Everybody knows Starbucks. Last month, on the 8th of March, the Coffee brand celebrated their 40th anniversary. To mark that date, they decided to revamp the Mermaid logo. When brands dare to change their logo, it is not an easy matter. It is almost like if a person would slightly change his name.

But it is not the first time! And that is the key of longterm success: evolution and not revolution. Did you know that Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle-USA? 3 partners joined to create the biggest Coffee company in the world. The English teacher Jerry Baldwin, the history teacher Zev Siegl, and the writer Gordon Bowker. A noble foundation :-). The name is taken from one of the main characters of the novel Moby-Dick. Starbuck was the name of the Chief officer, of the whale boat Pequod.

The logo has been significantly streamlined over the years. In the first version, which was based on a 17th-century “Norse” woodcut, the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully visible double fish tail. The image also had a rough visual texture and has been likened to a melusine. In the second version, which was used from 1987–92, her breasts were covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the third version, used between 1992 and 2011, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails.

Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982 as Director of Retail Operations and Marketing, and after a trip to Milan, Italy, advised that the company should sell coffee and espresso drinks as well as beans. In 1987, they sold the Starbucks chain to Schultz’s Il Giornale, which rebranded the Il Giornale outlets as Starbucks and quickly began to expand. Starbucks opened its first locations outside Seattle at Waterfront Station in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Chicago, Illinois, that same year. At the time of its initial public offering on the stock market in 1992, Starbucks had grown to 165 outlets. Since then, Starbucks became the biggest Coffee company in the world. They have more than 17,009 stores in 50 countries, including over 11,000 in the United States, over 1,000 in Canada, and over 700 in the United Kingdom. Lately, they started expansion in France and Switzerland.

Recently they have developed an interesting partnership with Apple. Starbucks has agreed to a partnership with Apple to collaborate on selling music as part of the “coffeehouse experience”. In October 2006, Apple added a Starbucks Entertainment area to the iTunes Store, selling music similar to that played in Starbucks stores. In September 2007 Apple announced that customers would be able to browse the iTunes Store at Starbucks via Wi-Fi in the US (with no requirement to login to the Wi-Fi network), targeted at iPhone, iPod touch, and MacBook users. The iTunes Store will automatically detect recent songs playing in a Starbucks and offer users the opportunity to download the tracks. Some stores feature LCD screens with the artist name, song, and album information of the current song playing. This feature has been rolled out in Seattle, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and was offered in limited markets during 2007–2008.
During the fall of 2007, Starbucks also began to sell digital downloads of certain albums through iTunes. Starbucks gave away 37 different songs for free download through iTunes as part of the “Song of the Day” promotion in 2007, and a “Pick of the Week” card is now available at Starbucks for a free song download. A Starbucks app is available in the iPhone App Store. (source: wikipedia and Starbucks.com).

Check the video of Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz explaining how Starbucks starts this year the first steps of their next 40 years.

Some people preferred the previous logo and others like the new one. And what about you?
LA