Rating: 
Summary: Brands Old: Inspiration for Brands Yet to Be
Review: As she completed her research and then began to write this book, Nancy Koehn made several important decisions. First, she placed her primary objective in clear focus: to explain "how entrepreneurs earned customers' trust." Next, she limited her attention to only six. Finally, she then examined them within an historical context from the late-18th century until the present time. As Koehn observes, "Before 1750,...most Britons ate off wood or pewter plates. Then came Josiah Wedgwood. In antebellum America, the majority of women made their own pickles. Then came Henry Heinz. Until the Civil War, urban retailing was a specialized activity with a wide variety of small shops offering particular kinds of goods. Then came department store entrepreneurs such as Marshall Field." It is important to stress that Koehn is a biographer and cultural historian only to the extent that the material she provides helps to advance the narrative of her core themes: how six individual entrepreneurs dealt with the "imperatives" to quality goods at reasonable prices, communicate the virtues of her or his products to potential buyers in effective ways and thereby maintain and grow a viable customer base, and, how to develop organizational capabilities to learn about their respective customers and then earn their trust.Before 1945, Koehn observes, "few American women wore premium lipstick or facial creams, and those who did [when they could] bought them in beauty shops along with elaborate treatments administered by trained cosmeticians. Then came Estee Lauder. Prior to the late 1970s, Americans bought ground coffee mostly in one-pound cans sold in supermarkets and supplied by large food processors. Then came [Howard Schultz and] Starbucks. Before 1980, most businesses used only typewriters and copy machines for paperwork. Large companies relied on mainframe and midsize computers to handle extensive calculations and data processing. Only a small number of households owned a personal computer or printer. Few if any of these users expected to be able to specify a particular computer's configuration. Then came Apple, IBM, Compaq, and Michael Dell." It is also important to stress that each of the six entrepreneurs whom Koehn discusses fully understood what rapid social and economic change in their respective era meant for consumers' needs and desires. Moreover, as she carefully explains, all six used their knowledge of both the supply and demand sides of the prevailing economy to create high-quality goods,, meaningful brands, and other connections with customers..." and they built elite organizations that worked to [in italics] satisfy and then [in italics] anticipate buyers' changing preferences." In Chapter 1, Koehn provides a brilliant overview on "Entrepreneurs and Consumers," then devotes an entire chapter to each of the six entrepreneurs. In her final chapter, she shifts her attention to "Historical Forces and Entrepreneurial Agency," followed by 104 pages of notes. In that final chapter, Koehn points out that the six entrepreneurs "lived and worked in different contexts. Yet they all shared a powerful gift: the ability to discern how economic and social change affected consumer needs and wants. They also understood that these demand-side shifts presented critical business opportunities -- opportunities that each exploited by creating new, best-of-class goods and strong brands." She goes on to suggest that they were "institution builders who were not interested in riding the wave of a short-lived trend or forcing their young brands on buyers. They wanted to [in italics] earn consumers' trust and keep it." It remains to seen which entrepreneurs emerge during the next few years but it seems certain that they will also encounter "economic and social change affected consumer needs and wants" and in a global marketplace yet to be developed. There is much that they -- and we -- can learn from Josiah Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell. Thanks to Nancy Koehn, those "lessons" are provided in a single volume, one which will continue to be of interest and value for decades to come. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Wolf's The Entertainment Economy, Schmitt's Experiential Marketing, Gobe's Emotional Branding, Gilmore and Pine's The Experience Economy, and Brands: The New Wealth Creators co-edited by Hart and Murphy.
Rating:
Summary: "Brand New"-- A fresh look at branding and entrepreneurship!
Review: Brand New is a brilliantly written book about entrepreneurs, brands, consumers, business history, and socioeconomic change. The book explores these subjects through the examples of six entrepreneurs-Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estée Lauder, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Michael Dell-and the brands and companies they created during times of economic and social change: Wedgwood during the Industrial Revolution, Heinz and Field during the Transportation and Communication Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Lauder, Schultz, and Dell in our time. Koehn is a perceptive historian and biographer as well as an astute analyst of brand creation, entrepreneurship, and organization-building. She explains how the entrepreneurs in her book were able to understand the economic and social change of their times and anticipate and respond to demand-side shifts. This understanding, she argues convincingly, enabled these entrepreneurs to bring to market products that consumers needed and wanted and to create meaningful, lasting connections with consumers through their brands. Koehn also focuses on the importance of these entrepreneurs as organization builders who understood that their success depended on developing organizational capabilities that supported their products and brands. Her book is very well-researched throughout, and uses primary archival documents extensively in the historical chapters on Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz, and Marshall Field. Koehn also brings her entrepreneurs and the stories of how each built his or her company and brand to life with her talent as a biographer and historian. The book's emphasis on drawing lessons from both past and present offers many valuable insights for those interested in coming to a better understanding of brand creation, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial management, and organization-building. Koehn's emphasis on the demand side of the economy and on entrepreneurs and companies making connections with consumers through the brand distinguishes her book as an important work of business scholarship on brands and entrepreneurship. A lively, interesting, and engaging read, Brand New is also valuable reading for anyone interested in business, economic, or social history or biography of business leaders. I highly recommend it!
Rating: 
Summary: a very useful and interesting business history book
Review: Did you know that in 1859 Americans consumed about eight pounds of coffee per year, per capita? Or that by 1939 it was fourteen pounds? If this is your cup of tea, then I think you will like this book. This is not a criticism, I liked the book because it looks at the growth in demand which was supplied by the entrepreneurs who formed the brands described in the book. Indeed this demand-side view is part of the book that made the biggest impact on me.
Some of this is obvious, but somewhat in the backround of our knowledge - "between 1860 and 1920 the population of the US grew from 31.5 to 107 million" - and some of this is well extracted in this book - e.g. "in 1844 (when Henry J. Heinz was born)less than 10% of American's lived in towns of greater than 2,500 population, 75 years later (when he died) 50% were urban dwellers and 20% lived in cities of greater than 250,000 people". Koehn builds up this demand side very well in each of the six cases she uses to illustrate who entrepreneurs build up branded business - Wedgwood , Heinz, Marshall-Fields, Estee Lauder, Starbucks and Dell.
Koehn, a Harvard business historian, is also quite good at showing how developing technology is put to use to serve this demand (or does it create it?) - "In 1830 it took three weeks to get calico from New York to Chicago, in 1860 it took three days, by 1880 ... less than 24 hours"
Again we all knew the importance of the railroad, but here its phrased in a way that makes sense of the dynamic growth and gentrification of the Mid West. She illustrates well the need that urbanisation created for prepared food that could be trusted and describes very well the increasing sophistication of industrial level food preparation - " by the 1860;s the introduction of calcium chloride to boiling water cut sterilization times from five hours to 25 minutes". She can even make innovations in canning technology sound exciting. So much for the good stuff, I did find the tone of the descriptions of each entrepreneurs a bit fawning. Each had the feel of a business case, with the usual tone of awe and deference to the wit and wisdom of the main characters. With the exception of the Starbucks case - where Howard Shultz openly tells of his mistakes and wrong turnings - each case seems to highlight the wisdom of the main character, whereas it seems to me its their determination that marks them out, more than anything else. Henry Heinz went bankrupt three times in food products, before he became successful, Michael Dell was still seen as a cloner into the late 1980's.
Koehn makes no judgements about the more unpleasant side of this determination - Estee Lauder staged a meeting with the Duke of Windsor, which she had photographed and publicised, in order to make it appear she had high-society connections, Josiah Wedgwood supplied free gifts to royalty in the certain knowledge that the aspirations of the middle classes to emulate royalty would drive demand for this his products.
There are good insights into how these individuals drove modern marketing techniques - Wedgwood emphasized showrooms, Estee Lauder the free gift. And all had tremendous energy for customer service and production detail. However in each of the early cases we are told that 20th Century techniques were unknown to the industry " Brand marketing was virtually unheard of in the 18th Century" [ Wedgwood]; " Between 1869 and 1899, real per capita income increased at an annual compound rate of 2.1%. Henry Heinz had no access to these statistics. These numbers are based on economic concepts developed in the 20th Century". This kind of clumsiness crops up in each case, ok we get the point that these pioneers instinctively did something which is now solidified into great theory, but surely this point could be illustrated with more deftness. This apart, a very useful and interesting book, a book for anyone interested in the general history of business. Some excellent details, too much fawning and praise too little criticism of the central characters who built the brands. A fascinating story.
If you liked this book, check out books by Arthur Chandler and John Drewer. One final fact, Charles Darwin had the time and money to devote to his famous voyage on the Beagle - which laid the basis for the theory of Evolution - because his wife's grandfather was Joshua Wedgwood. Was this financial evolution at work?
Rating:
Summary: a very useful and interesting business history book
Review: Did you know that in 1859 Americans consumed about eight pounds of coffee per year, per capita? Or that by 1939 it was fourteen pounds? If this is your cup of tea, then I think you will like this book. This is not a criticism, I liked the book because it looks at the growth in demand which was supplied by the entrepreneurs who formed the brands described in the book. Indeed this demand-side view is part of the book that made the biggest impact on me.
Some of this is obvious, but somewhat in the backround of our knowledge - "between 1860 and 1920 the population of the US grew from 31.5 to 107 million" - and some of this is well extracted in this book - e.g. "in 1844 (when Henry J. Heinz was born)less than 10% of American's lived in towns of greater than 2,500 population, 75 years later (when he died) 50% were urban dwellers and 20% lived in cities of greater than 250,000 people". Koehn builds up this demand side very well in each of the six cases she uses to illustrate who entrepreneurs build up branded business - Wedgwood , Heinz, Marshall-Fields, Estee Lauder, Starbucks and Dell.
Koehn, a Harvard business historian, is also quite good at showing how developing technology is put to use to serve this demand (or does it create it?) - "In 1830 it took three weeks to get calico from New York to Chicago, in 1860 it took three days, by 1880 ... less than 24 hours"
Again we all knew the importance of the railroad, but here its phrased in a way that makes sense of the dynamic growth and gentrification of the Mid West. She illustrates well the need that urbanisation created for prepared food that could be trusted and describes very well the increasing sophistication of industrial level food preparation - " by the 1860;s the introduction of calcium chloride to boiling water cut sterilization times from five hours to 25 minutes". She can even make innovations in canning technology sound exciting. So much for the good stuff, I did find the tone of the descriptions of each entrepreneurs a bit fawning. Each had the feel of a business case, with the usual tone of awe and deference to the wit and wisdom of the main characters. With the exception of the Starbucks case - where Howard Shultz openly tells of his mistakes and wrong turnings - each case seems to highlight the wisdom of the main character, whereas it seems to me its their determination that marks them out, more than anything else. Henry Heinz went bankrupt three times in food products, before he became successful, Michael Dell was still seen as a cloner into the late 1980's.
Koehn makes no judgements about the more unpleasant side of this determination - Estee Lauder staged a meeting with the Duke of Windsor, which she had photographed and publicised, in order to make it appear she had high-society connections, Josiah Wedgwood supplied free gifts to royalty in the certain knowledge that the aspirations of the middle classes to emulate royalty would drive demand for this his products.
There are good insights into how these individuals drove modern marketing techniques - Wedgwood emphasized showrooms, Estee Lauder the free gift. And all had tremendous energy for customer service and production detail. However in each of the early cases we are told that 20th Century techniques were unknown to the industry " Brand marketing was virtually unheard of in the 18th Century" [ Wedgwood]; " Between 1869 and 1899, real per capita income increased at an annual compound rate of 2.1%. Henry Heinz had no access to these statistics. These numbers are based on economic concepts developed in the 20th Century". This kind of clumsiness crops up in each case, ok we get the point that these pioneers instinctively did something which is now solidified into great theory, but surely this point could be illustrated with more deftness. This apart, a very useful and interesting book, a book for anyone interested in the general history of business. Some excellent details, too much fawning and praise too little criticism of the central characters who built the brands. A fascinating story.
If you liked this book, check out books by Arthur Chandler and John Drewer. One final fact, Charles Darwin had the time and money to devote to his famous voyage on the Beagle - which laid the basis for the theory of Evolution - because his wife's grandfather was Joshua Wedgwood. Was this financial evolution at work?
Rating:
Summary: Entrepreneurs Build Brands on Shoestrings in Changing Times!
Review: I found this book hard to grade, but easy to read. Stories are the best way for people to learn, and this book has six interesting ones (about Josiah Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell) describing entrepreneurs pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to create major brands. As a book of engaging business stories, this is a five star book. In terms of the insight you will get from these stories compared to the potential insight you should get, this is a three-star book. I compromised the two to come up with my grading. If you want to learn about today's brand-building challenges, other books handle that subject much better. If you want to learn about how the Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Starbucks, and Dell businesses got started, this is your book. The material is handled much like historical fiction (except the facts are meticulously gathered and documented), and you will find the going easy and pleasant. If you like Horatio Alger stories, you will find those here as well. I suspect that exhausted entrepreneurs on long plane trips where their computer batteries have run out will find this book helpful in recharging their personal batteries. As Winston Churchill once said, "Never give up." That's the key lesson here. Through trial and error, these entrepreneurs kept trying until they found formulas that worked. The choice of examples is a little flawed. Five are consumer branding examples and only one is a business example (Dell). Of the consumer branding examples, you will find that most are about selling to the higher income people. That gets a little repetitive. The explanation of the examples is also incomplete. Considering that this is a business book, there is relatively little financial information other than annual sales and occasional asset turnover ratios. Qualitative example are helpful, but they are more helpful with more pinning down. For example, when you see the profit margins that Wedgwood had, that explains a lot about why the company could afford such lavish promotions. Without similar information on Heinz, you wonder why he was so successful in making sales but went bankrupt. Presumably, he had low margins. The photographs and maps in the book are a plus, and I enjoyed them very much. The book was printed on such high quality paper (similar to that used for diplomas) that the images are on the same paper as the text. This permits the book to have many more illustrations than similar-sized business books. The point about earning trust in the book is easily explained. At the time when these entrepreneurs were getting started, their largest competitors usually provided poor quality products, sometimes had inappropriate brand images, often failed to offer decent guarantees, and typically acted in self-serving ways. Earning trust isn't too hard if others are scoundrels or incompetent. Above all, these entrepreneurs stood for decent human values, and got that point across in one-to-one situations. I'm not sure that point comes out clearly enough, even though it is certainly present in each example. Those who think the Internet age is unique will find the comparisons to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England and the transportation improvements in the United States to be valuable contrasts. But each age brings its unique changes. Entrepreneurs should seek to grasp those changes, but also see what others have missed. I think that the Starbucks concept could have been successfully innovated in the late 1950s. It's just that no one did it then. After you finish enjoying these stories, I suggest that you think about the values that your organization stands for. Are those values presented and delivered in ways that make your organization more trustworthy than any other? How else do you have to be superior in order to establish a burnished brand image? Be serious about giving people the best you can possibly provide!
Rating:
Summary: Building Brands Using Common Sense
Review: Koehn did an amazing job in conveying to the reader the challenges facing entrepreneurs in creating brands. While most people have heard of all 6 companies, most people do not know the extent to which these 6 individuals relied on their intuition, imagination, and their ability to listen diligently to customers in building their companies, thus leading them to build great brands.
In today's world, people are taught too much to be analytical in making business decisions. This can have the effect of taking business decisions too fay away from the everyday touch and feel of consumers' hopes and dreams, fears and fantasies. It's inspiring to see entrepreneurs succeed by making sound decisions based on common sense, such as Estee Lauder's packaging and sampling decisions (She pioneered the gift with purchase that we all take for granted today), instead of pure analytics. Koehn clearly demonstrates the passion each entrepreneur has towards his/her brand; it was very apparent that these individuals lived and breathed their brands while nurturing a rich understanding of their customers. Many people talk about ways to build a sustainable brand but few have studied it it Koehn's fashion. Frameworks are good, but common sense in combination with empathy and organizational commitment are better, which is what Koehn delivers via the 6 entrepreneurs depicted in this book. For someone who is curious about what it takes to build or manage a brand, Koehn's book is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Building Brands Using Common Sense
Review: Koehn did an amazing job in conveying to the reader the challenges facing entrepreneurs in creating brands. While most people have heard of all 6 companies, most people do not know the extent to which these 6 individuals relied on their intuition, imagination, and their ability to listen diligently to customers in building their companies, thus leading them to build great brands. In today's world, people are taught too much to be analytical in making business decisions. This can have the effect of taking business decisions too fay away from the everyday touch and feel of consumers' hopes and dreams, fears and fantasies. It's inspiring to see entrepreneurs succeed by making sound decisions based on common sense, such as Estee Lauder's packaging and sampling decisions (She pioneered the gift with purchase that we all take for granted today), instead of pure analytics. Koehn clearly demonstrates the passion each entrepreneur has towards his/her brand; it was very apparent that these individuals lived and breathed their brands while nurturing a rich understanding of their customers. Many people talk about ways to build a sustainable brand but few have studied it it Koehn's fashion. Frameworks are good, but common sense in combination with empathy and organizational commitment are better, which is what Koehn delivers via the 6 entrepreneurs depicted in this book. For someone who is curious about what it takes to build or manage a brand, Koehn's book is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Overview of successful entrepreneurial approaches to brands
Review: Koehn has produced a weighty and informative look at the way successful entrepreneurs have used brands to achieve a number of goals. These goals include long-term differentiation from competitors, internal quality control, profit margin protection, and facilitation of additional product introduciton. To make her case, she chose three cases from the past (Wedgwood, Heinz, and Marshall Field) and three cases from the present (Estee Lauder, Starbucks, and Dell Computers). Finally, she concludes the book with a chapter which addresses the issue of historical forces and entrepreneurial agency. I particularly found the cases from the past persuasive in their argumentation for a long-term differentiating factor in brand. The newer cases are obviously harder to make in that (particularly with Starbucks and Dell) how long-term the success will be remains to be seen. One of the best features of the book is the depth with which she treats each case-- she provides enough information to build her thesis (and often entertain with the anecdotes) but not so much that the book becomes bogged down. The excellent footnotes provide whatever's necessary to someone looking for further information. One minor quarrel is that I would have liked to see the further reading pulled out into a better organized bibliography. There were obviously quite a few good sources scattered amongst the footnotes and if you were interested in a particular subject matter it required some patience to pull all of the citations out.
Rating:
Summary: Lessons from History for the Entrepreneur
Review: Koehn is a prolific and beautiful writer. She displays unparalleled skill in sharing compelling human interest stories while providing rich pattern recognition analysis. As a manager in a start up Internet services company, I found the book helpful and encouraging as I realized the challenges we face were overcome by others before us and through the key factors postulated by Koehn - those others found a way to succeed - in many instances after much failure.
Rating:
Summary: Motivation for Entrepreneurs
Review: Nancy Koehn's Brand New inspires the entrepreneur in us all. Her book gives readers a greater appreciation for the risk and rewards of entrepreneurship, and an admiration for those who made their enthusiasm for a product or idea work to their advantage. The history and environment surrounding the advent of each of the entrepreneurs is especially enlightening, spotlighting how each person was able to see current trends and how they could capitalize upon them. Though sometimes lengthy and repetitive, the book is an overall good read for anyone interested in business, marketing, strategy or history. I particularly liked the stories surrounding Heinz, Estee Lauder, and Starbucks.
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