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The Empire Builders Podcast

The Empire Builders Podcast

著者： Stephen Semple and David Young
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Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.The Empire Builders Podcast マネジメント マネジメント・リーダーシップ マーケティング マーケティング・セールス リーダーシップ 経済学
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  • #271: Hi-C – Scurvy No More

    #271: Hi-C – Scurvy No More
    2026/08/26
    Can you believe we didn’t really discover vitamin C until the 1930’s? Well, Nile Foster, knew what to do with it. Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [Handyside Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple. And Steven has just told me what today’s topic is and made the assumption that it’s probably something from my childhood and sort of… We were more Tang kids than Hi-C. Stephen Semple: Okay. Dave Young: So Hi-C is the topic and I’m probably a little old maybe because it was the little Hawaiian guy, right? Their TV- Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: … commercials were the little Hawaiian guy with the pow or something like he’d come and I remember what he would do, saki or something, but he was kind of an obnoxious little mascot. But this is a orange drink or a fruit drink for kids that had some vitamin C in it, which made it a health food. Stephen Semple: Basically. Dave Young: Yeah. But I was the Apollo generation, so the fact that the astronauts drank Tang- Stephen Semple: Yeah, that was the- Dave Young: … all I really wanted was some Tang. Stephen Semple: You wanted Tang? Dave Young: Mm-hmm. Stephen Semple: All right. Well, Hi-C is actually kind of a surprising story because it’s actually a story about a company that built a product around a technological constraint and then had to pivot as the technology eliminated that constraint, which is kind of similar to Swiss Miss. Remember when we did Swiss Miss, there was a couple of these technological changes that forced them to pivot. So Hi-C was launched in 1946 and originally as Hi-C orange. And then of course, as they added a bunch of other flavors, things like that, they eliminated the word orange from it. And it was created by Niles Foster in Florida and in 1954, it was acquired by Minute Maid for approximately $40 million. So they did really quite well. And it’s estimated that they were doing $5 million in sales at the time. And then in 1960, Coke buys Minute Maid and Hi-C now finds itself with bigger distribution. So today Hi-C is a Coca-Cola brand. For generations of kids, it was this brightly colored fruit drink that we all grew up with. And frankly, if you ever ate at a McDonald’s, there’s reasonable chance that you had a Hi-C there. But Hi-C started with essentially a problem. And the problem was this, how do you give Americans orange juice when most Americans can’t easily store orange juice? Dave Young: Ah, okay. Stephen Semple: Even though it was launched in 1946, our story actually starts in the 1930s. Here’s the thing that I kind of found interesting is that basically vitamin C had only been identified as a vitamin in the early 1930s. Dave Young: So people are still getting scurvy or? Stephen Semple: Well, people knew that you should be having fruit, but they didn’t identify- Dave Young: Vitamin C. Stephen Semple: … vitamin C specifically. So vitamin C was discovered as a vitamin in the early 1930s. And then in 1941, the National Research Council published the first recommended dietary allowance. So for the first time, Americans were given specific guidance on nutrition, including vitamins. “Here’s how much you should consume.” So nutrition was now something that could be measured and that created interesting marketing opportunity because instead of simply saying, “This is good for you,” we can now say, “This gives you your daily allotment of vitamin C.” Dave Young: Your recommended daily allowance. Yeah, yeah. Stephen Semple: There you go. And this becomes important because along comes Niles Foster who’s working in Florida. Florida has lots of oranges, but there’s a problem. Orange juice is not the breakfast staple we think of today because fresh oranges were seasonal, fresh juice did not travel well, and storing and distributing juice was a ...
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    18 分
  • #270: Kraft Singles – Keeping Up With The Times

    #270: Kraft Singles – Keeping Up With The Times
    2026/08/19
    When Norman Kraft took over the company he wanted to leave his mark. I think he succeeded. What do you think? Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is… Well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So, here’s one of those. [Wagmore Garage Door Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here. Stephen Semple is sitting here and just told me that we’re… You keep… Man, do you know how to dial into my childhood, Stephen? Stephen Semple: It’s all about you, Dave. Dave Young: It is. Stephen Semple: It’s all about you. Dave Young: I don’t want to make it about me, but it always is. It’s the Swiss Miss and the… So, he’s like, “It’s not the company, but it’s the product inside the company.” We’re going to talk about Kraft Singles. Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: I’m assuming we’re talking about cheese… Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: … or the American cheese product, whatever that means. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: But my God, did I eat a lot of cheese as a kid? I don’t know why. My mom would just let me, my sister sit in front of the TV and grab a stack of Kraft Singles and watch Gilligan’s Island and all the things that were on TV right after school. So, we had a dachshund who knew what a Kraft Single being opened sounded like. Stephen Semple: Oh, that does not surprise me. Dave Young: Right. Is like, “Oh, someone is opening some cheese.” Stephen Semple: You have my attention now. Dave Young: I might get myself a little bite. So, today we’re going to learn about the Kraft Singles story. Stephen Semple: Yeah, and I know it’s a bit unusual because Kraft is a massive company and was a massive company even at the time that this was created, but they were going through a bit of a problem. And I just thought there was some innovative ideas inside the development of Kraft Singles. And look, they sell billions of slices every year. It’s like, look how recognizable it was. Kraft Singles. “Oh, you’re talking about the cheese thing that’s wrapped in the plastic and…” Talk about recognized. Whether you eat the product, like the product, don’t like the product, we all know what it is. The moment I say it, everyone would know what it is. It was very much driven by a change that was happening in the world and a bunch of things that Kraft had recognized because the Second World War has ended and basically what ends up happening was the baby boom. And instead of roughly two million births a year, suddenly the country is having three and a half million births a year, 60% increase. That changes everything. Schools overcrowded, new classrooms being built, neighborhoods appear overnight, but there’s also the whole thing of feeding the kids. School lunch programs were still developing. Kids brought lunch from home, and these lunches were uninspiring. They were yesterday’s pork chops. They were deviled eggs. They were bologna sandwiches. It’s just they were boring, and convenience hadn’t yet caught up to the sandwiches that kids were taking to school. So, it’s the late 1940s. Kraft wasn’t a small food company. It was the largest cheese company in the world. It was primarily cheese at that point, and it was selling roughly a million pounds of cheese a day, generating tens of millions of dollars. So, they were big. And James Kraft had built the company around processed cheese, the product that kind of spoilage and consistency. That’s what the business was built on. But after James retired, the leadership passed to his brother, Norman Kraft. And Norman wanted to make his mark on the business, and he noticed something. What he noticed was… This is the thing I found interesting. He looked at it and he went, “Wait a minute. Pre-sliced bread has changed the bread industry.” Wonder Bread, pre-sliced bread. Dave Young: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, wait. When Norman took over, they weren’t even slicing ...
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    16 分
  • #269: Shopify – Born of Necessity

    #269: Shopify – Born of Necessity
    2026/08/12
    What do you do when you follow the love of your life to a new country and aren’t legally allowed to work? You start Shopify… Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [Kooler Garage Doors Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast, eh. Stephen Semple: Eh? Dave Young: See what I did there? See what I did there, Stephen? Stephen Semple: I do. Dave Young: Stephen whispered in my ear that we’re going to talk about a Canadian company, eh. Shopify. Stephen Semple: Shopify. Dave Young: And I didn’t know they were Canadian. Stephen Semple: Yes, they are. Yeah. Dave Young: Well, do tell. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Well, and here’s one of the things that I love about this story is it was started by a person who couldn’t get a job and decided to sell snowboards online. Dave Young: All right. Stephen Semple: Right? Dave Young: Snowboards. Stephen Semple: How could I not love that? Dave Young: Yeah. You would love that all day long. Is that where you bought your first snowboard? Stephen Semple: No, it is not but… Dave Young: Wait, wait, you weren’t that kid, were you? Stephen Semple: No, I was not. So they’re a big deal, annual revenue of close to $12 billion. They’re one of Canada’s most valuable companies with $160 billion market cap. They’ve got 7,600 employees worldwide and kind of like five million online stores in 175 countries. And here’s the figure that got me the most when I was researching it. And it’s the number 378 billion. That’s how much merchandise was sold in a year. $370 billion worth of merchandise was sold through Shopify. Dave Young: All right. Stephen Semple: Put that into context, that’s the GDP of Singapore. Dave Young: Yeah, that’s crazy. Stephen Semple: Isn’t that crazy? Dave Young: That’s a lot of sales. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So Shopify was founded in 2006 in Ottawa by Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake. But our story starts a couple of years before with Snowdevil, the snowboarding business. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So Tobias was born and raised in Germany, and his parents had this place in the Alps, and they would often drive to the Alps to go skiing. Then they decided to do a trip to Canada to do Whistler. At the time, the Canadian dollar was low. It was like the 2000s, and he decided he was going to snowboard rather than ski. And this is when he fell in love with two things, snowboarding, and he met his now wife, Fiona. Dave Young: Was she also snowboarding? Do we know? Stephen Semple: I don’t know whether she was snowboarding or not. That’s an interesting question. Dave Young: All right. Stephen Semple: So he returns to Germany, they keep in touch, and when she finishes her bachelor degree, she decides to move to Germany. So in Germany, Tobias struggled in school, ADHD, dyslexia, dropped out after grade 10, and he joins a programming apprenticeship program at Siemens. And he’s part of this kind of rebellious environment. He loves it. And he and Fiona are together for about 10 months, and she decides she needs to return to Ottawa to start her master’s program. So he moves with her to Ottawa. Now, he tried to work remotely, but remember, this is the early 2000s. Tools were not really there. You didn’t have Slack, you didn’t have Zoom. It was tough. He wasn’t really able to do it. Dave Young: A little bit of Skype going on by then maybe, but yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah, maybe, but even not great, right? He’s spending a bunch of time snowboarding and he dives into it and he’s learning all he can about it. And he even started thinking, “Well, maybe I could sell snowboards online.” And around this time, he gets offer for a job with a business in Ottawa, and the topic of work permit comes up, which oops, he doesn’t have. Dave Young: Doesn’t have a work permit. Yeah. Stephen Semple: Right. He’s legally allowed in the country, but he’s ...
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    19 分
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