Starbucks Swot

Starbucks' Is the Best Yet to Come

Luis M. Cruz

BUS 402 Principles of Finance

Stephen Griffith

January 21, 2013

This paper will be a SWOT analysis of the Starbucks Corporation, I will cover the company's Strengths, its weaknesses, some opportunities and the threats the company had to contend with. I will start with a little bit of the companies background.

Starbucks got its start in 1971 when three academics, English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bowker, all coffee aficionados opened Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice in touristy Pikes Place Market in Seattle. The three partners who shared a love for fine coffees and exotic teas, each invested $1350 of their own money and borrowed $5000 from a bank and believed they could build a large clientele in Seattle that would appreciate the best in coffees and teas, much like what already happened in the San Francisco bay area,(Marcus, A.A. (2011)). The store became an immediate success after receiving a favorable article in the Seattle Times and by 1980 the company had four Starbucks stores in the Seattle area.

In 1981 Howard Schultz came to Seattle hoping to see this company called Starbucks that was buying so much of his company’s product, after seeing the operation and a year of numerous meetings with the three business partners Howard Schultz became the head of marketing for the four retail stores. While some people would dream of starting a business that succeeds and profits others dream bigger, Schultz was interested in the kind of business that would be profitable and successful for years and generations to come. In this paper I will go over the company’ strengths and weakness, the opportunities the company has, and the threats that could change the outcome for this company,(Marcus, A.A. (2011)).

Let me start with the strengths; for starters Starbucks roasted their own coffee beans, which entailed trial and error testing of different combinations...