He has born in
Brooklyn, New york in 1953.He moved with his family into bayview Housing
Society projects in Carnarsie. He attended Northern Michigan University on a
football scholarship. In 1975 he graduated with Bachelor of Science degree in
communication and started working as an appliance salesman for Hammarplast, a
company selling European coffee makers in United States.
In early 1980s, Schultz had
become the sales director and noticed that more coffee was being sold to small
operation in Seattle, Washington-known then as the Starbucks Coffee Tea and
Spice Company-than to Macy’s. In 1982, Howard Schultz was hired as director of
Retail Operation and Marketing
for Starbuck, which only sold coffee beans at the time. After a year,
Shultz visited a number of coffee bars while travelling to Milan, Italy. The
experienced inspired him to expand Starbucks’s products to include drinks
instead of just coffee beans. After fierce lobbying by Schultz, the owner
agreed to open a café bar in their new store in Seattle. The bar which
introduced café latte to Seattle was an instant hit. However, in 1985 realizing
that the owner were not interested in making it big, Shultz quit Starbucks to
establish his own coffee chain that is II Giornale. With the help of investors,
Shultz purchased Starbucks, merging II with Giornale with the Seattle company.
Consequently, he became CEO and chairman of Starbucks.
Finally in 1992, Starbucks had
made an initial public offering and after a year has passed Starbuck opened its
first store in New York City. It quickly grew to 240 outlets nationwide, and
aimed to expand to 1500 national stores by the year 2000. Starbucks opened
stores in Japan and Singapore, the first outside North America in 1996. Starbucks
has formed a partnership with Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau
to create products that benefit local literacy programs across America.
In 2000, Howard
Shultz publicly announced that he was resigning as Starbucks’ CEO but would
remain Chairman. He suggested that his new role would be to create a global
strategy for a company. In 2006, he entered into direct competition with fast
food chains by offering breakfast sandwiches, after McDonald’s started to serve
lattes. In the same year Howard Shultz was ranked number 359 in the “Forbes
400” list. After a year have been passed its stock fell by 42% due to its
sugary drinks, which damages its reputation as a reliable coffee shop.
Shultz returned to Starbucks,
starting in an interview that “We are not in business to filling bellies, we
are in a business of filling souls “.In an effort to turn the struggling
company around, he laid off1500store employee in the United Sates and 1700
global corporate employees. After this he has planned to shut down 300 stores
and lay off around700 corporate employees, while revising his target for new
stores down from 470 to 310. He has added a new service for public in his store
that is free Wi-Fi through AT&T.
In 2012, Starbucks
have grown up to more than 17,600 stores in 36 countries around the globe and
after a year which is 2013 Howard Shultz made headlines and won wide praise
after making a statement in support of legalization of gay marriages. After a
shareholder expressed his disapproval, he stated that not every decision is an
economic decision.
