A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

IMAGE: Financial Times

We’ll readily acknowledge that AndrewsGumWorld is not Jeopardy, but we’ll pretend, for a moment, that we are.

Question: How did Warren Buffett begin his journey towards becoming the second richest man in America?

Last week, the Financial Times began a series of articles about Warren Buffett (as well as a link to a review of his biography, “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life”), and we were nothing less than pleased to discover that his fabulous success in the world of business began quite simply, and that his first profits were made from selling our favorite brand of gum:

The first few cents Warren Buffett ever earned came from selling packs of chewing gum. And from the day he started selling – at six years of age – he showed an unyielding attitude toward his customers that revealed much about his later style.

“I had this little green tray, which had five different areas in it. I’m pretty sure my aunt Edie gave me that. It had containers for five different brands of gum, Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, Doublemint, and so on. I would buy packs of gum from my grandfather and go around door to door in the neighborhood selling this stuff. I used to do that in the evening, largely.

“I remember a woman named Virginia Macoubrie saying, ‘I’ll take one stick of Juicy Fruit.’ I said, ’We don’t break up packs of gum’ – I mean, I’ve got my principles. I still, to this day, remember Mrs Macoubrie saying she wanted one stick. No, they were sold only in five-stick packs. They were a nickel, and she wanted to spend a penny with me.”

Making a sale was tempting, but not tempting enough to change his mind. If he sold one stick to Virginia Macoubrie, he would have four sticks left to sell to somebody else, not worth the work or the risk. From each whole pack, he made two cents profit. He could hold those pennies, weighty and solid, in his palm.

Arjen L. Sportlife, originally uploaded by 10e.

, originally uploaded by PixelBoy.

 Today’s Punch, which is Nigeria’s most widely read newspaper, reported on Cadbury Nigeria Plc’s introduction of Stimorol chewing gum to its product line-up, the first chewing gum to locally produced in that country.

The company’s managing director, Wallace Garland, sees the local production of the gum as a significant step for his company, which faced a significant financial and management crisis two years ago:

“This is the start of a turning point. Cadbury, as we all know, has been through a couple of difficult years. What I can tell you is that in the background very quietly without making a lot of noise in the press we have been working hard putting our business together after the shock that we came to understand two years ago.“We are much stronger than we were, we have a much better knowledge of the business than we had two years ago and we are building our strength to come and jump back to where we thought we were two years ago and I can confidently tell you that we will be there. It might take us a while but I can tell you that we will be there”.

 Yesterday’s The Times in London reported on the production of a new series of radio sci-fi comedies based on the late Douglas Adams’ stories and produced by Dirk Maggs. The new series, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, promises to be of high quality, the article notes, and to make this point, they invoked Beatles chewing gum:

During the height of Beatlemania you could buy Beatles chewing gum. It cost twice as much as competing brands, but it was worth it. Not only did you get an exclusive colour picture of the Fabs, but the colours were brighter, the taste better and more varied. Or so we thought. As with their music, the impression was given that Beatles gum was a superior product. Care had been taken.

The producer Dirk Maggs is the radio comedy equivalent of Beatles gum.

Wrigleys—Real-America-04-35, originally uploaded by LotusMonger.

Spearmint, originally uploaded by kenny42952.