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Business Wars

Sponsored: When Small Businesses Think Big - Chobani & Wrigley (Dell Podference) | 2

Business Wars

Wondery

History, Business, David Brown, Management

4.613.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with Dell Technologies. In honor of small businesses, we’re featuring inspiring stories of successful companies that started out small.

In upstate New York, a Kurdish immigrant wants to make his biggest dream come true: to produce the tart, custard-thick Greek yogurt of his childhood for American palates. In 2005, he buys an abandoned Kraft factory for cheap. With an ingenious financing deal, standout packaging and clever marketing, he launches Chobani — the yogurt sensation that eventually forces goliaths Yoplait and Dannon to move over. 

While Chobani launched a quiet incursion, William Wrigley Jr. set out to upend the gum industry in 1893 with an improved spearmint flavor.  After one misstep after another, he finally gets traction. Then the gum monopoly approaches him: join or be crushed. Thanks to a savvy advertising campaign, he blows past them to become the nation’s biggest gum purveyor.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey, prime members, you can listen to Business Wars Add Free on Amazon Music.

0:04.6

Download the app today.

0:07.0

To inspire small business owners, Business Wars is showcasing successful companies that

0:17.0

started out small.

0:18.5

Here are their inspirational and motivational stories presented by Dell.

0:22.2

And if you need tech advice, Dell Technologies Advisors can help you find the right solutions

0:27.2

for your business.

0:30.8

It's March 2005, and in Johnstown, upstate New York, Humdy Yulakaya is in his office,

0:37.1

tidying his desk.

0:39.4

He grabs a pile of unsorted papers and starts tossing unwanted items into the waste paper

0:44.4

basket.

0:46.0

Yulakaya is a 34-year-old Kurdish immigrant.

0:49.0

He grew up in Turkey, milking sheep on his family's farm.

0:52.7

Now he runs a small, fed-a-cheese business.

0:56.3

He flings a coffee-stained pizza menu into the basket and looks at the next item.

1:01.3

It's a postcard from a real estate firm advertising a recently shuttered yogurt factory.

1:07.2

Yulakaya drops it straight into the trash.

1:10.0

But as he continues his clear-up, the postcard lingers in his mind.

1:15.4

He's always wanted to make yogurt, but not any yogurt.

1:19.0

No, he wants to make the tart, creamy, custard, thick Greek yogurts that his family makes

1:24.1

back in Turkey.

1:25.9

He loathes the runny, sugary, sweet yogurt sold in America.

...

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