5 Famous Brands and their Origins

If you’re a Zippy Opinion member and take surveys to get paid, you know that brands all over want to know what you want and what you need so that they can make their product or service better catered to you. But today, we’ll be taking a good look at these famous brands themselves and their origin stories (not as cool as superhero origin stories, but still pretty cool!) to learn about how they started out.

Wrigley’s

Founded in 1891 in Chicago by William Wrigley, the company now very well known for making lip-smacking, long-lasting chewing gum wasn’t always selling gum. Back then the company set out selling soaps and baking soda. They offered a free packs of gum for customers buying their products, only to discover that the chewing gum was more popular than their product itself! This got the strategic team at the company thinking that they should move on to the fast-moving consumer good industry and low and behold, the Wrigley’s famous chewing gum products you all know and love too well today came to life!

Samsung

This South Korean company is a behemoth today. Known for selling electronics to both the B2C and the B2B market, they are a very recognizable brand in today’s world. However, this wasn’t always the case. Can anyone guess how they started out? No prizes for guessing right but you wouldn’t even in your wildest dreams guess this. Way back in 1983, they started out as a grocery trading store! A grocery trading store of all things! Lee-Byung-Chull, the founder of Samsung used to sell noodles and other suh goods to China and it’s provinces in the days of war. Then they progressed towards the textile industry and then the chemical and petro-chemical industry. Only in 1969 did they launch their first electronic product, a television set! Looking forward back then, nobody would’ve guessed that they would reach the heights they now are at. This brand’s journey is one that’s really amazing!

Uber

We don’t really say Taxi anymore. We use Uber as a synonym instead. How the times have changed in such a short duration. Uber today is one of the biggest companies in the world despite being founded only in the year 2009. The idea for Uber was conceptualized when the two founders were in Paris for a tech conference they were attending. They were looking to hail a taxi but weren’t able to get one easily. This situation they were in prompted them to look into a service that can hail taxis through a smartphone. They put a lot of thought and work into it and low and behold, the company known as Uber was born. The founder were already flush with cash through other startup businesses they had sold for millions. Uber took them to a whole other level! The ride-sharing behemoth started with only 3 taxis back in 2010. Now, they are operational in more than 83 countries worldwide!

Nokia

Nokia’s smartphone market is almost non-existent. However, in the early 2000s, Nokia was the Belle of the Ball when it came to the cellphone market. We all know that the catalyst in this downturn was the advent of the iPhone and other phone makers that adapted to the change in demand while Nokia fell behind. But how did Nokia originate? Was it always a smartphone company? Nope. Nokia started off started off as a paper manufacturing mill way back in 1865. So they are one of the oldest companies that are still in the market today. But who would’ve guessed that they were a paper mill manufacturer before!? Not us, Zippians! Through the years, Nokia grew and branched out to other industries. In the 1960s, Nokia moved to the electronics industry and made a host of radio telephone products for the army. Only in 1979 did they take their first step towards the telephone industry by making the Mobira Oy in a joint venture with Finnish TV maker Solaro. Nokia was more recently acquire by Microsoft and their market share in the smartphone world never hit the heights it did back in the day. This serves as a reminder to everyone that if you aren’t quick enough in adapting to the changing demands of the world, then the world will move along without you. In this case, it was Nokia that was left in the lurch.

Lamborghini

An insult – That’s right. An insulting statement from the then founder of Ferrari began the supercar saga that is now the luxurious supercar company, Lamborghini. Back in the day, Lamborghini was known for making tractors and was quite successful at it. With success comes riches and the founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini bought himself some of the finest cars money could buy. One of those cars was a Ferrari 250GT, which was his favorite car. Being the mechanical genius that he was, he made suggestion on the clutch of the car to Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari more or less brushed off his suggestion and told him to stick to making tractors (Ouch!). Motivated by this jibe, he went on to make build one of the best supercar companies of all time which you now know.