7-Eleven - Switching Industries

[Music] 7:11 now there's a name most of us know the seven is just the number but the eleven is spelled out makes for a cool-looking logo on July 11th or 711 each year they've been having this big promotion where they give away free Slurpees July 11th has become known as 7-eleven day it's nice when the name of your business corresponds with the date on the calendar just think about that first off the name has to consist of two numbers the first number has to be between 1 and 12 and the second number has to be between 1 and 31 or 30 or 28 depending on the first number so since the very existence of 7-eleven day is practically a miracle it'd be cool for me to release a video about them on 7-eleven I've certainly been getting enough requests saying that I should do it but the issue is I only release videos on Wednesdays now we need a second mini miracle to make 7-eleven fall on a Wednesday well it happened this year and I completely ignored it jet fan 92 even told me about it a week in advance so I can't claim I didn't know I just had my mind set on hallmark and I released a video about them instead then I realized that July 11th won't fall on a Wednesday until 2029 and I'm not waiting that long jet fan 92 was understandably disappointed in me for letting it pass but then informed me that 11 7 is also on a Wednesday now I know it's not as good but it's the best remaining option within the decade so today is 11 7 and I'm talking about 7-eleven I say most of us know the name because there's so many of them I found this location locator on their website and have been messing with it for far longer than I care to admit just typing in a somewhat large city and watching all the little pins appear just look at the Los Angeles area and then you move it a little and get a bunch of new pins to show up here's a map provided by 7-eleven of their Us locations doesn't seem to be much of a pattern except the east and the west coasts have a ton of them and States without any seem to be more toward the middle in total there us locations add up to over 9000 but that's only the beginning globally they're reaching 70,000 to put that into perspective that's almost twice as many as McDonald's there's over 20,000 in Japan alone 9,500 in South Korea almost 11,000 in Thailand that's three countries that have more 7-eleven s than the United States I'd say they've done a terrific job expanding globally I'd say they've been pretty successful overall now the way you envision 7-eleven is highly dependent on which of these countries you're from the stores in Japan are different from those in Canada and those are different from China these 5300 locations in Taiwan are far different than anywhere else the citizens pay bills and traffic tickets there and some even offer health screenings but the focus here is on the United States and generally speaking I came up with a few things that we associate with 7-eleven I think most people even outside of the US would agree with the list they have snacks and food and they're always open generally 24 hours they're seemingly everywhere many of gas stations attached and the Slurpees of course when I say 7-eleven that's what comes to your mind right well you might be surprised to hear that when this company started it didn't have any of these so let's take a look at how they transformed into what they are today in 1927 which is over 90 years ago there was a company in Dallas called the Southland ice company as the name suggests they sold ice big blocks of ice sea before everyone had electric refrigerators they had ice boxes it's essentially a large box with blocks of ice in it to keep the surrounding food cold naturally these blocks would melt away and have to be replaced if you lived in the Dallas area in 1927 you'd be able to do this at the Southland ice company there was a man named Jefferson Greene that ran the day-to-day operations at one of these locations his thought was that alongside the ice they could start selling a few essentials just milk and eggs and mostly things that would be brought home and placed inside your icebox alongside the ice it was convenient no need to go to the crowded grocery store and wait behind people buying who knows what you just needed something basic Jefferson presented that idea to one of the owners and he was open to it once they started offering all of this stuff it was thought to be the very first convenience store and a good thing it was I'd hate to think of where they'd be today if they had refused to expand from there ice sales the switch into the store that we know today wasn't as fast as you may be picturing their focus was still on ice for many more years there was a huge spike in demand for during World War two and after it with all the soldiers returning home to a point where they started acquiring other ice companies as a method of expansion to take advantage of this strong demand but soon after they started that first convenience store in 1927 they did change their name not to 7-eleven they changed it to totem stores now hold on it does make sense one of the managers had this random idea of sticking a totem pole in front of one of their busy locations thinking maybe it'll be noticed and attract a few customers because of this people started referring to it as the totem store not only because of the totem pole it was sort of a play on words people tote away their giant ice blocks the word tote means to carry like you know like a tote bag totem stored you get it yeah I know it doesn't sound all that clever right now but the name caught on so much so that the company actually made it their official name and it stayed that way for almost 20 years in 1946 is when they changed it to 7-eleven it was their store hours open from 7:00 in the morning till 11:00 at night at the time those were thought to be insanely long operating hours making it their name was a means to advertise that they're open for those uncommon hours but it also helps show their commitment to the customers as if to say we're here even when others aren't kind of a thing along with the name change they started putting a greater emphasis on the convenience store part of their business is evidenced by the fact that they doubled the floor space in their stores and today their name doesn't even make much sense anymore they're not open from 7:00 to 11:00 they're generally known to be open for 24 hours that stems back to 1962 in an Austin location the story goes that a University of Texas football game had just ended late one night and everyone went to a 7/11 afterward and the location chose to stay open through the night it gave that particular location the motivation to experiment with the idea of staying open for 24 hours and soon others saw the benefits and tried it out as well in the late 1970s it became fairly standard 7-eleven is thought to be the very first 24 hours convenience store so at this point they're now called 7-eleven they've placed an ever-increasing emphasis on their convenience stores but they're still in Texas haven't expanded too far from Dallas yet that started in the later 50s when they opened some stores around Pennsylvania in that area in the east over the next couple of years they continued expanding mainly by acquiring competing convenience store changed throughout the United States as well as franchising throughout the 1970s they started doing all of this internationally by the end of that decade they had a presence in Canada Mexico the United Kingdom as well as Japan as I mentioned their largest presence today is in Japan and in 1990 it was actually sold to a Japanese company after a bankruptcy I can go into more detail about that one in the future now as far as their involvement in gasoline things always tend to get involved when you're talking about gasoline but I'll try to keep it simple they actually started experimenting with it back when they were still called totem but their involvement became much heavier in the 1970s somewhat related they bought a company called chief Otto parts a chain of auto parts stores that soon grew to 465 locations in the early 80s they bought Citgo Petroleum Corporation for seven hundred and eighty million dollars so it can supply them with gasoline it didn't quite go as well as they planned they turned around and sold half of it a few years later but signed a 20-year deal where they agreed to purchase a specified amount from that deal ended in 2006 I think that about covers it that's their journey from selling ice at a few locations in Dallas Texas to becoming the massive convenience store that we all know today that's how they entered the market of food and snacks they got their name by operating long hours and eventually expanded it to 24 hours that's a brief overview of their expansion and involvement in the gas and automotive industry as well as the Slurpees we haven't talked about the Slurpees real quick it was invented in the late 50s sort of by accident I won't go into the whole story but it found limited popularity until 1965 when 7-eleven licensed the Machine and started calling it a Slurpee there that should cover it but can we take a minute to acknowledge how revolutionary this company has been throughout the years as I already stated they're thought to be the first convenience store the first 24-hour convenience store and according to their website the first to offer ATM services and the first to sell coffee to go that's an impressive list of firsts considering that there are all things that we've come to expect in our everyday lives what started as a very common local business selling ice has transformed into 7-eleven let me know in the comments were you surprised to learn about this transformation or better yet were you impressed by it I know this video was a little different from what I normally make there weren't any figures or graphs and I covered more ground but not as in-depth it felt and that's because I view 7-eleven as something that's unlike anything else and I thought it'd be interesting to see how it got that way later on I do want to make a more conventional video about that 1990 bankruptcy which was actually their second bankruptcy and any other thoughts you have about convenience stores ice boxes Slurpees or those unique 7-elevens in Taiwan and leave them in the comments I'd like to hear what you have to say happy 11:7 and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Company Man

Views: 1,466,688

Keywords: 7-Eleven, Seven Eleven, 7-11, Business Growth, Citgo, Stores, Retail

Id: DA-ZdPFqUhk

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 07 2018