Henry Parsons Crowell was born in 1855 and his father was a successful shoe manufacturer.
Henry Parsons Crowell was a philanthropist and founded Quaker Oats. He was an extraordinary Christian businessman who funded many Christian initiatives, including the Moody Bible Institute, despite having to overcome a childhood deadly disease.
In 1881 Harry Crowell then 26-y old purchased a bankrupt mill in Ravenna, Ohio. Crowell became the outright leader when Schumacher, humbled by a devastating mill fire in 1886, joined the Quaker group.
Crowell wasn’t a Quaker, and neither were the two men he bought the mill from. But all three understood the power of reputation.
Oats were then sold in bulk by grocers, who kept them in barrels. Whereas Schumacher had succeeded by selling large volumes of commodity oats, Crowell believed in the future food would be sold by differentiating itself with intelligent marketing. Expanding the market for Quaker’s product beyond traditional oatmeal-eating Scots, Irish, and Germans would require an unprecedented appeal directly to the consumer, making the case for oats as a better way to eat breakfast. Crowell recognized that the group’s oats needed to be separated from the commodity crops that grocers scooped out of bulk barrels.
He quickly gained acceptance from the public in part because of his method of packaging the oats in a two-pound paper package with cooking directions.
Crowell succeeded in business through new techniques of marketing, advertising, and merchandizing. Because of his innovations, the Quaker Oats Company became an industry leader.
The “Quaker” name, chosen to convey the brand’s “frugality, thrift, neatness, orderliness and—above all—its integrity” was Crowell’s chief asset in the merging of the various mills.
Founder of Quaker Oats :Henry Parsons Crowell (1855 to 1944)
