Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Customers' Trust, from Wedgewood to Dell

It's probably a result of less-than-fully applying myself during my college years, but I tend to pre-judge any book by an academic as boring. I'm glad that didn't stop me from reading Nancy Koehn's book, "Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers Trust From Wedgwood to Dell." Koehn is a professor at no less than the Harvard Business School. She is also an excellent writer, and she understands that the essence of getting good information across is stories. Brand New is a book of stories about branding. It is anything but boring. Koehn divides the book into two giant sections, The Past and The Present. In The Past, she includes the stories of Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz and Marshall Field. All the stories are told in detail enriched by facts, insights, and quotes. All of them contain lessons for today's businessperson. Most of the lessons are about branding, but there's a lot more. Read this book and you will find out all about how Josiah Wedgwood changed the common practice by impressing his own name in the unfired clay of his works. That's impressive. But you will also learn how his partnership with Thomas Bentley took Wedgwood's strengths and his insight about branding and turned them into a highly profitable business. You'll learn about why H. J. Heinz packed his product in glass jars and how he kept control of his distribution. You'll hear about the 1902 giant opening at Marshall Field's and you'll learn about Field's varying relationships with his partners. In the section on The Present, you will get the story of Estee Lauder and how she changed not only her name and image but also the face of cosmetic marketing through magnetism and incredible persistence. You'll hear how Howard Schultz wound up at Starbucks Coffee and why it bears his imprint, and you'll hear about Michael Dell without overmuch mention of the legendary dorm room. The stories themselves make delightful reading, but the learning is probably even more important than the enjoyment. These stories illustrate how specific, successful entrepreneurs took a look around at things that were happening in society and developed products and brands and marketing and distribution systems to take advantage of them. These insightful and inspiring stories will help you understand your own business and find ways to make it more profitable.

This highly readable business book profiles six successful entrepreneurs from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Each profile (Josiah Wedgwood, Henry Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell) details the milieu of the era and offers insight into the environmental business factors that each of these business builders faced. It is this holistic approach to the subject of each profile that makes the stories so compelling. Using her command of history, Ms. Koehn outlines the period view of each of the products (pickles to perfume) and vividly draws the reader into the strategy of each of these entrepreneurs' approach to the market and building their brand. It is the power of these stories that gives the brand message such import. All of these people had a great number of competitors in their market niche but their focussed approach to the brand associated with their goods or services is what set them apart.Ms. Koehn uses some excellent demographic and financial information (indexed to today's dollars) that provide the backdrop for the scale of the success each of these entrepreneurs' achieved. This provides just enough quantitative information to provide texture without clouding the real story in statistics.As an executive in the software business today, I found a great deal of comfort in the fact that the challenges I face in today's competitive marketplace are not new. In fact, with great courage and resolve, they have been solved again and again in differing but similar ways over centuries.

Sick of reading books about branding in the new economy, ebrands, digital brands and every other thing that marketers try to sell you? Then read this book for inspiration, which is not only about branding, but poignantly illustrates the pleasures and the pain of entrepreneurship, and managing a growing business.This book is very well written, with excellent observations and pointers for success. Although the majority of the book is case studies, these are not the usual 'filler' material that have become so common in business books. I highly recommend the studies of Wedgewood, Heinz and Marshall Field, and how they took advantage of new trends such as railroads and communications. These are not so far from the revolution that the Internet has placed many corporations in. The historical perspective is excellent, and for once this is not written by a big 5 consultant with something to prove, or a service to flog.

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!

This book is a fascinating look at what it really takes for entrepreneurs to succeed. Koehn demonstrates truly exceptional depth of knowledge about her subject and delivers a book that is as entertaining as it is educational. What is perhaps most interesting is the parallels she draws between business leaders of such different eras. This approach helps the reader clearly see the enduring business principles and talents that are unchanging and essential. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in business history or entrepreneurship.