Smart, very smart..........................

Dow Chemical has been a major employer in our part of the world for a long time.  For several decades one of their research facilities was located here, employing over four hundred really smart people.  While that particular facility no longer has a Dow presence, they still have a manufacturing plant here.  Never paid too much attention to the company's founding until reading this yesterday:

Herbert Dow founded Dow Chemical after he figured out a way to produce bromine cheaply. He was doing well in the U.S., but couldn't break into Europe because a giant German cartel fixed the price.

He eventually went to England, beat the cartel on price, which prompted the Germans to start dumping bromine into the U.S. at incredibly low prices. Dow simply stopped selling in the U.S., and started secretly buying all of that German bromine, and selling it in Europe at a fraction of the cartel's prices.

He massively expanded his business, broke the German monopoly, and created "the textbook response to predatory price cutting."  

You can read more about Herbert Dow (February 26, 1866 – October 15, 1930), and the company he founded in 1896, here.

Herbert Henry Dow    c. 1888

The source for the above "cut and paste", and eleven more really shrewd business decisions, can be found here.

thanks craig