It was announced on Thursday that the Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz is stepping down next year, April 13 and is going to be replaced by the company's current president and COO, Kevin Johnson.
Schultz, who is 63 years old, started the coffee business 30 years ago with the goal of establishing and strengthening the relationship between people and their coffee. Needless to say, he made his visions a reality as Starbucks is now the largest coffee chain in the world.
But as to how Schultz became the man responsible for Starbucks' success is what is going to be revealed if you read through.
Schultz was born in July 19, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. He experienced poverty at a very young age, especially when he was seven years old when his father lost his job for breaking his ankle while working as a truck driver.
When he was in college, he took advantage of student loans and took various jobs to be able to pay for the tuition charges. When he graduated, he landed a job at Xerox in a sales training program, but left three years later to take a job at Hammarplast, a Swedish housewares business. This is where he stepped up and became the vice president and general manager and got the chance to handle a team of sales people in their office in New York.
It was at Hammarplast that he was first introduced to Starbucks and because he was intrigued by the coffee shop, he traveled to Seattle to meet with the company's then owners who were Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. A year later, he was hired by Baldwin to be the director of retail operations and marketing. However, he left in 1985, when his idea of an Italian coffee experience was rejected by the founders and led him to start his own coffee company, Il Giornale which means "the daily" in Italian.
While he was away from Starbucks, he focused on the growth of Il Giornale until he was able to buy Starbucks for $3.8 million and that was when Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks Corporation which had 6 stores at the time.
There was definitely a lot of major setbacks when Schultz was running Starbucks but Schultz was hoping it could achieve its ultimate goal to better the world. In his letter in 2015 to shareholders, he wishes that Starbucks is "showing the world what's possible when for-profit public companies go beyond what is expected and also do what is right - and what is in their hearts."
