Howard Schultz

Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks

Biography

Howard Mark Schultz was born on July 19, 1953. He is an American businessman and writer. He is the chairman and CEO of Starbucks and a former owner of the Seattle SuperSonics. Howard Mark Schultz was born to a German-Jewish family on July 19, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. He is the son of ex-US Army trooper and then truck driver Fred Schultz, and his wife Elaine along with his younger sister, Ronnie, and brother, Michael, he grew up in the Canarsie Bayview Houses of the New York City Housing Authority. Schultz's family was poor, he saw an escape in sports such as baseball, football, and basketball. He graduated in 1971 from Canarsie High School . In high school, Schultz excelled at sports and was awarded an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University and become the first person in his family to go to college. Schultz was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, received his bachelor's degree in Communications in 1975.


Career

As soon as he graduates, he worked as a salesperson for Xerox Corporation. In 1979 he became a general manager for Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer, Hammarplast. In 1981, Schultz visited a client of Hammarplast, a fledgling coffee-bean shop called Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle which he joined as the Director of Marketing a year later. On a buying trip to Milan, Italy for Starbucks, Schultz noted that coffee bars existed on practically every street. He learned that they not only served excellent espresso, they also served as meeting places or public squares, they were a big part of Italy's societal glue, and there were 200,000 of them in the country. On his return, he tried to persuade the owners (including Jerry Baldwin) to offer traditional espresso beverages in addition to the whole bean coffee, leaf teas and spices they had long offered. After a successful pilot of the cafe concept, the owners refused to roll it out company-wide, saying they didn't want to get into the restaurant business. Schultz started his own coffee shop in 1985, named 'Il Giornale' after the Milanese newspaper. Two years later, the original Starbucks management decided to focus on Peet's Coffee & Tea and sold its Starbucks retail unit to Schultz and Il Giornale for $3.8 million. Schultz renamed Il Giornale with the Starbucks name, and expanded its reach across the United States. Schultz's keen insight in real estate and his hard-line focus on growth drove him to expand the company rapidly. On January 8, 2008 Schultz regained his status as CEO of Starbucks after an eight-year hiatus. At this time, Schultz was earning a total compensation of $9,740,471, which included a base salary of $1,190,000, and options granted of $7,786,105.