Howard Schultz
speaker
633 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Jun 2024
Howard Schultz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
back to my hotel room and i have a message that cnn is covering the opening life or they got cameras high risk high reward wow i'm so nervous at 6 a.m we get in the car it's so hot my the tie around my neck it feels like a a noose We're driving up to the store in the Ginza and it's like 200 people online. And I turned to the translator and I said, did he hire extras?
I cut the ribbon and a young man who slept over the night before to be the first person as a college student speaks no English. He rushes to the front of the line and I follow him, no English and he says, double tall latte. As God is my witness, just like that. And I said, holy shit. How did they know? And Japan was a extraordinary success from minute one. We got 2,000 stores there.
I was there two months ago. Incredible. We have a roastery there.
Why were there people lined up around the block? Why did it work so well instantly? Was it a strong coffee culture or?
No, it was the iconic reputation and anticipation of something that they had convinced themselves was unique, proprietary, not in Tokyo, not in Japan, that they wanted to have. And that cup, and by the way, the research, that cup was all over Tokyo in months. Everyone was walking around with that cup.
And this is nine years after you bought the six stores. It has turned into this icon. In all the events we just covered, Starbucks has already become Starbucks. It is already this globally desirable brand. There by 1996. I honestly haven't thought about it in that way. That's so fast. I mean, to build something that... It seemed fast to us. I bet.
Did not know that.
And they stayed 50% international permanently.
Yes. As you know, ServiceNow is the AI platform for the enterprise, helping to automate processes, improve service delivery, and increase efficiency. Over 85% of the Fortune 500 runs on them, and they have quickly become one of the world's most important enterprise technology vendors.
Yep. The operations are mind-bending. I was looking into it. They move a huge part of the company and set up a new base of operations in a new city every week. The whole thing is like a roving circus that needs to build a festival from scratch while keeping consistent infrastructure to ensure that fans and teams have a seamless experience from race to race.
Yeah, the NASCAR story is a classic one for ServiceNow. They first became a customer for the IT operations, but as they saw the power of the ServiceNow platform, they extended it into every corner of their business, from employee experience to app engine.
So Japan's 96. In 97, you cross 1,000 stores globally. You're getting your feet under you. You're saying, OK, international is going to be a thing. In 1999, you- 2,000 stores. 2,000 stores. Because we had a goal of 2,000 by 2,000. We beat it by a year. Ah. 99, you also opened in Beijing. What's the calculus on entering China?
And did you realize it could become such a pillar of the company like it is today?
I honestly don't think we had any real understanding of what we were getting into. And we went there with a partner that didn't work out. I should tell you that we had a theory of the case that any international market that we opened that didn't speak English, we needed a partner. And so Japan was a partner, successful.
We entered in a partnership in China early on that was not successful, did not share our values, and we got out and ended up going.
So you closed all the stores?
No, no, we got out of the partnership, bought them out, and became company-owned. And so that was legal to do that, to be an American-owned company operating in China. Yeah, but we struggled in China for almost a decade. Lost money. There was tremendous pressure inside the company to close China. Until Belinda Wong, maybe the most valuable person in the company, from my view.
Really? Yeah. When did Belinda get involved with Starbucks?
Belinda was working. She started with Starbucks in Singapore. But she was working in Hong Kong. We were open in Hong Kong. And I saw something in her who was just an extraordinary operator and had a touch with people. And I said, and we were dying in China. We were really in trouble. Would you come to China and run it? And she said, I would consider doing that, but you've got to decentralize it.
And we couldn't do that right away. It was just too much. But she changed the course of history for Starbucks in China.
Showing 301–320 of 633 · page 16 of 32
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