Matt MacNabb: A Secret History of Brands: The Dark and Twisted Beginnings of the Brand Names We Know and Love

Iwould first and foremost like to thank my lovely wife Holly for her patience and support, along with our four children Sebastian, Anastasia, Alexandre and Callidora. You’re the light of my life.

Thank you to Claire Hopkins and everyone at Pen and Sword Books for believing in me and this project. Also a special thanks to Karyn Burnham for her fantastic editorial assistance.

Special thanks also to author MaryJo Ignoffo and finally Phillipp Mimkes of the CBG Network.

Abrand is often developed around a name, logo, distinct packaging and/or a dedicated mascot. Brand name products are such a part of our daily life and identity that it is difficult to imagine a world where they don’t exist. There was a time, not all that long ago, when we weren’t defined by the type of car we drove or the brand of clothing or shoes on our bodies. Today, our culture thrives on brands in every facet of our life. These brands have all emerged into the post-Industrial Revolution marketplace and have become an enduring part of our daily lives over the past century. You might think of Bayer when you have a headache, Coca-Cola when you want a drink and perhaps Ford when you’re car shopping. These brands are taken for granted today, but they all started somewhere and for many of the brands you know and love, their roots are firmly planted in dark, twisted, and sometimes violent, origins. These aren’t the stories that you’ll read on the carefully crafted and orchestrated modern corporate histories of companies like Chanel or Adidas. These are the true stories of the brands you know and the often very flawed individuals who created them.

The landscape of both life and industry were very different prior to the events of the Industrial Revolution. The inception of brand names and corporations is relatively new; before the development of mass manufacturing and industrialisation one had to rely on self-production or regionally produced products. Society, in both America and Europe, was comprised primarily of rural and agrarian culture. There were some cities, like London, that had grown and expanded as a capital city, but most of the towns and villages were self-sustaining. If you lived in a village you would have your own on-site bakers, butchers and blacksmiths, and you would often have to hunt for, or grow, most of your own food. If you lived in a rural setting and wanted clothing, food or other goods, there were no stores to visit. If you were lucky you had in-demand goods to barter and trade for other goods or services, but this process was spotty and largely unorganised. The more common occurrence was malnourishment and even starvation when things got difficult. There were no food banks or charities. If there was a bad crop or other pressingly negative issues in your region, any neighbours you had were likely suffering to a similar degree.

This way of living carried over to the Americas in the seventeenth century, when the thirteen colonies that would eventually become the United States were settled. The colonies would self-govern, even though there was still the British monarchy to answer to back at home across the ocean. The local landowners would vote for a provincial government and governor to oversee the goings-on there. When you came to the ‘new world’ it was, literally, starting over. There were no buildings and no cities or roads. There was only wilderness and the Native Americans who already resided there.

This way of life would soon change, as the Industrial Revolution began to take shape in England. There were certain factors that were necessary for one central area to be the focal point of the coming industrialisation; the demands of the eighteenth and nineteenth century included vital, and bountiful, naturally occurring deposits of commodities like coal and iron ore. Other materials were needed, but if a country had a vast colonisation system in place around the world, then various raw materials could be easily mined and imported. The best option in the world at the time and that was Britain. It was the natural birthplace of big industry. In eighteenth-century Britain, the textile and iron industries were transformed in a major way.

Cottage industry used to be the cornerstone of the textile market. In order to get the best version of ‘mass’ production in those days the work would be distributed to workers to complete in their homes on their own time. This disorganised and unsupervised way of doing things left the industry plagued with overdue deadlines and inconsistent returns. Still, it was the best and most efficient way of doing things until the age of mechanisation was born. It was in 1764 that weaver and inventor James Hargreaves developed one of the first methods for spinning spools of yarn, called the ‘spinning jenny’. This invention was vital in response to the ‘flying shuttle’, which was introduced by John Kay in 1733. The flying shuttle would allow cloth to be woven on a wider scale. The device could even be attached to a machine and mechanised, a development that was met with much resistance from weavers at the time. The flying shuttle would double the productivity, so the demand for yarn grew. The spinning jenny (‘jenny’ was slang for engine) would allow the worker to manipulate several spools at once, for a far greater output. There were over 20,000 spinning jenny machines in use around England by the time of Kay’s death in 1778. Around the same time, the inventor Samuel Crompton was developing a ‘mule-jenny’, which was later dubbed the ‘spinning mule’. This device built upon the previous inventions and would spin cotton and other fibres into a strong, thin yarn. There were over fifty million mule spindles in use in Lancashire alone! These all led to the invention by Edmund Cartwright of the ‘power loom’ in the 1780s.

It was Englishman Abraham Darby that would revolutionise the iron industry. The industry had to rely solely on charcoal to run the furnaces necessary to separate the iron from iron ore. The issue with this is that the volume of product that can be produced is completely dependent on the rate of tree growth, as wood is the essential component of charcoal. Rapid deforestation was beginning to catch-up with the industry and it was in need of a new and more sustainable fuel source. Darby developed a system that utilised coke as the primary component. Coke is a fuel source that is made from coal that undergoes a process of synthesis, rather than occurring naturally. In 1709, Darby’s coke-fired blast furnace was introduced as a method for casting iron. A key component of the Industrial Revolution was the mass availability and cheaper pricing of iron, both of which were possible thanks largely to Darby’s innovation.

The modernisation of the textile and iron industries were major factors in the Industrial Revolution, but it was the inception of the steam engine that would really tip the scales. Englishman Thomas Newcomen was an ironmonger by trade. He introduced the atmospheric engine, the world’s first commercial steam engine, in 1712. The engine was first developed to pump the water out of mines, as the flooding of coal and tin mines was a major safety and productivity concern. The steam engine would eventually be adapted to power major machinery, trains and ships. James Watt improved upon the steam engine design with a ten-horsepower continuous rotary engine in 1781.

It was the railways that would push the world forward into mass industrialisation. The first glimpses of a railway network came with the advent of the steam locomotive in 1803. British inventor and mechanical engineer Richard Trevithick was the brilliant mind behind the construction and inception of the world’s first railway steam locomotive. The young engineer had a knack for identifying and solving problems that other more educated engineers had difficulty with. Trevithick was a natural in his field and his innovations would change the way we transport both people and goods. Prior to the steam locomotive, the transportation of items utilising horse and carriage, was quite unreliable, vulnerable and slow. Trevithick’s engine was half the cost of Watt’s model, so it quickly dominated the market, rendering the out-dated Watt type obsolete.