Talent JR

Born in 1892, J. M. Haggar established Haggar Clothing in 1926 at the age of thirty-four.  At the age of thirteen, he migrated from his home in Mexico and later moved to the United States some years later. Haggar started as a dish and window washer, but gradually advanced into the sales industry due to his prowess and interaction skills. By 1921, he was selling overalls in Louisiana, Texas for a company based in Missouri. During this period, he realized that selling similar products at a fixed price was more profitable, as opposed to selling different products for varying profit margins. J. M. Haggar had saved enough funds to enable his establish his own business. He, therefore, set up shop and begun producing and selling high-quality pants for men. Haggar Clothing Co. started from a one-room office, steadily growing from a men’s dress pant manufacturer to become the most renowned brand in the market. The company had its headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

His first son Ed joined the business in the early 1930s. The enterprise’s products were then sold to numerous chain stores with no brand name attached. As at 1938, Haggar Clothing commanded a greater portion of the market specializing on menswear. During this period, the company introduced wash & wear pants, pre-cuffed pants, forever-prest pants, elastic waist pants and wrinkle-free cotton casual pants. This led to the need for a brand, of which the company began introducing brand names under E.R. Haggar’s direction. Haggar Clothing Co. went the extra mile to advertise their products on national TV and magazines, making it the first company to adopt UPC and IDE technologies, as well as invent the size strip sticker, ship pants pre-hung, and even sell pants and jackets as suit separates. Under their brand, this company also developed the highly successful eco-friendly khaki outfits.

One of the first advertisements ever done by Haggar Clothing on television showed a pair of the forever-prest slacks crumpled and then run over by a steamroller. The pants were then picked up and shaken. They showed no sign of wrinkles, selling off as the first ever wrinkle-free men’s pants. The success of this advert led to a full-time commitment to advertising on television. The business entity became a sponsor to shows like Bronco, Naked City, Sugarfoot and Twelve O’clock High.

Haggar went on to popularize his newly invented polyester-and-wool permanent press pants in the late 1960s. The company then introduced the new popular leisure tops to match with its slacks in the 1970s. At the age of 50, the company’s sales rose during this year when the industry witnessed a general drop-off. Haggar’s competitor Levi Strauss took advantage of a gap in the market and applied the same strategy as Haggar. It introduced Dockers line, which filled the existing gap between casual and dressy. This snatched a substantial percentage of the market commanded by Haggar, who then responded by introducing a line of all-cotton pants.

Presently, Haggar Clothing Co. is the proud leading manufacturer of men’s dress pants in the entire United States for more than eighty-five years. The company currently has an active employee count of six thousand and generating $437.9 million in sales as at 1996.

Going by the slogan ‘Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us!’, this company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Greyhound Lines was founded more than 103 years ago (1914), offering intercity coach services in alliance with some reputable organizations like Indian Trails, Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, Jefferson Lines and others. Presently, the company has an operational fleet of 1,229 motor coaches. Most of these coaches are the G4500, MCI 102DL3, D4505 as well as the Prevost X3-45.

Traveling to more than 2,700 destinations across North America, Greyhound Lines has 230 company-operated stations that serve 123 routes including Greyhound express routes. Greyhound Lines began its operations in 1914 with its first route in Hibbing, Minnesota. Fifteen years later, the company adopted the name Greyhound Corporation. This intercity motorcoach service provider and its sister company in FirstGroup have been a subsidiary of FirstGroup, holding the position of largest motor coach operators in Canada and The United States.

Starting as a sales representative, Carl Eric did not have much success in marketing his cars; he opted to use his remaining 7-seater car to establish a Bus Andy and transporting iron ore miners to Alice from Hibbing at only 15 cents a trip. He later joined masses with Ralph Bogan, who operated a similar service. As a result, their organization made an annual profit of $8,000 in the initial year. By 1918, Eric was a proud owner of eighteen buses with a yearly profit of $40,000. In 1926, Wickman bought the Pickwick Lines and the Pioneer Yelloway System, both of whom conducted their operations in the west coast. This led to the development of the first National Intercity Bus Company. The name Greyhound was first adopted to the Blue Goose Lines segments. This name gained much popularity that it was later applied to the entire network of buses. By 1928, Greyhound was generating an annual gross income of $6 million.

In 1946, Wickman retired from the position of president to the company, being replaced by Orville Ceaser, his long-term partner. Coincidentally, Wickman died in 1956 when the construction of the Interstate Highway System begun. This development drastically reduced the prices of air travel to make it more affordable, at the same time making road transport the preferred mode of transportation in the United States. Greyhound and other travel carriers begun experiencing problems.

The company later had to deal with numerous cases that tarnished the name of the carrier. Greyhound began witnessing a drop in the number of clients in the 1960s. This led to the introduction of drastic changes within the entity, prompting the management to use this profitable motor operation to invest in different industries. The company later experienced a major driver’s strike in 1983, leading to one fatal incident when one of the buses ran over a worker at a picket line. The drivers, however, agreed to get back to work after the ratification of a new contract.

The spin-off, merger, and bankruptcy between 1986 and 1990 let another driver’s strike in the early 1990s. This was topped up by the expiration of the 1987 three-year contract. Greyhound was forced to drop its low-demand rural stops to concentrate on the denser inter-metropolitan routes, cutting close to 37% of its road network.

Scottish transport FirstGroup acquired Laidlaw International for $3.6 billion, exporting the Greyhound brand back to the United Kingdom naming it Greyhound UK. Currently, the company has 1,229 buses that travel more than 5.5 billion miles and serving 3,800 destinations within North America.

FedEx Office, previously Kinko’s, is a subsidiary business entity that offers various office services including office print and shipping services. Founded in 1970 as Kinko’s, FedEx Office has its headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Presently, the company offers printing, photocopying, binding and shipping services to clients all over the world through the different chain of stores the operate. The entity rebranded its name more than three times, starting as Kinko’s, before renaming to FedEx Kinko’s, and now officially going by the name FedEx Office.

Because of his curly hair, FedEx Office founder Paul Orfalea acquired the name Kinko. Paul established the first copy shop in the college community of Isla Vista with a sidewalk copy machine. He was however forced to leave the company due to disputes that emerged regarding his decision to sell off a greater portion of the company in 1997. The issue was further enhanced by Paul’s actions whereby he did not adopt the conventional franchising model; he developed the business entity as loosely connected partnership agreements between the various store owners and himself. He had managed to establish more than 120 kinko outlets by 1997 using this technique.

This prompted the need to carefully dismantle the various stores to come up with one S corporation that would turn the company into a centralized corporate business model. This made it simpler for the investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice to gradually eliminate him from his business. Paul claimed that he had to make great efforts to disentangle himself from the attorneys at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. It is not until 2002 that the company relocated its headquarters from Ventura, California to Dallas, Texas. FedEx later acquired the company in early 2004 for $2.4 billion, changing the name to FedEx Kinko’s Office & Print Centers.

The company currently relies on home office clients and small business owners, with close to 2,000 operational facilities. As at 2006, FedEx Office had an active employee count of 19,000 servicing these outlets. During rebranding on June 2, 2008, there was considerable confusion among many clients. This is because some stores still had the name FedEx Kinko’s. The management, therefore, opted to put up enormous signs on various store windows stating that there’s “Kinko’s printing inside.” The next Chief Executive Officer, Amanda Gulotta came in after Ken May left the company on March 7, 2008.

Being the seventh largest company in the North America region, the company nets slightly more than $2 billion in revenues even with the high competition rate from other similar service providers. FedEx Office also strategized their service delivery techniques to expand into the international market during the late 1990s and early 2000s. They acquired great reception in various countries including South Korea, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Canada. Additionally, the company conducted its operations in the Netherlands, Mexico, and Australia, but was forced to withdraw from these countries because of low demand.

To date, every FedEx Office outlet offers additional services including fax machines, photo printer kiosks, monochrome and color photocopiers as well as numerous desktop computer rentals. Clients can also find a selection of business book and office supplies in some stores.