER OF FEDEX ONCE SAVED THE COMPANY BY TAKING ITS LAST $5,000 AND TURNING IT INTO $32,000 BY GAMBLING IN VEGAS. TODAY I FOUND OUT.COM After raising nearly contributing his own fortune of $4 million to the cause, Fred Smith successfully $90 million and founded Federal Express in 1971. Unfortunately, three years later, thanks to on the verge of bankruptcy with no one willing to give them any more loans nor any investors At one rising fuel costs, the company was interested in contributing capital. point, all the company had was $5000 to its name, which wasn't enough to continue operating as their planes needed fuel and that Not to be dissuaded, Smith took the $5000 and flew to Vegas and played Black Jack that weakened with the remaining By Monday, the company had $32,000 in its bank account, which was enough to cover the fuel for their planes and to continue operating a little while longer. When asked what he'd been thinking, taking a chance like that with company funds, he stated: wouldn't cover it. company funds. JOHN DCE 123 STREET LAS CRUCES NM 68003 19 CORNHIE FedEx "What difference does it make? Without the funds for the fuel companies,we couldn't have flown anyway." Shortly thereafter, he successfully managed to raise PRIORITY OVERNIGHT $11 million to keep the company afloat and by 1976 Federal Express made its first profit of $3.6 million and up from there. Today it's estimated to be worth in the vicinity of $25-$35 billion with Smith himself currently worth around $2 billion. E 1582 1918 9372 A2 4A LRUA 88003 ELP The World On Time Envelope WELL Dand FOUNDED BY: DAVE THOMAS IN 1969 WenDy's 04341077087-8 OLD FASHIONED HAMBURGERS. THE FOUNDER OF WENDY'S HELPED SAVE KFC AND WAS A HIGH SCHQOL DROPOUT Dave Thomas started out working at Knoxville restaurant at the young age of 12 years old. Later, when his family opted to move away, Dave Thomas stayed behind and started working at the Hobby House Restaurant where he met none other than Colonel Sanders himself, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, who later became his mentor. After serving in the Korean war, Dave Thomas bought 4 failing KFC fast foed restaurants. After changing their complicated menus restaurants were a huge success and KFC implemented his "simple menu" strategy with all their franchise locations. Thomas then sold the restaurants back to KFC for 1.5 million dollars. With that, he started his own fast foed chain, Wendy's. Using what he learned in the Korean war as a coek serving around 2000 soldiers daily, he was able to devise methods for serving fast foed that was not pre-cooked, with everything made fresh, which made his restaurants the first fast foed chain to do so. He also developed the first successful drive through window service, which was quickly copied by most all other fast food chains. Wendy's is the third largest hamburger fast foed chain in the world with over 6000 restaurants with an annual revenue of around 7 billion dollars. Thomas died January 8th, 2002 after a decade long battle with liver cancer. to just serve a few staple meals, the 4 Today, WHY ZIPPERS HAVE YKK ON THEM The YKK stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha. In 1934, Tadao Yoshida founded Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha (translated Yoshida Industries Limited). This company is now the worlds foremost zipper manufacturer, making about 90% of all zippers in over 206 facilities in 52 countries. In fact, they not only make the zippers, they also make the machines that make the zippers; no word on if they make the machines that make the parts that make up the machines that make the zippers. Their largest factory in Georgia makes over7 million zippers per day. SOS Luffy SOS WHAT THE "S.O.S" IN S.0.S BRAND SCRUB PADS STANDS FOR The "S.O.S" in S.0.S brand scrub pads stands for "Save Our Saucepans". The name was originally thought up by the wife of the creator of the S.0.S pad, Ed Cox. In 1917, Cox was an aluminum pot salesman. When Cox would introduce himself to potential new customers, he would give them a little steel wool pad that he had encrusted with soap as a sort of calling card. Eventually, these pads became more popular than the pans he was trying to sell so he began selling the pads and the rest is history. ups Synchroniing he world ef commece FOUNDED BY: CLAUDE RYAN & JIM CASEY UPS WAS FOUNDED BY TWO TEENAGERS WITH ONE BICYCLE AND $100 BORROWED FROM A FRIEND The date was Claude Ryan and 19 year old Jim Casey. The two had one bike between them and $100 borrowed from a friend "American Messenger Company" in Seattle, Washington. The company was initially run in a hotel basement at Second Avenue and Main Street in Seattle. At that tíme, most pcople didn't own August 28, 1907 and the two kids were 18 year old found the phones, so sending telegrams was a frequent thing. These had to be hand delivered. In the beginning, they primarily delivered these telegrams, but eventually expanded into transporting pretty much anything that could be transported on a bicycle or on foot. Casey and Ryan manned the phone while Casey's brother George and a handful of other teenagers went out making deliveries. Fast-forward a few years and Casey and Ryan had merged their company with rival Merchant's Parcel Delivery taking the latter's name. In the process, they acquired a few motorcycles and delivery cars with their first car being a Ford Model T. At this time, more and more people had telephones so Casey and Ryan switched to prímarily delivering packages, particularly working with retail stores to deliver customer's purchases to their homes; the rest is history. ur TREAT sO GOOD TO EATI CURTISS Baby Ruth In 1923, Otto Schnering, the founder of the Curtiss Candy Company that created the "Baby Ruth" candy bar, CANDYched dante BABY RUTH hired a pilot to fly his plane GIVES ME MY LIFT over Pittsburgh and drop several thousand Baby Ruth candy bars over the city. Each equipped with a parachute, to avoid injuring people. BEST TASTING LANDY BAR IVE FOUND IN ALL MY TRAVELS candy bar was CURTISS C CURTISS CANDY COMPANY Oto Schnering Founder DESIGNED BY NOREEN QUNDOUTCO Domino's DZZ. FedEx Express TODA