Defying Gravity

Tweet

1948

Toys "R" Us During a time of high inflation, a 25-year-old named Charles Lazarus gambles that rising birth rates will sustain the baby-furniture store he opens in Washington, D.C. He soon adds toys, which prove popular. Sensing that consumers' buying habits are changing, he decides that his second store will sell only toys and uses the supermarket as a model. The stores that Lazarus subsequently opens feature shopping carts and long aisles of merchandise and are an early example of big-box retail.

1960

Domino's Pizza Tom and James Monaghan borrow $500 to buy DomiNick's, a pizza shop near Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The business's proximity to the school helps to define its brand. "They succeeded mostly because they were able to make their deliveries very quickly," says Stephen Litwhiler, who was one of Domino's first delivery men and is now a franchisee in Burlington, Vermont. "No one else was focusing on that at the time."

1973

The OPEC oil embargo begins.

1974

Super 8 When Ron Rivett and Dennis Brown open the first Super 8 motel, in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1974, they set their room rate at a recession friendly (and memorable) $8.88 per night. The company expands quickly and cheaply through franchising, and it establishes itself very deliberately as the low-cost competitor by locating new Super 8s as close to Holiday Inns as possible. By 1977, the chain is adding a property every 18 days.

1975

Stagflation!

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) With the economy in the doldrums and the nation still reeling from Watergate, Bill Gates leaves Harvard and strikes an informal partnership with his friend Paul Allen to launch a company called Micro-Soft. Their first office? An Albuquerque motel room. The company chugs along, making software using the BASIC programming language, until 1981 -- during another recession, no less -- when Microsoft introduces MS-DOS, which catapults it to the forefront of the industry.

1979

Jimmy Carter delivers his "malaise" speech.

1982

Symantec In 1982, Gary Hendrix is working for a struggling company called the Machine Intelligence Corporation. His team of researchers is developing software to search databases for information with plain-English queries. When Hendrix learns that his bosses are considering selling to HP the intellectual property he has helped to develop, he persuades them to let him spin off a company instead. The following year, Hendrix raises $3 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Canfield & Byers.

1987

The market crashes on Black Monday, October 19.

1991

The savings-and-loan crisis reaches its peak; in all, a thousand thrifts will fail.

Nantucket Allserve The sluggish economy doesn't deter Tom Scott and Tom First from setting up a juice bar on Nantucket, Massachusetts. The company takes in $52,000 in its first year, before the self-proclaimed Juice Guys switch gears and begin selling bottled beverages through grocery and convenience stores. Money is tight -- Scott often sleeps in his car -- but the company soon builds a killer field sales force, which ensures its success.

2000

The Nasdaq hits 5,132 on March 10, the top of the dot-com bubble.

2001

Wikipedia The popular online encyclopedia, which has changed the way people collaborate online, is shaped in two ways by its experiences during the dot-com meltdown. First, amid a dearth of venture capital funding for new Web-based enterprises, Wikipedia is set up as a nonprofit (and initially viewed as a side project). And second, founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger are able to expand quickly because they can borrow plenty of unused server capacity from other companies.

Newegg.com When Fred Chang notices that the computer integrator he works for is turning away a lot of requests for components from customers who don't want to buy complete systems, he launches an online emporium to sell custom parts to gamers and do-it-yourself techies. While dot-com companies crash and burn, the City of Industry, California, company builds a loyal following by providing excellent customer service. Revenue tops $1.5 billion in 2006.

2008

Although the dimensions of the current downturn are not yet clear, Warren Buffett tells CNBC in March that "by any commonsense definition, we are in a recession."

 PREV  1 | 2 

Read more:

Sign-up for our Small Business Success Newsletter

Email Address: