Iconic Companies and Brands There are some companies which just stir the imagination. Some are relatively new comers and others have been around for quite a while. One of these companies is Rolls Royce. Most people even though they could never afford their cars think of this as a great company. Their airplane engines are very highly regarded also. Many of us have the idea whatever they build is overbuilt to guarantee longevity. In 1906 they sold their first cars. The company was sold in 2003, but still maintains its high standards. Incredibly about 65 percent of Rolls Royce cars ever built are still on the road. The company has decided it is a good idea to develop an electric airplane engine and is hard at work trying to create one that will live up to its reputation and things are looking good. The engine started with 500 horse power and according to Rolls Royce the plane had a battery strong enough to power 250 homes. It is the densest battery pack ever created for a plane. It looks like Rolls Royce will be around for a long time. A new comer which has been able to attain iconic stature is SpaceX. Their rapid ascension to the top of the aerospace heap was phenomenal. When their first rocket landed in typical science fiction fashion, that is tail first, it amazed all who watched. Their current string of successes has dazzled the industry. Never mind the fact they seem to be able to do what other aerospace companies do for a much cheaper price. I guess this is what happens when you have the head of a company who is truly interested more in the result than even the profit. If SpaceX keeps advancing in space technology the way it is going, it will leave NASA and the other old time aerospace companies in the dust. IBM is not only one of the pioneers in computing, but it is still one of the most respected companies in the field. It is one of the leaders in Artificial Intelligence. They were a leader in speech recognition and demonstrated their prowess with Artificial Intelligence by perfecting its reaction to playing games against humans and being able to learn from its mistakes. This all began with a checkers player which came out in 1959 and could learn. In 1997 they came out with the famous chess program Deep Blue and in 2011 Watson Jeopardy Challenge. They seem to be a little quiet in the public arena, but they should not be confused with not doing anything. They are working as hard as ever on many different advanced projects. In retail there are two iconic companies. I bet you know who they are? Yes, one is Amazon and the other is Walmart. They couldn’t be more different and yet one has adopted some of the ideas of the other. Amazon started out as a kind of dreary online company, but after a year or two began to take off. They tapped into the idea people were lazy and would rather buy things online than go out to the store as long as they could exchange them if they needed to. Now they are the biggest online retailer. The other chain, Walmart is the biggest brick and mortar chain of retail stores and has adapted the idea of also selling online and has managed to remain a huge retailer. According to the comparison of sales between the two for 2019 Walmart US had sales of $331.67 billion and its ecommerce sales grew 40 percent. Amazon had sales of $232.89 billion in 2018. No figures were available for 2019, but they were expected to be much higher. It is predicted that by 2022 Amazon will surpass Walmart in sales. If we talk about soft drink companies, the king of iconic has to be Coke. Everything coke is valuable. Old signs, soda machines and any sort of advertising is worth its weight in gold if it has the Coca Cola name on it. The famous formula is said to be guarded better than a nuclear base. Sales of the soda are the best for a soft drink worldwide. There is no denying the refreshing taste of a cold Coke. Many companies have tried to outdo Coke and some sell quite well like Pepsi Cola, but the champ is still Coke and it looks like it will remain the favorite for years to come. Disney started as a cartoonist and then over the years the company branched out from it beloved cartoons. It started with animated movies, many of which became icons on their own. They established incredible theme parks and took over some of the media. Disney has become a powerhouse company and in 2019 had a net income of 11.05 dollars on gross revenue of $69.57 billion. The entire world loves Disney as demonstrated by their sales of souvenirs everywhere. If someone is talking iconic companies, they would be remiss not to mention McDonalds. They started out with a humble hamburger shack and blossomed out to 38,695 in 119 markets. It is hard to imagine an expansion like this for a hamburger chain, but due to incredible marketing and a menu which keeps up with the times McDonalds has been able to stay current and wanted by the public. As incredible as this sounds there is another fast food chain which has more locations and that is Subway with 42,600 locations, but they sell an entirely different product. General Electric has been around forever and was originally the Edison General Electric and was founded in 1892. Today they are listed in the Fortune 500 as the 14th most profitable company. Two of its former employees were awarded the Nobel Prize. The company is involved in such diverse things as home appliances, jet engines and wind turbines among a myriad of other products. They were even involved in computers in the 1960s. Their vast diversity will probably keep them around for at least another hundred years or more. Another iconic company which seems to have been with us is Nestle. I remember it when I was a kid, which seem forever. Their coffee products have been around since 1938 when Nescafe was introduced in Switzerland. A lot of people like it, but truthfully, I hated it. It used to only come in powder form and you put it into a cup and added boiling water. In 1965 they came out with a freeze dried version and in 1966 Nestle came out with freeze dried Taster’s Choice coffee.
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