[Outliers] K.C. Irving: Competing with Giants

When a railway raised his shipping costs, he bought a ship. When oil suppliers tried to squeeze him, he built a refinery. When a plant went on strike, he pulled up to the picket line, took off his coat, and challenged the much larger union boss to a fight.

Whenever someone told him no, he found a way. From a small town store, he built an empire of roughly 300 companies.

You’ll see how he won customers the big companies ignored, why he kept expanding during the Great Depression, and why a man who owned ships and a refinery still cared about clean bathrooms and one customer’s cold house.

He spent his life making sure no one could push him around. Eventually, he got so big that governments wanted to rein him in.

Source: Farnam Street — Read the full article on the original site ↗