Name: Take a tour of some of businesses' biggest archives
Uploaded: 2024-05-31
Duration: 11 min 26 s
Description: From 60-year old Coach bags to Delta’s first passenger plane, take a trip down memory lane at some of corporate America’s most well-known brands.

From 60-year old Coach bags to Delta’s first passenger plane, take a trip down memory lane at some of corporate America’s most well-known brands.

Take a tour of some of businesses' biggest archives

Magazine

In the archive, we have over 25,000 items. This includes all the original catalogs, all the handbags, all the ready to wear pieces, anything that has a coach stamp on it comes through the archives. Behind me is Delta's first passenger service. Airplane carried five people had wicker seats and was not pressurized. Think about how much laundry has changed over the past 200 years, you know, doing laundry in a tub with bars of soap to then using early powders and flakes and you know, the beginning appliances to then moving to liquids to then moving to pods, still similar chores, but better technologies. And we want to make sure that we capture that evolution in the archives. A lot of the larger companies, particularly those with long histories have both archives and museums and that is to inspire employees to make them feel like they belong to something bigger to themselves. And it's also a way to guide the C SUITE when they're having to do decision making. And that can include things like how was a crisis handled a decade ago. It serves also innovation. So whether you're a designer, a coach or somebody trying to find a new twist on shaving cream at PNG. And so it's a mix of both and that's why companies invest money and hire actually real historians with masters and doctorates in history. Delta has both a museum that's open to the public and is actually a very popular tourist attraction in Atlanta as well as archives. It has things like press releases, minutes from board meetings, presentations from strategy sessions, etcetera, etcetera that are important for the corporate history aspect of it. As the manager of the archives, I take care of Delta Airlines corporate archives that they have been collecting um since the 19 fifties. This is actually a piece of glassware. This is from Delta's first alcoholic beverage service. So this would have held champagne in the late fifties. Delta started, they called Royal Beverage Service and this is such a fun menu. Delta started as a crop dusting company actually in Macon, Georgia, which a lot of people don't realize in 1925 quickly moved to Monroe Louisiana and the name Delta was actually coined by Catherine Fitzgerald. She was known as Miss Fits. So she was the longtime assistant to the principal founder of Delta Ce Woolman. Delta started passenger service in 1929 then this kind of airplane. Um we actually have one, a similar one in the museum behind me is the travel air and it was Delta's first passenger service. Airplane carried five people had wicker seats and was not pressurized. I'm Kelly Moore, executive Director of the Delta Flight Museum here in Atlanta, Georgia. In my opinion, the most interesting piece is Spirit of Delta A 767 aircraft ship 102 that was purchased by employees, friends and members of the community and donated to Delta. She was dedicated on December 15th, 1982 and she flew for 30 years and we are in the first-class cabin which doesn't look anything like the first-class cabins of today. She has IFE that is on a screen mounted to the front of the cabin. We no longer use overhead projectors. One of my favorite things about uh, this airplane that you don't see anymore are the telephones and I can remember seeing people use them. You would slide your credit card and I can't remember what it was per minute, but it was some crazy amount per minute. So behind me, we have then and nail. We have the first class seats from the 19 sixties conveyor 880. You can see the bucket seats from the sixties and then behind me on this side, on my left is the life flat seats of today on the A 350. I prefer the life flat. This is my absolute favorite Delta uniform. It's dubbed the Huntsman 1969 to 70 summer uniform. You can see it comes with its own smock, its own belt, its own hat coach was founded in 1941. It started as a men's wallets and briefcase company originally from a baseball glove, leather, from a baseball glove that was repurposed. Of course, over the decades that has evolved its single against category are women's handbags. And it really hit the big time in the sixties when they hired a designer called Bonnie Cash and who absolutely revolutionized coach and brought it closer to the world of luxury and fashion and not just, you know, functional well made wallets. She was an absolutely trailblazing designer with the locks on her bags that continued to inspire design to this very day. This is the turn lock which was created in the 19 sixties by Bonnie Cash in. And the fun fact about this is that she was inspired by her 19 forties convertible and that the turn lock was what kept the top on of her car. So she redesigned it and placed it on a bag and that's why we have this today. My name is Ryan Borg and I am the manager of the coach archives in the archive. We have over 25,000 items. This includes all the original catalogs, all the handbags, all the ready to wear pieces, anything that has a coach stamp on it comes through the archive. The archive is primarily used by our design teams. They will come down here and look at all the bags for inspiration and that could be from proportions of the bag constructions of the bag and how they were constructed back in the sixties or seventies, but also for color and for the structure and the integrity of the leather. So in this case, here, we start with our 19 forties and 19 fifties collection. Uh when Miles Kahn first started coach um and that continues in this whole case with our 19 sixties, which is when Bonnie Cash and first started in 1962. Uh This is her first bag that she did for us. The shopping bag she did not like seeing women carrying around a brown paper bag down Fifth Avenue. So she designed this more lux shopping bag for people to carry their luxury items in one task for the archivist at coach to do is to source out bags that are rare to find bags that we don't have yet or currently looking for. And one bag in particular is the chubby clutch from 1964 where I recently found this through outside vendors who are willing to part with it. So this is our case of the 19 seventies bag collection. Bonnie Cashen designed up until 1973. At this time. In my opinion, she made one of the most iconic bags for coach, which is the devils. As you can see here. This is a bag that we still design and create today with little to zero modifications. You see how the handbags both reflect and push fashion as you get a sense from the sixties to now, it's really a lot of fun. Um, you know, you obviously have to be there with somebody, but I can match on my own. I could easily spend hours looking at all these products. Procter and Gamble has been around for decades and is the largest consumer products manufactured in the United States. They're behind all sorts of products, Tide and Charmin Gillette, etc, Procter and Gamble is a giant and has always had innovation in its blood. There's a lot more competition now for conser products. And so the pressure to innovate more quickly is great. The P and G Heritage Center collects preserves and shares all the great stories and objects and products and innovations from our past as a catalyst to inspire the employees as they work on the future. My name is Shane Meeker. I am the P and G company historian and corporate storyteller. The origin story of PNG really goes back to two people, an English candle maker named William Proctor and an Irish soap maker named James Gamble. And they end up coming over to Cincinnati, looking to start up their respective businesses and ended up actually becoming partners because they married sisters and it was their father in law's idea that they should join forces. And in 1837 they officially became Proctor and Gamble selling both soap and candles. Not only do we have the original partnership agreement, but we've got some very old handle cases including also some original bars of soap too from around that time period. So a day in the life in the Heritage Center is not only virtual and online requests coming from our employees but also employees just stopping in looking through the artifacts, going through the timelines asking about the stories. And we're pulling everything from photos to content to information that we then can send to them, so they can use that to research the projects that they're doing now. So we have a lot of great artifacts here. But one of the most fun is one of the mock ups of the original prototype for the Swiffer Wet Jet. And that story honestly goes back to consumer. As boss for us, we had started doing some in-home research around mopping. And while watching a consumer mop, she looked at the researchers and said, hey, I tell you if you really want to clean up something, please clean up the closet that I have to put all this mopping stuff in that then became the insight that would turn into creating this great all in one solution that we call Swiffer wetjet. And when you look at the prototype, it's really fun because it leverages areas of our expertise in different categories. Our hard surface cleaning expertise with Mr Clean while also leveraging our absorbency and non woven expertise in pampers, diapers and always pads. The wall of failures is one of our most popular exhibits in the archives and it's really centered around a growth mindset way of thinking because, you know, quite honestly, if you're not failing, you're probably not innovating. And so, you know, being around for 187 years, we try to save all of the projects that we can and all the learnings from them. And just because an idea fails, doesn't mean it's a bad idea. You know, there's so many things that could have influenced that from everything, from habit to technology, to business model, to consumer behavior, to whatever. And so for example, Tide Pods I pod is an incredible success for us that we launched in 2012. But believe it or not, the first actual unit dose detergent that we launched was called Tide Ready Packs in 1960 and that failed. So what you're looking at is 52 years of learning from failure and tempting new and different innovations to get there, just like in other spheres of life, history tends to repeat itself. And I think these archives and these museums really guide companies in harnessing their history so they can continue making products that are contemporary. I think what this shows though is that things move in cycles, what is old is new again if you do it intelligently and in a well guided way, which is what I think all these facilities help these companies to do.