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In the first decade of the 20th century, Elbert Hubbard, entrepreneur and advertising genius, launched a second career as a writer, philosopher, orator, publisher and founder of one of America's most [commercially] successful Arts and Crafts Colonies, The Roycroft, in East Aurora, New York.
The sentence above is from the Roycroft Museum's brochure, still telling Hubbard's story 94 years after his death.
Before founding The Roycroft, Hubbard sold soap. In 1871, at age 15, he began to sell soap door to door to help improve his family's financial situation. Three years later, recognizing him as a consummate salesman, his brother-in-law invited him to Buffalo, New York, to work at the Larkin Company, whose principal product was soap.
A very readable history of the Larkin Company, including how Hubbard implemented novel marketing ideas that transformed the small company into a corporate power, is on http://www.monroefordham.org/Projects/Larkin/history.htm. You'll see that some of his ideas are still in play today, such as:
- Door-to-door selling (now home parties) in addition to wholesale
- Logo displayed on every product
- Certificates that could be redeemed for premiums, such as handkerchiefs or cash
- Co-op buying clubs, offering members better pricing
- A company tagline, in Larkin's case From Factory-to-Family: Save All Cost Which Adds No Value
Throughout his life, Hubbard was a voracious reader and prolific writer. The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard, published posthumously by his son in 1927, contains words that might inspire you as much as they did others when Hubbard penned them.
The big man at the last is the one who takes an idea and makes of it a genuine success-the man who brings the ship into port.
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business, sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.
To confirm Hubbard's positive position on women in the workplace, read on: Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.
© 2009 Nikki Evans, Spotlight Writing