Category Archives: Business & Finance

Jews in the World of Business and Finance

Jew of the Week: Howard Schultz

Starbucks

Howard Schultz, Mr. Starbucks

Howard Schultz was born to a poor Jewish-German family in Brooklyn. A phenomenal athlete, he paid his way through higher education on sports scholarships. After working as a salesperson for Xerox, he became the general manager of Swedish coffee machine maker Hammarplast. In this role, he paid a visit to one of the company’s clients – a tiny café in Seattle called Starbucks. Having traveled through Italy and seen the importance of café-socials in Italian society, Schultz was inspired to create the same for America. Unfortunately the three Starbucks founders (two of whom are fellow Jews Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl) didn’t share his vision. So in 1985 Howard Schultz started his own café called Il Giornale. Hugely successful, by 1988 Schultz was able to buy out the original Starbucks and adopted it as his own brand name! Schultz quickly became a billionaire, went on to own the Seattle Supersonics basketball team, wrote two books, and received multiple awards, including one from Aish HaTorah for his Israel advocacy work. Today, Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse in the world, with 19,435 locations in 58 countries. The company continues to run under the direction of Schultz, and has become well-known for its humanitarianism: their Ethos brand raises money for water development projects, while Product Red delivers AIDS medication to Africa. The Starbucks Foundation works to develop youth literacy and leadership, sponsoring volunteer work and providing millions of dollars in grants every year.

 

Words of the Week

Leave Israel alone, for even if they are not themselves prophets, they are still the children of prophets.

The very first Starbucks in Seattle, 1971

– Hillel

 

 

 

Jews of the Week: George Lerner & The Hassenfeld Brothers

All Your Favourite Toys!

Mr. Potato Head – one of the most succesful toys of all time!

Having written recently of the world’s largest toy company, Mattel, it would be unfair not to mention the second-largest company, Hasbro. This toy giant was founded as a tiny textile company in 1923 by Polish-Jewish immigrants Henry and Helal Hassenfeld. Over time, they shifted their business towards pencil cases and school supplies, and later to children’s toys. Meanwhile, a fellow Jew (of Romanian descent, born in Brooklyn) named George Lerner invented Mr. Potato Head. In 1952, the Hassenfeld brothers bought the rights to the toy, quickly putting their company on the map. In fact, Mr. Potato Head was the first toy to be advertised on television! But the real big day came in 1964 when the brothers came up with G.I. Joe, thus launching the era of the now-ubiquitous “action figure”. Shortening the company name to Hasbro (a contraction of Hassenfeld Brothers), they continued growing tremendously, creating toys for Star Wars and Sesame Street, and later for Transformers, Batman and Pokemon. Favourites such as Play-Doh, Tonka, My Little Pony, and even Parker Brothers board games like Monopoly, are all created by Hasbro. True to Judaism, the company has become well-known for its charity work, setting up the Hasbro Children’s Foundation and the Hasbro Charitable Trust. They also built and continue to finance the Hassenfeld Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, considered one of the top children’s institutions in the world!

 

Words of the Week

The responsible nuclear Iran. Wait. We’re supposed to believe that a revolutionary Shiite theocracy is overnight going to become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy … because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction? Presumably this would be in the same way that, if German scientists had developed an atomic bomb as quickly as the Manhattan Project, the Second World War would have ended with a negotiated settlement brokered by the League of Nations.
– Niall Ferguson

Jew of the Week: Marcus Samuel

Oil & Seashells

Marcus Samuel, Oil Baron

Marcus Samuel (1853-1927) was born in London to a wealthy Iraqi-Jewish family originally from the Netherlands. On a trip to the Black Sea in 1890, he saw the potential in oil (still a novel resource at the time). Samuel ordered the construction of 8 tankers that met the highest safety standards, receiving permission to transport oil to Asia across the newly-built Suez Canal. Thus was born Shell Oil, taking the name of the Samuel family business, which began meagerly just a few decades earlier by selling painted seashells. Using one of his tankers, Samuel once saved the stranded ship HMS Victorious, a feat for which he was knighted. Previously, Sir Samuel had served as the Sheriff of London, and even its Mayor! For his role in fueling the Allies in World War I, he was made 1st Baron of Bearsted, and later 1st Viscount of Bearsted. Lord Samuel was known for his incredible devotion to his wife and four children. So much so, in fact, that he died less than 24 hours after the passing of his beloved wife. At death, he left his large estate to be transformed into a public park, an orphanage and a nursing home. Today, his company is known as Royal Dutch Shell, after having merged in 1907 with the Royal Dutch oil company in order to compete with Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Shell is currently the 5th largest company in the world, with a yearly revenue of over $360 billion.

Today is Tu B’Shvat!

Words of the Week

If you live as though there will always be a tomorrow, then you’ll never make much of today.
– Rabbi Noah Weinberg