Sublime

One should never use a mandatory sentence in addressing a customer; should never give orders. The subliminal message of a Trader Joe’s commercial is, “We’re gonna be around for a long time. If you miss out on this bargain, there’ll be another. If you have the time and inclination .

We instituted full health and dental insurance back in the 1960s when it was cheap. When I left, we were paying about $6,000 per employee per year! Why? If the employees are stressed by medical bills, they may steal. That’s one good reason for Trader Joe’s generous health and dental plans. On the other hand, we were cheap, cheap, cheap on life insu

Trader Joe’s buying objective was to get just one, dead-net price, delivered to our distribution centers. This was quite similar to the policy that Sam Walton was developing at about the same time, a practice called “contract pricing.”

Claire Pennoyer Chouinard high up in a merlin’s nest, Cascapedia River, Quebec,

In an effort to make standing in those long lines more bearable, Stacy started cutting up their leftover pitas at the end of each day and then baking the pieces into different-flavored chips (cinnamon sugar and parmesan garlic to start) that she would hand out for free to customers while they waited for their sandwiches. “Initially, it was just a w

1. Product, the coffee mainly. 2. Partners, the suppliers and farmers. 3. Customers, who generate revenue. 4. Stores, and the employees who work in them. 5. Neighborhood, and the communities the company facilitates. 6. Shareholders, the co-owners of the company (Starbucks Coffee Company Web site).

I believe that the sine qua non for successful retailing is demographic coherence: all your locations should have the same demographics whether you are selling clothing or wine. We looked for our demographics: there are lots of overeducated and underpaid people in Southern California.

took forty years for the company Bill Hewlett and I started in 1939 to reach one billion dollars in annual sales and a major part of that was from inflation. In the 1994 fiscal year that ended last October, we began the year with twenty billion dollars in worldwide sales and added five billion to that by year’s end. This occurred with essentially n

While Delicious was rapidly changing hands, Pinboard was started by web developer Maciej Ceglowski. He offered his simple service to users at $3 per year, a fee that increased over time to $11 per year. Since the beginning, Pinboard has been a one-person company with a limited feature-set and with no investors. Ceglowski operated it as a side busin