Howard Schultz

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Howard Schultz : biography

July 19, 1953 –

Howard Mark Schultz (born July 19, 1953) is an American businessman and writer. He is best known as the chairman and CEO. URL last accessed August 16, 2007. of Starbucks and a former owner of the Seattle SuperSonics. Schultz co-founded Maveron, an investment group, in 1998 with Dan Levitan.

In 2012, Forbes magazine ranked Schultz as the 354th richest person in the United States, with a net worth of $1.5 billion.

Controversy

Speaking to CNBC in February 2009 about his concerns over the global economic crisis, Schultz said that "the place that concerns us the most is western Europe, and specifically the UK", which he considered to be in a "spiral", expressing concern with the levels of unemployment and consumer confidence in the country.

Lord Mandelson, the then-UK Business Secretary, responded saying that Britain was "not spiralling, although I’ve noticed Starbucks is in a great deal of trouble", and suggesting that Schultz was projecting his own company’s trouble in the United Kingdom onto the wider national economy. Mandelson was later overheard at a drinks reception, saying: "Why should I have this guy running down the country? Who the hell is he? How the hell are [Starbucks] doing?"

An official comment from Starbucks read that "It is a difficult economic situation in the US and around the world. Please be assured that Starbucks has no intention of criticising the economic situation in the UK. We are all in this together and as a global business we are committed to each and every market we serve."

Early life and education

Howard Mark Schultz was born to a Jewish family June 02, 2003 on July 19, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of ex-US Army trooper and then truck driver Fred Schultz, and his wife Elaine. November 28, 2011 With his younger sister, Ronnie, and brother, Michael, he grew up in the Canarsie Bayview Houses of the New York City Housing Authority. As Schultz’s family was poor, he saw an escape in sports such as baseball, football, and basketball. He went to Canarsie High School, from which he graduated in 1971. In high school, Schultz excelled at sports and was awarded an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University – the first person in his family to go to college. A member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, Schultz received his bachelor’s degree in Communications in 1975.

Career

After graduating, he worked as a salesperson for Xerox Corporation and was quickly promoted to a full sales representative.. In 1979 he became a general manager for Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer, Hammarplast where he became responsible for their U.S. operations with a staff of twenty. In 1981, Schultz visited a client of Hammarplast, a fledgling coffee-bean shop called Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle, curious as to why it ordered so many plastic cone filters. He was impressed with the company’s knowledge of coffee and kept in contact over the next year, expressing interest in working with them. A year later, he joined Starbucks as the Director of Marketing. On a buying trip to Milan, Italy for Starbucks, Schultz noted that coffee bars existed on practically every street. He learned that they not only served excellent espresso, they also served as meeting places or public squares; they were a big part of Italy’s societal glue, and there were 200,000 of them in the country.

On his return, he tried to persuade the owners (including Jerry Baldwin) to offer traditional espresso beverages in addition to the whole bean coffee, leaf teas and spices they had long offered. After a successful pilot of the cafe concept, the owners refused to roll it out company-wide, saying they didn’t want to get into the restaurant business. Frustrated, Schultz started his own coffee shop in 1985, named ‘Il Giornale’ after the Milanese newspaper. Two years later, the original Starbucks management decided to focus on Peet’s Coffee & Tea and sold its Starbucks retail unit to Schultz and Il Giornale for $3.8 million.