Successful entrepreneurs know their customers. In the late 1960s, a failing convenience store owner had a vision for a new kind of grocery store for a particular type of customer he described “as a person who got a Fulbright scholarship, went to Europe for a couple of years and developed a taste for something other than Velveeta.”
This type of insight allowed Joe Coulombe to lay the foundations for what today is a 530-store chain that bears his name: Trader Joe’s.
Coulombe had a wild hunch that the introduction of the new Boeing 747 in 1969 would open international travel to many more Americans who would return home with an enhanced appreciation regarding food. He did not hesitate to remake the company as other opportunities appeared; among them a loophole in California liquor laws, using private label branding and spotting the demand for natural and organic foods to gain a march on rivals in a very competitive industry where net profit margins over 2% are considered remarkable.
Learn more about Joe Coulombe (and links to more information about him) in this short blog post “Wait, Trader Joe was a real guy?”
