The history of Clough Company can be traced back to 1883, when Bernard Clough opened the first chain store in the United States-Great Western Tea Company.

Through unremitting efforts, Clough developed his company from a small grocery store into a supermarket. He played an important role in the history of American business development, and many American business laws and regulations were formulated according to the development of Crowe Company.

Today, Clough has more than 2,000 large supermarkets in the United States, with about 6.5438+0.7 million employees and annual sales of about 6.5438+0.965438+0 billion dollars.

1873, financial panic broke out in the United States. The storm brought many small and medium-sized companies, including krogh's father's small grocery store, to the brink of bankruptcy, and also pushed krogh, who was only 13 years old, into the business world.

In order to make ends meet at home, Clough was forced to drop out of school and work everywhere. Later, he started a small business selling coffee along the street.

Mrs. Kela has a sweet mouth and is willing to endure hardships, and soon she has a group of regular customers. At the age of 20, Clough saved some money and bought a grocery store.

Krogh, who has been selling in the wind and rain for many years, cherishes this small grocery store that can shelter from the wind and rain. He is considerate of customers everywhere and attentive to service, so that "customers feel that they have become hereditary aristocrats as soon as they enter the door." Clough also used price reduction to attract customers. He set the price just a little higher than the cost. In his own words: "Meat with bones smells the best, and customers will come to you when they smell it."

By the summer of 1885, 24-year-old krogh had established the Great Western Tea Company with four stores. 1893 When the financial panic broke out again, Clough seized the opportunity to buy a large number of shops on the verge of bankruptcy at low prices, which increased the number of shops under the company to 17. 1902, krogh owned 40 stores and a food processing factory in Cincinnati, and changed its name to krogh Grocery Bread Company.

Clough's rapid development is mainly due to the fact that the company directly deals with customers, which saves a lot of links that need the intervention of middlemen, reduces the cost and thus lowers the price. Clough once had a famous saying about commodity prices: "Go as far as possible on the road of price reduction, so that your opponent can't reach your throat."

In order to reduce the number of middlemen, krogh set up a bakery, becoming the first store in the United States to produce and sell its own bread. These breads are not only cheap but also fresh. Customers standing outside the counter can see the whole process of baking bread by the baker, which enhances their trust in food.

Clough was greatly inspired by the success of the bakery. 1904, krogh acquired Nadjir livestock sales and processing company, becoming the first company in the United States to operate livestock meat in grocery stores.

However, this reform is not as smooth as last time. At that time, butchers in the United States were short of weight and customers, and butchers also took bits and pieces of meat home. All this is incompatible with Clough's practice of "service first" and "cost reduction". Therefore, krogh installed an automatic cash register at the livestock meat counter for weighing and collecting by the machine. But before long, these cashiers often broke down inexplicably, and the sale of livestock meat was still dominated by butchers. Clough turned to salesgirls, who were responsible for weighing and collecting money. The butchers drove away the salesgirl with monkey-like words and actions. When Clough hired salesmen, the butcher threatened them with violence.

But Clough took an uncompromising attitude towards the butchers. He fired the stubborn butchers in batches and advertised in the newspaper:

"Butchers who want to work in grocery stores and bread companies in krogh, please think carefully before applying, whether you can be loyal to customers." Clough's firm maintenance of its business purpose finally gained the upper hand, which not only reversed the butcher atmosphere in the store, but also greatly improved the company's reputation.

19 12 years, krogh first expanded its business outside Cincinnati and bought 25 stores in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition, Clough began to seek to establish chain stores all over the country. By 1920, krogh Grocery and Bread Company has established a huge chain store network in Hamilton, Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Indianapolis, Indiana, Springfield and Toledo. These chain stores are organized by the head office and purchase goods in a unified way. Due to the large purchase volume, the company can get much more discounts from wholesalers than independent stores, thus reducing costs.

By 1928, Crowe Grocery Bread Company has become the leader of American retail industry and a veritable retail kingdom. Clough, the founder of this kingdom, sold his shares in the company for $28 million this year, and William Albers succeeded him as president. At this time, there are 5575 chain stores under the company name.

As soon as chain stores appeared, many criticisms followed. Many people accuse chain store companies of using unfair competition to eliminate small and medium-sized independent stores. These large chain stores also monopolize commodity prices, undermine the spirit of free competition and force consumers to accept high prices.

By the end of 1920s, the anti-chain-store movement reached its climax. Politicians, radio hosts, newspapers, etc. It's all the same tune: "Chain stores are dangerous." On the one hand, people are worried that chain stores with strong development momentum will quickly dominate the retail industry, thus monopolizing commodity prices and increasing consumers' shopping expenses; On the other hand, I am worried that the power of chain stores will affect other industries. Because these chain stores are all engaged in commodities closely related to people's daily lives, they are indispensable. The rise of these commodity prices will inevitably lead to the rise of wages and costs in other industries, thus affecting the entire American industrial system. In addition, the biggest complaint of consumers is that many chain stores sell poor quality goods, especially food. These chain stores buy inferior goods at low prices and then sell them at high prices.

Krogh grocery and bread company became the target of this anti-chain store movement. Albert Moreel, the new president of the company from 65438 to 0930, not only had to deal with the Great Depression, but also met the challenge of public dissatisfaction with chain stores.

In order to eliminate customers' concerns about the company's food, Moreel specially organized a special car to send customers to visit the company's farms and factories, so that they could see with their own eyes how krogh Grocery and Bread Company selected high-quality raw materials to process and produce food. Finally, the company simply established Wesco Food Company, which is open to the outside world, responsible for supplying food to chain stores under the company's name, and strictly controlling the quality of goods from the time of purchase.

Moreel also established the krogh Food Foundation, becoming the first company in the United States to hire experts to conduct scientific food testing. The Foundation also set up a housewife advisory committee, and * * * hired 750 housewives to taste the food samples presented by the company at home and put forward suggestions for improvement.

While beginning to restore customers' trust in the quality of the company's goods, Moreel also strives to improve the image of the company's monopoly price. He divided the company's business into 23 branches, each of which was headed by a manager. Managers can set their own price standards according to local actual conditions, and the head office will no longer set a unified price.

This decentralization policy has greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of various departments. 1930, Michael Cullen, manager of the company's southern branch, put forward a revolutionary idea: to build a large shopping center with customers and abandon the traditional salesman service. This can not only reduce the number of sales staff and sales costs, but also increase the freedom of customers to shop and attract more customers. In fact, this is the concept of "supermarket". Karen opened the first supermarket in the United States in New Jersey, which set off a wave of retail revolution.

Strengthening customers' trust in the company's products and building supermarkets are two trump cards for Crowe Grocery Bread Company to survive in the Great Depression and the anti-chain store movement. By 1935, the company has 50 supermarkets.

After World War II, Joseph Hall became the president of krogh Food and Bread Company. This man, who is famous for his innovation, has turned a new page in the company's development history.

Hall changed its name to krogh Company and launched 45 kinds of company monopoly trademarks at one time to deepen customers' impression of the company's products.

Customer survey is a major reform measure presided over by Hall himself. Hall insists: "It is the customers who have the most say in the company's development of goods, services and sales methods. To this end, he installed customer "ballot boxes" next to all cash registers. Customers can put their comments and suggestions on Crowe Company into the box, such as what kind of goods are needed, how to improve what kind of goods, what special services are needed and so on. Each ticket is marked with the customer's name and contact address. Once the customer's suggestion is adopted, you can enjoy the service for free for life or buy goods from krogh's stores, and you can also get a discount consumption card given by the company, and you can enjoy preferential price reduction when buying any goods.

The "ballot box" is very popular with customers, and suggestions emerge one after another. Clough Company takes the right medicine according to the customer's suggestions, making every new measure and new product launched by the company a success. The company's business scope expanded to Texas, Minnesota and California, and its 1952 sales exceeded the10 billion dollar mark.

1960, krogh Company added a drug counter in the store according to the customer's suggestion, which was a great success. 1962 opened a discount store at the suggestion of customers. This kind of shop is badly decorated and the service items are pitiful. It's exactly like a customer going into a warehouse full of goods and choosing for himself. Due to the reduction of management costs, the prices of goods here are particularly cheap, which firmly attracts the working class with huge purchasing power. By 1863, Crowe's annual sales have reached $2 billion.

recent advance

James Herring became the president of krogh Company on 1970. He not only emphasizes the construction of supermarkets with complete varieties, but also pays attention to the establishment of monopoly stores with concentrated varieties to attract customers with special products.

Herring called the customer's "ballot box" set up by the company "a scientific market research method", and he asked the employees of the company to meet the customer's requirements "like the lover's requirements". Clough's planning, advertising and innovation are all carried out according to the wishes of customers. For example, krogh took the lead in marking the shelf life on the packaging of perishable goods, introducing pollution-free "green food" and adding nutrients that are easy to be lost during flour processing to Fuqiang flour food.

Herring not only attaches importance to customers' suggestions, but also encourages employees to make suggestions. 1972, an employee of a company suggested that the cashier's office in each supermarket was working too slowly, and the cashier read the price from the commodity label and then entered it into the cash register. Usually customers buy a lot of goods, as a result, they often have to wait a few minutes to check out. So he suggested that the company adopt the electric eye system in railway transportation. The system uses electronic sensors (electric eyes) to read specific signs on the carriage, such as tonnage, variety and destination. In this way, when a train passes through the electric eye at high speed, all the information of the train is quickly transmitted to the electronic computer, and all kinds of information of the train can be displayed on the terminal immediately.

This proposal attracted great attention of the company and immediately joined hands with RCA, a famous American electronics company. That year, it developed the first electronic scanner for supermarket receipts in the United States. As long as the label of the goods is scanned with a scanner, the price and name of the goods will be automatically input into the computer, and then the total price will be calculated immediately, which greatly shortens the waiting time of customers.

After entering the 1980s, Crowe Company turned its development direction to a "one-stop" super-large supermarket. This kind of shopping mall has reached an all-encompassing level, not only engaged in retail, but also engaged in beauty salons, financial services, fast food restaurants, gas stations and so on. So that customers can buy all the goods and get all the services they need only once.

Throughout the development history of krogh Company, the company always puts innovation in the first place.

To commemorate the 0/00th anniversary of the company/kloc-Crowe Company published a large-scale publicity book entitled "Innovation 100-Crowe's Story", which wrote: "100th year is only a moment in history, so we can sum up the deeds of Crowe Company in one sentence:' People have nothing but me, and people have something new.

This enterprise brand ranked 200 th in the top 500 world brands compiled by the World Brand Lab in 2006. This enterprise ranked 80th in the ranking of Fortune 500 enterprises in the world in 2007.