9 Companies in Consumer Products and Services

Adidas is one of the most iconic sporting goods brands in the world. Its signature moniker, Adidas, is a household name. It’s often defined as an acronym for the phrase “all day I dream about sports.” While many Adidas customers might find this...

Chewy was founded by Ryan Cohen and Michael Day in 2011, when they were in their early twenties. The company is an online pet supply store that sells everything from toys to food to medicine for dogs, cats, fish, birds, small pets, reptiles,...

FedEx was born out of a college paper written by founder Frederick W. Smith at Yale in 1965. Smith wrote a paper about the need for a new shipping industry to optimize urgent shipping needs, especially for air freight shippers. His system...

While this company’s “swoosh” is now one of the most familiar symbols in the world, the Eugene, OR-based company—co-founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964—got its start as a distributor of Japanese running shoes;...

Lloyd and Mary Anderson were enthusiastic mountaineers in the 1930s in search of cheaper equipment. The process of purchasing ice picks and other mountain equipment from local shops was expensive, so Lloyd took to ordering directly from the...

Columbia Sportswear is based in the Pacific Northwest oasis that is Portland, Oregon. The company was started by the Boyle family in 1937. After fleeing Nazi Germany, the family settled in Portland and began the Columbia Hat Company as a means...

Outdoor apparel and lifestyle merchant Patagonia is one of those companies that eschews the relentless pursuit of shareholder value in order to give something back to the community, if not the planet. The company donates one percent of all sales...