Overnight Success

Very Early Beatles

How many times have we heard of something or someone on the national or world spotlight for the first time, and assume it was overnight success?

Here is the perfect example of the road to overnight success:

Before They Were Beatles: 1957-1959

• John Lennon was just 17 when he formed his first band, The Black Jacks. The band was made up entirely of classmates at Quarry Bank Grammar School in Liverpool, and almost immediately after they started, they changed their name to The Quarry Men. They played skiffle music, a mixture of folk, jazz, and blues which was popular in England at the time.
• In the summer of 1957, The Quarry Men were setting up for a performance in a church hall when another member of the band introduced Lennon to Paul McCartney, then a 15-year-old self-taught left-handed guitar player. He auditioned for the band when they finished their set, and was immediately invited to join, which he did in October, 1957.
• By February 1958 Lennon was moving increasingly away from skiffle and toward rock 'n' roll. This prompted the band's banjo player to leave, giving McCartney the opportunity to introduce Lennon to his friend and former classmate, George Harrison.
• The band, which then consisted of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, piano player Duff Lowe and drummer Colin Hanton recorded a demo consisting of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day" and a Lennon-McCartney original, "In Spite of All the Danger."
• The Quarry Men broke up early in 1959. Lennon and McCartney continued their songwriting, and Harrison joined a group called The Les Stewart Quartet. The Quarry Men briefly reunited when Harrison's group fell apart, and he recruited Lennon and McCartney to help him fulfill a contract with Liverpool's Casbah Coffee Club. When that gig ended, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison continued performing as Johnny and the Moondogs. ~ Wikimedia

 

Now for another example of overnight success:

Catalog Stores (mail Order):  Many of us remember becoming aware of catalog sales in the 1950’s and 60’s when some of our mothers would order our back to school clothes through Sears or Wards Catalogs.

• The heyday of the mail-order business occurred between the 1890s and the 1910s, when it was dominated by Montgomery Ward and Sears. During this period, these companies became two of the largest business enterprises in the United States. Wards, which opened several mail-order branches across the country during the first part of the twentieth century, was employing over seven thousand men and women in the Chicago area by 1910. By 1913, Wards was selling about $40 million worth of goods per year.
• Even more astounding than the rapid growth of Wards was the rise of Sears. The firm of Sears, Roebuck & Co., which settled in Chicago in 1895, was the creation of a Minnesotan named Richard W. Sears. After getting his start in the 1880s by selling watches through the mail, Sears (whose partner Alvah C. Roebuck started as a watch repairman) established a general mail-order company along the lines of Wards. Only a few years after its birth, Sears overtook Wards as the leading mail-order company.
• Like Wards, Sears issued giant catalogs and succeeded in attracting orders for a variety of goods from hundreds of thousands of rural consumers. By 1905, Sears had about nine thousand employees, and its annual sales approached $50 million. Much of Sears's success was overseen by Julius Rosenwald, who became a partner in the company in 1895 and became its president after Richard Sears retired in 1909. By 1914, when Sears had branches in Dallas and Seattle in addition to its central operation in Chicago, the company's annual mail-order sales had surpassed $100 million. ~ Wikimedia

 

Always remember that just because you become an overnight success it doesn’t mean that you will be around forever.  The arrival of Amazon.com was the end or decline of catalog sales as we knew it.

• Jeff Bezos incorporated the company (as Cadabra) in July 1994 and the site went online as Amazon.com in 1995. The company was renamed after the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world, which in turn was named after the Amazons, the legendary nation of female warriors in Greek mythology. ~ Wikimedia

As always the best is yet to come……