Starbucks at Pikes Place in Seattle

The other day I wrote about Scott Bedbury and his ideas on branding. What I didn’t make clear was that building a brand takes time. A very long time.

Bedbury worked at Nike and Starbucks. Nike was started in 1964 by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, so when Bedbury started in 1987, the company was 23 years old. The first Starbucks coffee house started in 1971 in Pike’s Place market in Seattle. When Bedbury joined Starbucks in 1995 it was 24 years old.

My point is that it takes a long time for a company, even a very successful one, to find the right business model and build a solid foundation for growth. It’s only when the foundation is established that the company can expand rapidly and communicate its value to the world through its brand.

Bedbury understands this very well, although his audiences of entrepreneurs often fail to appreciate how long it takes to build a solid business and that no amount of branding can change this requirement.