I stumbled across an invaluable resource that entrepreneurial and business geeks will fall in love with. The web site Funding Universe has an incredible list of company histories that are well researched, concise and packed with details such as dates and names as well as financial and operational statistics.
The histories include both public and private companies. Each entry is followed by a "Further Reading" section that includes bibliographical information useful for anyone wanting to do further research. I could easily spend hours on this site. Here are some interesting things I learned during the past 30 minutes.
The employee leasing industry was started in large part by four guys sitting in a Bradenton, Florida garage brainstorming how they could help small businesses cope with taxes and paperwork. The founders of Staff Leasing, later to be renamed Gevity HR, grew the company from $0 to $26 million in four years by methodically calling on businesses street-by-street. In the morning they would call on all the businesses on one side of the street. After a short lunch break they would spend the afternoon calling on all of the businesses on the other side.
Tropicana founder Anthony Rossi was a cab driver, machinist, chauffeur, grocery store owner and failed restaurant chain operator before he entered the fruit business. Further, his decision to sell orange juice wasn't so much a brilliant business idea as it was a way to use the smaller, less attractive oranges he couldn't sell in fruit gift boxes. The innovation didn't stop there. Once orange juice became the big seller Rossi built a cardboard box plant to insource packaging and built a glass factory to make his own bottles. When he couldn't expand his trucking fleet he bought a ship to send 1.6 million gallons of orange juice to New York every week. During a devastating freeze in the U.S. that killed much of the orange crop he put packing equipment on a ship and anchored it off the coast of Mexico to take advantage of cheap produce prices and insure his supply of fresh oranges.
Just be careful. You may find yourself spending a lot more time than you expected at Funding Universe.