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Brand New : How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell

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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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

As she completed her research and then began to write this book, Nancy Koehn made several important decisions. First, she placed her primary objective in clear focus: to explain "how entrepreneurs earned customers' trust." Next, she limited her attention to only six. Finally, she then examined them within an historical context from the late-18th century until the present time. As Koehn observes, "Before 1750,...most Britons ate off wood or pewter plates. Then came Josiah Wedgwood. In antebellum America, the majority of women made their own pickles. Then came Henry Heinz. Until the Civil War, urban retailing was a specialized activity with a wide variety of small shops offering particular kinds of goods. Then came department store entrepreneurs such as Marshall Field." It is important to stress that Koehn is a biographer and cultural historian only to the extent that the material she provides helps to advance the narrative of her core themes: how six individual entrepreneurs dealt with the "imperatives" to quality goods at reasonable prices, communicate the virtues of her or his products to potential buyers in effective ways and thereby maintain and grow a viable customer base, and, how to develop organizational capabilities to learn about their respective customers and then earn their trust.

Before 1945, Koehn observes, "few American women wore premium lipstick or facial creams, and those who did [when they could] bought them in beauty shops along with elaborate treatments administered by trained cosmeticians. Then came Estee Lauder. Prior to the late 1970s, Americans bought ground coffee mostly in one-pound cans sold in supermarkets and supplied by large food processors. Then came [Howard Schultz and] Starbucks. Before 1980, most businesses used only typewriters and copy machines for paperwork. Large companies relied on mainframe and midsize computers to handle extensive calculations and data processing. Only a small number of households owned a personal computer or printer. Few if any of these users expected to be able to specify a particular computer's configuration. Then came Apple, IBM, Compaq, and Michael Dell." It is also important to stress that each of the six entrepreneurs whom Koehn discusses fully understood what rapid social and economic change in their respective era meant for consumers' needs and desires. Moreover, as she carefully explains, all six used their knowledge of both the supply and demand sides of the prevailing economy to create high-quality goods,, meaningful brands, and other connections with customers..." and they built elite organizations that worked to [in italics] satisfy and then [in italics] anticipate buyers' changing preferences."

In Chapter 1, Koehn provides a brilliant overview on "Entrepreneurs and Consumers," then devotes an entire chapter to each of the six entrepreneurs. In her final chapter, she shifts her attention to "Historical Forces and Entrepreneurial Agency," followed by 104 pages of notes. In that final chapter, Koehn points out that the six entrepreneurs "lived and worked in different contexts. Yet they all shared a powerful gift: the ability to discern how economic and social change affected consumer needs and wants. They also understood that these demand-side shifts presented critical business opportunities -- opportunities that each exploited by creating new, best-of-class goods and strong brands." She goes on to suggest that they were "institution builders who were not interested in riding the wave of a short-lived trend or forcing their young brands on buyers. They wanted to [in italics] earn consumers' trust and keep it."

It remains to seen which entrepreneurs emerge during the next few years but it seems certain that they will also encounter "economic and social change affected consumer needs and wants" and in a global marketplace yet to be developed. There is much that they -- and we -- can learn from Josiah Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell. Thanks to Nancy Koehn, those "lessons" are provided in a single volume, one which will continue to be of interest and value for decades to come.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Wolf's The Entertainment Economy, Schmitt's Experiential Marketing, Gobe's Emotional Branding, Gilmore and Pine's The Experience Economy, and Brands: The New Wealth Creators co-edited by Hart and Murphy.

Nancy Koehn's Brand New inspires the entrepreneur in us all. Her book gives readers a greater appreciation for the risk and rewards of entrepreneurship, and an admiration for those who made their enthusiasm for a product or idea work to their advantage.

The history and environment surrounding the advent of each of the entrepreneurs is especially enlightening, spotlighting how each person was able to see current trends and how they could capitalize upon them.

Though sometimes lengthy and repetitive, the book is an overall good read for anyone interested in business, marketing, strategy or history. I particularly liked the stories surrounding Heinz, Estee Lauder, and Starbucks.

Koehn did an amazing job in conveying to the reader the challenges facing entrepreneurs in creating brands. While most people have heard of all 6 companies, most people do not know the extent to which these 6 individuals relied on their intuition, imagination, and their ability to listen diligently to customers in building their companies, thus leading them to build great brands.

In today's world, people are taught too much to be analytical in making business decisions. This can have the effect of taking business decisions too fay away from the everyday touch and feel of consumers' hopes and dreams, fears and fantasies. It's inspiring to see entrepreneurs succeed by making sound decisions based on common sense, such as Estee Lauder's packaging and sampling decisions (She pioneered the gift with purchase that we all take for granted today), instead of pure analytics.

Koehn clearly demonstrates the passion each entrepreneur has towards his/her brand; it was very apparent that these individuals lived and breathed their brands while nurturing a rich understanding of their customers. Many people talk about ways to build a sustainable brand but few have studied it it Koehn's fashion. Frameworks are good, but common sense in combination with empathy and organizational commitment are better, which is what Koehn delivers via the 6 entrepreneurs depicted in this book.

For someone who is curious about what it takes to build or manage a brand, Koehn's book is a must read.

Through a series of portraits of entrepreneurs, including Henry Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, and Michael Dell, the book demonstrates how each was able to forge effective connections with consumers. The process of building a brand was less the result of a single strategic coup, than an ongoing series of calibrations, matching the entrepreneur's own creativity and design to the shifting needs and wants of consumers in a particular historical context. The book makes for engrossing reading and is populated with interesting, at times eccentric, and most of all highly-successful entrepreneurs. More than a collection of biographical profiles, the book provides an overview of the workings of America's vast retail network, discussing the variety of ways products are bought and sold-through department stores, over the telephone, and in highly specialized shops. It also contains a wealth of statistics-on coffee consumption, personal computer sales, household income, the number of televisions owned, etc.-that document the growth of the consumption-driven economy.

Koehn is a prolific and beautiful writer. She displays unparalleled skill in sharing compelling human interest stories while providing rich pattern recognition analysis. As a manager in a start up Internet services company, I found the book helpful and encouraging as I realized the challenges we face were overcome by others before us and through the key factors postulated by Koehn - those others found a way to succeed - in many instances after much failure.