Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble, although it has been blamed by some for driving independent book sellers from the field, is actually the progeny of two very dedicated bibliophiles.
Way back in 1873, Charles M. Barnes started a book selling business out of his home in Wheaton, Illinois. Barnes apparently passed his love of books to his son, who in 1917 traveled to New York City, where he met G. Clifford Noble. Together they opened a small bookstore in the city, and a few years later expanded into what would become their flagship store at Fifth Avenue and 18th Street.
Barnes & Noble chugged happily along for the next few decades, but fell on hard times in the late 1960s, the beginning of a period that saw the extinction of dozens of independent bookstores in New York City. Fortunately, Barnes & Noble caught the eye of Leonard Reggio, a successful college bookstore owner, who bought the chain in 1971 and set out on a course of expansion that eventually would spawn more than 600 Barnes & Noble stores and a successful online presence, as well as almost 200 B. Dalton and Doubleday bookshops.
Frisbee
Poor William Russell Frisbie. When he moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut to manage a new bakery in 1871, he never dreamt that someday half the dogs in America would be chasing his legacy across the nation’s lawns.
Mr. Frisbie was a good baker; so good, in fact, that within a few years he had bought the bakery and established the Frisbie Pie Company, selling pies all across New England. Frisbie pies were especially popular among the students at Yale University in New Haven in the 1920s, and soon Yale dormitories were awash in empty Frisbie Pie tins. College students being expert time-wasters, it wasn’t long before the Yalies discovered that the Frisbie tins, if flung with a spinning motion, would waft gracefully through the air to be caught and returned by a fellow scholar. Since the tins were made of metal, however, it was advisable that the recipient know in advance that the pie tin had been launched, so the cry of “Frisbie!” was adopted as the game’s equivalent of “Fore!” in golf.
Within a few years, the game of “Frisbie” had spread far beyond Yale. In 1948, a California building inspector and inventor named Fred Morrison began to manufacture and market the first flying disc made of plastic as the “Frisbee,” most likely modifying the spelling to avoid legal problems with the Frisbie Pie folks. In 1955, Morrison joined the Wham-O toy company, and in 1957 Wham-O began to market his disc as the “Pluto Platter,” neatly avoiding the trademark question entirely while also capitalizing on the national obsession with UFOs.
By 1958, however, the venerable Frisbie Pie Company had gone out of business, and Wham-O quickly renamed their disc the Frisbee and trademarked the name. Frisbee-mania followed and continues to this day, and while Wham-O won’t say exactly how many Frisbees are sold every year, they do slyly estimate that the number is probably greater than sales of footballs, baseballs and basketballs combined.
Arm & Hammer
Without a doubt one of the most widely-recognized trade symbols in the world is the muscular arm and hand holding a blacksmith’s hammer within a red circle on the yellow box of Arm & Hammer baking soda. But the origin of the symbol has never been fully explained.
The symbol was first used when Dr. Austin Church founded the Vulcan Spice Mill, a small store selling a variety of imported spices, in Brooklyn, NY in the mid-19th century. Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, was associated with blacksmiths, so why Church chose the name for his spice business is anyone’s guess. But in an age of widespread illiteracy, when visual symbols were the key to forging customer loyalty, Church chose a blacksmith’s arm and hammer for his shop sign.
In 1846, sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) was becoming popular for cooking, and Church formed a company with John Dwight to market the new product. Over the flowing two decades, Church and Dwight marketed baking soda under a variety of names and distributed highly popular baking soda cookbooks via direct mail. When Austin Church retired in 1867, his two sons formed their own company, resurrecting their father’s old “arm and hammer” logo for use on the baking soda boxes. In 1896, the Church sons merged with their father’s old firm under the name “Church & Dwight,” and within a few years was producing baking soda using the Vulcan logo and the brand name Arm & Hammer.
Today Arm & Hammer soda is found in 95% of all American households and is still produced by Church & Dwight Co., Inc.