Launching your company : Client perception

Client perception at launch
Launching a company is a very sensitive point in time. You’re not launching a product. You are launching an organization, a company. And everything that you do is going to affect the perception of your company. You want people who you would like to be your customers to perceive your company in a particular way.

An exemple?
If you are opening a legal firm or an accounting firm, you probably would not wear the clothing that you wear to the beach. If you are launching a company that is going to produce telephone applications for a variety of businesses, you probably would want to wear the clothes that you wear to the beach. Because your customers, businesses, want to believe that you are a really creative person. Whereas if you are an accountant or a lawyer they want to believe that you are a really serious person. So everything about your company affects perception.

And for Starbucks?
When Starbucks first launched its first store in Seattle, this was in the year 1971. We were not launching a coffee bar, we were launching a coffee bean store. We did everything in our power to make people forget that we were a new company. Our store had a slightly historical look to it, just slightly. Our logo definitely had a historic work to it. And the way we interacted with our customers was extremely important and very refined to allow people to come to the conclusion that we were world class experts in coffee. We had to think about how to do that because we were a brand new company.