And the man behind the brand is...
Orlando Scott
In 1868 the home lawn was regarded merely as ground cover, not a thing of beauty. Grass was used to keep down dust and protect children and horses from mud. Quality was no concern. Each fall stable manure laden with undigested weed seeds was spread through neighborhoods. Grass, if manicured at all, was groomed by the sharp teeth of sheep.
Orlando Mumford Scott harbored a white-hot hatred of weeds. To him weeds were the sin of neglect. He despised the weeds that grew on his Marysville, Ohio farm and set out to develop an inexpensive weed-free grass seed. But if weedy lawns weren't enough for Scott to overcome he had to change the attitudes of homeowners. Many Americans liked the look of their weedy, uncut natural lawns.
Scott, who operated the Union County elevator after his discharge from the Union Army, considered farmers too complacent. He recognized the costly toll extracted by weeds, even if the farmer didn't. Weeds represented the biggest cost in farming by far - much greater than the cost of a good seed. Weedy seed,
no matter how cheap, was expensive in terms of extra work and time.
Working in a period before state and federal regulations when mediocrity had no limitations Scott waged a one-man war against weeds. Clean, high quality seed was his battle cry. With care in selection and skillful cleaning Scott produced nearly weed-free seed. Scott's Farm Seeds were 99.91% weed free.
In the 1880s hand-pushed rotary mowers began appearing in American stores. Home owners started coming around to the white-bearded Ohio seed merchant's way of thinking with regards to manicured lawns. Slowly the lush green lawn gained stature as a luxury item.
With his sons Dwight and Hubert, Scott started a mail order business for his weed-free seeds in 1906. Beautifully produced shelter magazines like House Beautiful and Better Homes and Gardens began displaying luxuriant lawns.
Scott's quality seeds blended from around the world were the best way to make a new yard look like the magazines.
In 1916, without solicitation, Scott received an order for 5000 pounds of seed from Brentwood in the Pines Golf Club on Long Island, opening this market to the company. Five years later one in five golf courses used Scott seed. Then the Scotts sold grass seed to club members for their home lawns.
The Scott's complete line of lawn care products began with the introduction of Turf Builder, the first fertilizer specifically for grass in 1928. O.M. Scott had lived long enough to see the lawn gain status on par with the automobile.
Showing posts with label Yard Brands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yard Brands. Show all posts
February 9, 2007
John Deere
And the man behind the brand is...
John Deere
The life expectancy of a blacksmith shop in the early 19th century was roughly akin to that of a wagon wheel shouldering a two-ton load through a rutted mountain pass. If the cinders from the iron filings didn’t spark a fire the intense heat from the forge constantly jeopardized the wooden structure.
In 1831 the 27-year old John Deere realized a lifelong dream when he opened his own blacksmith shop in Leicester Four Corners, Vermont. Deere had begun apprenticing as a blacksmith ten years earlier for $30 a year. By 1825 he was an experienced journeyman with a reputation across the countryside for his fine-tined pitchforks.
Deere’s quality work attracted an investor, Jay Wright, who helped set him up in his own shop. But shortly after he opened for business the small shop burned to the ground. He started again and again the shop burned. Frustrated. Deere gave up and took a job repairing iron parts of stagecoaches.
When Deere again tried to start a blacksmith shop, Wright filed a writ to recover money lost in the original venture. Thus stymied in business Deere left Vermont in November 1836, leaving his family behind in Rutland.
Deere left with only a few tools and $73.73, making his way West by canal boat and stage. He headed for Grand Detour, Illinois where other Vermonters had settled by an odd bend in the Rock River. The prairie land here was rich and the water power plentiful.
It was hard to figure that in less than one year, from these unpromising beginnings, the young Vermont blacksmith would create the foundations of the largest agricultural machinery manufacturer in the world.
In Illinois Deere found his smithing skills immediately in demand and he was able to rent some land and erect a small shop. He was kept busy seven days a week hammering, welding, casting and assembling farm implements. When time allowed he peddled some of his hand-made goods to merchants.
The prairie soil was rich, certainly, but did not release its bounty willingly. Farmers using cast iron plows had to carry paddles and stop every few yards to wipe the blades clean of the black, sticky soil. Deere reckoned that a steel plow might help the situation.
In 1837 he fashioned a plow that would “scour” the soil from a discarded sawblade. Deere polished the surface with thousands of cutting strokes. It did the job perfectly. The plow literally “sang as it sliced through the black gumbo soil. The next year Deere quit general blacksmithing and started making plows exclusively. He turned out ten that first year and made enough profit to construct a house and send for his family.
After that Deere could sell all the plows he could make: forty in 1840, seventy-five in 1841 and one hundred in 1842. By 1843 Deere had settled his debts in Vermont and began buying steel directly from England. By now there were many steel plow manufacturers. Deere expanded his business with a relentless devotion to quality. “I will not put my name on a plow that does not have in it the best that is in me,” he vowed.
In 1846 Deere despaired of Grand Detour’s future with regard to transportation and shifted his factory to Moline, Illinois. He took on partners and for the first time steel was made for the specifications of his plows. Deere, Tate & Gould was manufacturing over 2,000 plows a year.
The partnership did not thrive. Tate wanted standardized plows; Deere wanted to improve constantly. The partnership dissolved in 1852. Deere did not suffer, however. The years before the Civil War were halcyon years of innovation for John Deere & Co.
After the War Deere, now in his sixties sold off most of his holdings in his company, retaining a quarter share. He farmed around Moline and served as mayor for a year in 1873, keeping order between the increasingly hostile Prohibitionists and anti-temperance factions. Deere died in 1886 at the age of 82, still renowned as the creator of the “plow that broke the prairies.”
John Deere
The life expectancy of a blacksmith shop in the early 19th century was roughly akin to that of a wagon wheel shouldering a two-ton load through a rutted mountain pass. If the cinders from the iron filings didn’t spark a fire the intense heat from the forge constantly jeopardized the wooden structure.
In 1831 the 27-year old John Deere realized a lifelong dream when he opened his own blacksmith shop in Leicester Four Corners, Vermont. Deere had begun apprenticing as a blacksmith ten years earlier for $30 a year. By 1825 he was an experienced journeyman with a reputation across the countryside for his fine-tined pitchforks.
Deere’s quality work attracted an investor, Jay Wright, who helped set him up in his own shop. But shortly after he opened for business the small shop burned to the ground. He started again and again the shop burned. Frustrated. Deere gave up and took a job repairing iron parts of stagecoaches.
When Deere again tried to start a blacksmith shop, Wright filed a writ to recover money lost in the original venture. Thus stymied in business Deere left Vermont in November 1836, leaving his family behind in Rutland.
Deere left with only a few tools and $73.73, making his way West by canal boat and stage. He headed for Grand Detour, Illinois where other Vermonters had settled by an odd bend in the Rock River. The prairie land here was rich and the water power plentiful.
It was hard to figure that in less than one year, from these unpromising beginnings, the young Vermont blacksmith would create the foundations of the largest agricultural machinery manufacturer in the world.
In Illinois Deere found his smithing skills immediately in demand and he was able to rent some land and erect a small shop. He was kept busy seven days a week hammering, welding, casting and assembling farm implements. When time allowed he peddled some of his hand-made goods to merchants.
The prairie soil was rich, certainly, but did not release its bounty willingly. Farmers using cast iron plows had to carry paddles and stop every few yards to wipe the blades clean of the black, sticky soil. Deere reckoned that a steel plow might help the situation.
In 1837 he fashioned a plow that would “scour” the soil from a discarded sawblade. Deere polished the surface with thousands of cutting strokes. It did the job perfectly. The plow literally “sang as it sliced through the black gumbo soil. The next year Deere quit general blacksmithing and started making plows exclusively. He turned out ten that first year and made enough profit to construct a house and send for his family.
After that Deere could sell all the plows he could make: forty in 1840, seventy-five in 1841 and one hundred in 1842. By 1843 Deere had settled his debts in Vermont and began buying steel directly from England. By now there were many steel plow manufacturers. Deere expanded his business with a relentless devotion to quality. “I will not put my name on a plow that does not have in it the best that is in me,” he vowed.
In 1846 Deere despaired of Grand Detour’s future with regard to transportation and shifted his factory to Moline, Illinois. He took on partners and for the first time steel was made for the specifications of his plows. Deere, Tate & Gould was manufacturing over 2,000 plows a year.
The partnership did not thrive. Tate wanted standardized plows; Deere wanted to improve constantly. The partnership dissolved in 1852. Deere did not suffer, however. The years before the Civil War were halcyon years of innovation for John Deere & Co.
After the War Deere, now in his sixties sold off most of his holdings in his company, retaining a quarter share. He farmed around Moline and served as mayor for a year in 1873, keeping order between the increasingly hostile Prohibitionists and anti-temperance factions. Deere died in 1886 at the age of 82, still renowned as the creator of the “plow that broke the prairies.”
Coleman
And the man behind the brand is...
William Coleman
"What the average man needs is not a gasoline buggy or a good nickel cigar but light to read and work by." Especially a man with bad eyes like William Coffin Coleman, who spoke those words to explain the motivation behind the Coleman lantern.
Coleman was the son of schoolteachers who migrated west from New England in 1871, the year after his birth. Despite having no money Coleman entered the University of Kansas to study law. He survived on canned tomatoes, brown sugar and day-old bread but his funds ran out when Coleman was still one year short of his law degree.
He started selling typewriters and was on calls in the dusty coal town of Brockton, Alabama. As he walked down the board sidewalks he saw a brilliant light in a drugstore window, a glow so bright that even he, with his bad eyes, could read comfortably. The illumination was not from Mr. Edison's marvelous new invention but emanating from a gasoline-powered flame.
Coleman thought that this new light could replace smoky oil lights and flickering gas lights on America's farms, western towns and everywhere electricity had not yet reached. He invested all his money buying samples of the new-fangled Efficient Company lamp which burned gasoline under pressure. He took his new product line to Kingfisher, Oklahoma. It was January 1, 1900.
At the end of his first week he had sold two lamps. What was wrong? No one ever believed more vehemently in his product. Asking around he discovered that months earlier a predecessor had sold dozens of gasoline lamps in town that glowed brightly for a few days and then clogged with uncleanable carbon deposits. Coleman knew his lamp was better but how to prove it?
He would not sell lamps but light. He would become a one-man utility company. He leased his lamps for $1 a week. No light, No pay. The Kingfisher merchants couldn't refuse that deal. The lamps were reliable and sales boomed. The Hydro-Carbon Company was born.
He sold a $2000 interest in his business to two brothers-in-law and purchased the patent rights to the lamp and renamed it the Coleman Arc Lamp. He moved to Wichita where in 1905 Coleman Arc Lamps lighted the first night football game under artificial light as Fairmount College ground out a victory.
In 1909 he invented the Coleman table lamp. It was portable and could be carried anywhere. By adding bug screens the lamp could be used outside and in 1914 the first of over 30 million Coleman gasoline lanterns, usable in any weather, was built. The Coleman Lantern was named an essential product in World War I and Coleman sold one million to the government so farmers could work around the clock. The Coleman lantern went to the South Pole with Admiral Byrd.
President Roosevelt launched massive rural electrification projects during the Depression and Coleman's traditional markets disappeared. He took the company into oil heaters and gas floor furnaces, although ventures into home appliances failed. In World War II Coleman developed a compact stove for field use and after the war rode the wave of expanding interest in outdoor recreation with insulated coolers and jugs, tents, and sleeping bags.
In 1949 The Saturday Evening Post carried an article on William Coleman under the headline, "The Company That Should Have Gone Broke." But Coleman had always shown an innate ability to cope with change. At the time of his death in 1957 his company was the leading manufacturer of camping products and a major supplier to the mobile home industry.
William Coleman
"What the average man needs is not a gasoline buggy or a good nickel cigar but light to read and work by." Especially a man with bad eyes like William Coffin Coleman, who spoke those words to explain the motivation behind the Coleman lantern.
Coleman was the son of schoolteachers who migrated west from New England in 1871, the year after his birth. Despite having no money Coleman entered the University of Kansas to study law. He survived on canned tomatoes, brown sugar and day-old bread but his funds ran out when Coleman was still one year short of his law degree.
He started selling typewriters and was on calls in the dusty coal town of Brockton, Alabama. As he walked down the board sidewalks he saw a brilliant light in a drugstore window, a glow so bright that even he, with his bad eyes, could read comfortably. The illumination was not from Mr. Edison's marvelous new invention but emanating from a gasoline-powered flame.
Coleman thought that this new light could replace smoky oil lights and flickering gas lights on America's farms, western towns and everywhere electricity had not yet reached. He invested all his money buying samples of the new-fangled Efficient Company lamp which burned gasoline under pressure. He took his new product line to Kingfisher, Oklahoma. It was January 1, 1900.
At the end of his first week he had sold two lamps. What was wrong? No one ever believed more vehemently in his product. Asking around he discovered that months earlier a predecessor had sold dozens of gasoline lamps in town that glowed brightly for a few days and then clogged with uncleanable carbon deposits. Coleman knew his lamp was better but how to prove it?
He would not sell lamps but light. He would become a one-man utility company. He leased his lamps for $1 a week. No light, No pay. The Kingfisher merchants couldn't refuse that deal. The lamps were reliable and sales boomed. The Hydro-Carbon Company was born.
He sold a $2000 interest in his business to two brothers-in-law and purchased the patent rights to the lamp and renamed it the Coleman Arc Lamp. He moved to Wichita where in 1905 Coleman Arc Lamps lighted the first night football game under artificial light as Fairmount College ground out a victory.
In 1909 he invented the Coleman table lamp. It was portable and could be carried anywhere. By adding bug screens the lamp could be used outside and in 1914 the first of over 30 million Coleman gasoline lanterns, usable in any weather, was built. The Coleman Lantern was named an essential product in World War I and Coleman sold one million to the government so farmers could work around the clock. The Coleman lantern went to the South Pole with Admiral Byrd.
President Roosevelt launched massive rural electrification projects during the Depression and Coleman's traditional markets disappeared. He took the company into oil heaters and gas floor furnaces, although ventures into home appliances failed. In World War II Coleman developed a compact stove for field use and after the war rode the wave of expanding interest in outdoor recreation with insulated coolers and jugs, tents, and sleeping bags.
In 1949 The Saturday Evening Post carried an article on William Coleman under the headline, "The Company That Should Have Gone Broke." But Coleman had always shown an innate ability to cope with change. At the time of his death in 1957 his company was the leading manufacturer of camping products and a major supplier to the mobile home industry.
Burpee's
And the man behind the brand is...
Atlee Burpee
Nowhere is a seller's reputation of more paramount importance than the seed business. To the consumer an ill-bred seed looks exactly the blue-ribbon winner. Not until it actually grows months later will the buyer know if he has made a good bargain.
Washington Atlee Burpee never forgot the need to win his customer's trust. He wrote relentlessly in his catalogs about the need for a seed merchant's honesty. At times he even argued against the selling of his own seeds.
At the turn of the century a craze swept America for growing ginseng root to sell to the Chinese trade. Burpee detested such get-rich-quick plotting and angrily fired off a missive in his 1904 catalog admonishing his readers about ginseng root. The plant was devilishly difficult to grow, he wrote, and if it was that easy to make millions of dollars selling ginseng root he would be doing it. But if his customers still wanted to buy ginseng root seed - now knowing the truth - he could sell it in good conscience.
Burpee came to seeds from his days as a poultryman. He became an avian specialist by the age of 14 and in 1874, when he was ready to begin the study of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania at 17, Burpee was actively selling and exhibiting fancy breeds of chickens, geese, turkeys and pigeons. He had already published the first of many authoritative information bulletins, "The Pigeon Loft, How To Furnish and Manage It."
Burpee withdrew from the University of Pennsylvania medical program after one year because he couldn't stand the suffering of patients. In 1875 he offered a line of fowls and livestock by mail order in the 16-page "W. Atlee Burpee's Catalogue of High Class Land and Water Fowls." Seeds were probably first offered as feed for birds. Almost immediately he issued a separate seed catalog he called "Burpee's Farm Annual."
Burpee offered $1.00 worth of vegetable seeds for 25¢ and pushed his introductory deal by offering a $22 sewing machine to anyone buying 300 25¢-boxes. But for the most part he sold his seeds from his Philadelphia area home at premium prices.
Gardens were much more an integral part of American life in the late 1800s than they are today. Not only food and beauty sprouted in the family garden. Garden plants provided medicines, cosmetics, useful household items and even fuel.
Burpee loved seeds and assumed his customers were waiting breathlessly for his new pronouncements on seeds. He put his personal seed beliefs on special pink pages in the front of his catalogs. It was a chatty catalog, often written in flowery longhand, that educated and excited the reader.
He further informed the public with information bulletins. In the early days he wrote the bulletins himself but by the 1880s the seed business had grown so large he had others write the educational pamphlets by offering cash prizes for essay contests. Some were quite extensive: "How and What to Grow in a Kitchen Garden of One Acre" ran 198 pages.
Burpee also sponsored prizes for growing contests and naming new plant varieties grown on his Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. He conducted trials on thousands of vegetables and flowers at Fordhook. Plant breeding was of supreme importance to Burpee who was always seeking the ultimate seed.
In 1905 Burpee received a letter from a California lima bean grower stating he had discovered two new bush lima beans on his property that were so excellent that he was auctioning them to the nation's seedsmen. Burpee paid $1000 for each seed. When he had grown enough to sell bush lima seeds in 1907 Burpee spent six pages glorifying the seed in his catalog.
The bush lima seeds were headliners in Burpee catalogs for decades.
Golden Bantam corn introduced by Burpee in 1912 remains a prized ear of corn. Iceberg lettuce is a produce staple. Perhaps W.A. Burpee's most enduring success was Burpee's Surehead cabbage which was found growing in Europe and first sold in 1877.
W.A. Burpee was exceedingly conservative in his personal habits. He refused both electric lights and telephones at his Fordhook Farms home for years. He did not own a car until a year before his death in 1915, when a liver ailment claimed the world's largest seed merchant at the age of 58.
After his death his family, who continued the business, perpetrated a campaign to name the American marigold, Burpee's favorite, as the country's national flower. Their efforts failed and America continued without an honored flower until Ronald Reagan adopted the rose as the national flower in 1986.
Atlee Burpee
Nowhere is a seller's reputation of more paramount importance than the seed business. To the consumer an ill-bred seed looks exactly the blue-ribbon winner. Not until it actually grows months later will the buyer know if he has made a good bargain.
Washington Atlee Burpee never forgot the need to win his customer's trust. He wrote relentlessly in his catalogs about the need for a seed merchant's honesty. At times he even argued against the selling of his own seeds.
At the turn of the century a craze swept America for growing ginseng root to sell to the Chinese trade. Burpee detested such get-rich-quick plotting and angrily fired off a missive in his 1904 catalog admonishing his readers about ginseng root. The plant was devilishly difficult to grow, he wrote, and if it was that easy to make millions of dollars selling ginseng root he would be doing it. But if his customers still wanted to buy ginseng root seed - now knowing the truth - he could sell it in good conscience.
Burpee came to seeds from his days as a poultryman. He became an avian specialist by the age of 14 and in 1874, when he was ready to begin the study of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania at 17, Burpee was actively selling and exhibiting fancy breeds of chickens, geese, turkeys and pigeons. He had already published the first of many authoritative information bulletins, "The Pigeon Loft, How To Furnish and Manage It."
Burpee withdrew from the University of Pennsylvania medical program after one year because he couldn't stand the suffering of patients. In 1875 he offered a line of fowls and livestock by mail order in the 16-page "W. Atlee Burpee's Catalogue of High Class Land and Water Fowls." Seeds were probably first offered as feed for birds. Almost immediately he issued a separate seed catalog he called "Burpee's Farm Annual."
Burpee offered $1.00 worth of vegetable seeds for 25¢ and pushed his introductory deal by offering a $22 sewing machine to anyone buying 300 25¢-boxes. But for the most part he sold his seeds from his Philadelphia area home at premium prices.
Gardens were much more an integral part of American life in the late 1800s than they are today. Not only food and beauty sprouted in the family garden. Garden plants provided medicines, cosmetics, useful household items and even fuel.
Burpee loved seeds and assumed his customers were waiting breathlessly for his new pronouncements on seeds. He put his personal seed beliefs on special pink pages in the front of his catalogs. It was a chatty catalog, often written in flowery longhand, that educated and excited the reader.
He further informed the public with information bulletins. In the early days he wrote the bulletins himself but by the 1880s the seed business had grown so large he had others write the educational pamphlets by offering cash prizes for essay contests. Some were quite extensive: "How and What to Grow in a Kitchen Garden of One Acre" ran 198 pages.
Burpee also sponsored prizes for growing contests and naming new plant varieties grown on his Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. He conducted trials on thousands of vegetables and flowers at Fordhook. Plant breeding was of supreme importance to Burpee who was always seeking the ultimate seed.
In 1905 Burpee received a letter from a California lima bean grower stating he had discovered two new bush lima beans on his property that were so excellent that he was auctioning them to the nation's seedsmen. Burpee paid $1000 for each seed. When he had grown enough to sell bush lima seeds in 1907 Burpee spent six pages glorifying the seed in his catalog.
The bush lima seeds were headliners in Burpee catalogs for decades.
Golden Bantam corn introduced by Burpee in 1912 remains a prized ear of corn. Iceberg lettuce is a produce staple. Perhaps W.A. Burpee's most enduring success was Burpee's Surehead cabbage which was found growing in Europe and first sold in 1877.
W.A. Burpee was exceedingly conservative in his personal habits. He refused both electric lights and telephones at his Fordhook Farms home for years. He did not own a car until a year before his death in 1915, when a liver ailment claimed the world's largest seed merchant at the age of 58.
After his death his family, who continued the business, perpetrated a campaign to name the American marigold, Burpee's favorite, as the country's national flower. Their efforts failed and America continued without an honored flower until Ronald Reagan adopted the rose as the national flower in 1986.
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