Garage Greatness
Garage Greatness is a running blog series, updated every Monday, about companies and inventions that originated in garages. The garage is the perfect climate for innovation, and many of the companies that shape our world today come from simple origins inside a garage, including Google, Apple, Amazon, Mattel, and Disney, among many others. Garage Greatness explores how these companies were founded and the specific conditions that led to them using a garage for their early operations.
Garage Band Startups
Garage bands are notorious. Anytime that a child wants to explore music or an adult wants to try a new hobby, they inevitably need a space to make noise. So many middle-school bands have been sentenced to the garage by moms tired of listening to their racket that music made in the garage – garage rock – has long been an accepted genre of music. There is something inimitable about the freedom that musicians can find in the garage, sequestered just far enough away from the house that everyone else can still get some sleep during late-night practices. This bootstrapping process is respected, even coveted, among musicians tired of the heavily produced and styled modern ultra-stars that dominate pop music. Names like “The Who” and “Nirvana” are cited as inspirations and critical thought leaders among the next generation of garage bands.
Finding Treasure: Fisher Research Labs
Who hasn’t fantasized about discovering a buried stash of old valuables, or uncovering a pirate’s treasure from the beach? Children and adults alike love to rediscover the past, and one of the most fun and potentially lucrative ways to do that comes with treasure hunting. Hobbyists and professionals who search through ruins, farmsteads and beaches for relics from another time capture the imagination of us all, and hearing about someone finding a lost wedding ring or handful of colonial-era coins makes you wish that you’d been the one searching your backyard! This desire is exactly the reason that led Dr. Gerhard Fisher to patent the metal detector and found Fisher Research Labs, an ongoing world leader in metal detectors. Fisher founded his company in 1931 in Palo Alto, California, inside the garage attached to his home.
The HP Garage
The Hewlett-Packard Company, usually called HP, is one of the largest information technology companies in the world. They produce a variety of hardware components and software that are used all around the world. HP employs over 300,000 employees and earned more than 110 billion dollars of revenue in 2014. Needless to say, HP is a big deal in the world of electronics, but the company has one high honor that has nothing to do with their commercial success; the garage in which HP first operated has been named “the birthplace of Silicone Valley” and added it to the list of California Historical Landmarks. Hewlett-Packard started in a garage, and for over seventy-five years since then they have been one of the preeminent names in information technology.
Primed for Success
Amazon.com is the largest Internet-based retail company in the United States, and the 6th-most-visited website in the world, but it hasn’t gotten to that lofty position without some growing pains. Amazon in one of the newest companies we’ll be covering in Garage Greatness, since they made their first sale in 1995, a mere twenty years ago. In those twenty years, Jeff Bezos, the manically-driven mastermind behind Amazon’s record-shattering success, has moved his business from a garage-based bookseller to a household name and competitor in nearly every industry and country around the globe. At the beginning, however, it began in a garage.
Maglite’s Bright Idea
Your garage holds more than just your cars and rarely-used power tools. It holds the potential for greatness. The wide-open floorplan and separation from the rest of the house mean that the garage is the perfect room for making noise, as countless hobbyist handymen or...
The Google Garage
Google is the most omnipresent and omnipotent power that people interact with on a daily basis, which has given some geeks the idea to argue that Googlism – that is, worship of Google as God – is the closest that humans will ever come to interacting with something omnipotent. The farcical religion is more joke than theology, but the believers of Googlism are right about Google’s power over every part of our lives. Google is the most-visited website in the world and handles over half of all internet searches, but Google Inc is also involved in Email, cloud storage, an office software suite, and a host of cutting-edge technologies like self-driving cars and augmented reality headsets. The company is a very big deal, and vying with Apple (another garage startup!) for the coveted position of most valuable brand.
Holding a Candle to Yankee Candle
The Kittredge family may just have a little wax in their blood. Michael Kittredge II started making candles when he was just 16, starting The Yankee Candle Company in his parent’s garage. Forty years later, his son Michael III founded Kringle Candle, establishing the company just 20 miles from Yankee Candle’s flagship store. Michael III is intent on following in his father’s footsteps to greatness, although of course having a multimillionaire father means that he has plenty of help beginning his journey. Michael Kittredge the II, his father, only had three things – a dream, a garage, and a single candle.
Making Mickey: Disney’s Dream Turned Reality
Walt Disney’s success sounds almost like one of his fairy tales. When the young cartoonist began filming his “Alice Comedy” shorts in his uncle’s garage, no one could have predicted that Disney would spend the next century growing into a multi-billion dollar international king of family entertainment, revolutionizing animation and building some of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, the Disneyland parks in Florida, California, Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong.
Need For Speed
Did you know that Lotus Cars, British manufacturer of sport and racing cars and one of the most respected names in F1 racing, began in a garage? Founder Colin Chapman originally studied Structural Engineering at University College London, but after graduating, serving in the Royal Air Force and working for the British Aluminum company, Chapman began to pursue his passion for muscle cars, starting in a garage.
Dream House DIY: Building a Toy Empire
Did you know that Mattel got their start in a garage? Mattel is the Fortune-500 toy manufacturing company responsible for several of the biggest names in toys; Fisher-Price, Barbie, Hot Wheels, American Girl, Matchbox, and several other household names are produced entirely by this American powerhouse. Want to read all about how newlyweds Ruth and Elliot Handler began Mattel in two different garages, over a decade of their lives? We’ve got you covered.