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Starting the Business: Asa Candler Pops His Way to the Top
Starting the Business: Asa Candler Pops His Way to the Top
In 1877, Candler and one of his former co-workers, Marcellus Hallman, began a partnership and established their own retail drug establishment. At the time, druggists were known for their dubious cure-all potions, which usually had little impact. Over the years, these concoctions became more popular for their sweet taste than their medicinal effects and pharmacies became the place to go to enjoy a casual drink.
Candler’s first products were a range of perfumes as well as a ‘blood balm,’ which he sold at his drugstore. The success of this venture was such that he bought out his partner’s share. In just over ten years, Candler’s company had become one of the largest drug businesses in all of Atlanta and was earning over $100,000 a year; his own personal net worth had reached $50,000. Candler continued to manufacture and sell various medicines and cosmetics until one day, he was paralyzed by one of his nagging migraines. In fact, it would turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
Candler’s migraine was so bad that he was willing to try whatever it took to get rid of it. He turned to a little known product that had been produced by a fellow Atlanta-based druggist, John Smyth Pemberton. Pemberton had created something called “Coca-Cola,” his own personal fizzy ‘brain tonic’ and headache remedy that combined coca leaves and kola nuts. He had been selling the drink for five cents a glass at his own drugstore. It was created in his back yard in a three-legged fifteen-gallon pot that stood over a fire, and when Candler sampled it, he was immediately hooked.
In what appeared to be a rash decision to onlookers, Candler decided at once to sell his entire stock of drugs, paints, oils, glass, and fancy clothes. He sold off everything he could and raised roughly $50,000. He initially invested $500 into Pemberton’s company, but by the end of 1891, he had managed to gain control over the entire Coca-Cola product for just $2,300. He used the rest of the money to continue manufacturing and marketing the drink.
In 1892, Candler incorporated Coca-Cola in Georgia, with capital stock of $100,000. While the formula for the drink remains one of the business world’s best kept secrets – it is said that only two company executives have access to the SunTrust vault in which it is kept – it is known that Candler tinkered with it after buying it from Pemberton to make it better tasting. He also replaced the tin cans the syrup was stored in with refurbished whiskey barrels.
In Candler’s early days, he focused solely on marketing Coca-Cola as a fountain drink. In 1899, two Tennessee attorneys approached him with the idea of bottling the drink. In a costly mistake, Candler had little interest in the venture and sold them exclusive rights to bottle and sell the drink. Sales soared from 9,000 gallons in 1890 to 370,877 gallons in 1900. The company would later spend much time and effort buying back those rights. By 1916, the company was earning $27 million. Over the years, sales continued to rise and Coca-Cola came to dominate the industry. Candler’s initial $500 investment had paid off.
Outside of the soft drink market, Candler was also a success in banking and real estate, and he also served as mayor of Atlanta from 1916 to 1919. Before passing away from a stroke on March 12, 1929, Candler had become famous for his generous philanthropic donations to such institutions as Emory University and Emory Hospital, as well as 50 acres of his land holdings to establish Candler Park.
Both before and after Candler became an internationally successful businessman, he had a clear grasp of the fact that he, and every other person along with him, was in possession of a number of intangible assets tha...
Everybody knows somebody who did not succeed, somebody who got caught in a web of difficult circumstances and could not find their way out in order to fulfill their goals. Pemberton had a good idea and a good head s...
It has become such an integral part of American culture that when the Coca-Cola Company tried to change the original formula for its flagship drink in the mid-1980s, the public backlash was overwhelming; the Old Col...
“Every human life is made to fit some place, and there is a place for every life,” Candler once said. “The lives and the places are made for each other that they may serve the purposes of the God who made them.” In ...
Before Candler took over Coca-Cola operations, Pemberton had been doing business on a small scale. He ran a local company with a local customer base and had little chances of growing it much larger at the rate he wa...
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Both before and after Candler became an internationally successful businessman, he had a clear grasp of the fact that he, and every other person along with him, was in possession of a number of intangible assets tha...
