Company Founder Biographies  
Successful Entrepreneurs Company Founder Biographies: Founder bios of some of the most successful people in business today. Company Founder Biographies



Gordon Bowker Bio, Founder of Starbucks

Originally a writer, Gordon Bowker was one of the founders of Starbucks. Under its original ownership, Starbucks primarily sold coffee beans and equipment, inspired by the Berkeley-based Peet's Coffee & Tea, from which they purchased their unroasted beans in their first year of operation (after which point they bought direct from the farmers).

In 1984, the Starbucks owners -- Bowker, Jerry Baldwin, and Zev Siegel -- bought Peet's, and soon sold Starbucks to Howard Schulz, a former employee who had tried to convince them that there was more money to be made in operating as a coffee bar than in aiming at the home coffee market. The Starbucks stores merged with Schulz's Il Giornale coffee bars, all of them taking the Starbucks name. In the next couple decades, Starbucks would go on to become the McDonald's of coffee -- globally present, efficient, standardized, introducing millions of Americans to espresso drinks for the first time, and opening the market for premium-priced coffee to such a degree that even McDonald's itself has followed suit.

Read More Company Founder Biographies -

Select another successful entrepreneur below:

Copyright (c) 2008 FounderBios.com. All Rights Reserved.