Media Spotlight: Onward
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By Howard Schultz
The economic downturn has shown just how important strong leadership and vision is for firms to survive, whatever the product being sold.
For the mortgage industry the economic crisis precipitated a long period of reassessment.
But for coffee giant Starbucks, while the crisis had a big impact on its business as consumers cut back on spending, profits and sales were falling as a result of over-expansion and moving away from its core product of coffee.
Howard Schultz, chief executive officer of Starbucks, bought the Seattle company in 1987 and turned it into a global chain. Taking inspiration from the coffee shops he’d visited in Italy, his aim was to market the European concept of coffee well-made, strong, something that’s an experience rather than a bland tasteless caffeine hit to the US.
Ironically, once he’d conquered the US he then marketed that idea back to Europe and the rest of the world. With global domination like that it’s hardly surprising that in the second Austin Powers film Dr Evil’s lair is the Starbucks headquarters.
But two decades on, and the brand had moved far beyond its original goal of providing great coffee. Starbucks diversified into music, films and cheese sandwiches, and as Schultz says, both the brand and consumers needed to wake up and smell the coffee again.
Onward then is the story of how Schultz restored the chain to its previous glory. The title of the book is taken from the subject line of an email he fired off to Starbucks’ directors on Valentine’s Day 2007 about where he thought the company was going wrong.
Unfortunately for Schultz, someone made the email public with the net result that everyone knew Starbucks was in difficulty.
Soon, falling year-on-year sales proved his concerns to be correct, and with the downturn Schultz persevered to regain the company’s kudos.
Schultz consulted friends and industry experts about how best to reignite the Starbucks brand which he eventually succeeded in doing.
At times this is a heavy going business book but you can’t help being won over by Schultz’s candour. For all his obvious success at building an international brand, in no way does he allow himself to rest on his laurels.
He presents the mistakes proudly. In the section on innovation, he describes a glass bottle that sits on his desk with the awful name of Mazagran.
The Mazagran bottle is the last evidence of Starbucks’ failed attempt to bring a fizzy coffee drink to the mass market in the 1990s in conjunction with Pepsi.
“Celebrate, learn from and do not hide from mistakes,” he says of the Mazagran debacle. That could pretty much sum up the whole book.
The fact Mazagran failed didn’t stop Schultz trying again later on he is open to an even more implausible tie in, a link with online game World of War Craft.
The book is an insight to the lengths a passionate entrepreneur will go to ensure their brand endures.
A word of warning though the book is to coffee what US television series Mad Men is to smoking. About a month before reading Onward I’d actually given up drinking coffee, but when you read 300 pages of one man’s passion for espresso and steamed milk, it’s difficult to stay cold turkey.
REVIEW BY ROBERT THICKETT
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