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Title details for The Pampered Chef by Doris Christopher - Available

The Pampered Chef

The Story of One of America's Most Beloved Companies

by Doris Christopher
Kimberly Farr
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
The Pampered Chef is Doris Christopher’s extraordinary account of how she turned an innovative concept and $3,000 investment into a business with annual sales approaching the billion-dollar mark. It is packed with real-life lessons and inspiring insights for small-business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.
In 1980 Doris Christopher, a former home economist and teacher, was itching to get back into the workforce after an eight-year hiatus as a stay-at-home mom. Drawing on her personal and professional expertise, and determined to make cooking easier and more convenient for families, she started selling high-quality kitchen tools through cooking demonstrations to groups of women in their homes. Today, the company she started in her basement, The Pampered Chef, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and has grown into a corporation (now owned by Berkshire Hathaway) with tens of thousands of independent Kitchen Consultants who present more than a million Kitchen Shows a year, attended by more than 12 million people.
The Pampered Chef is the story of the vision, energy, hard work, and chutzpah that drove Christopher and her company to the height of success. She describes her early days as a “one-woman show,” chronicles the company’s gradual expansion, its challenges and growing popularity, and the process, offers invaluable advice and sound strategies on how to found and grow a business, including:
• Hard learned lessons for start-up entrepreneurs
• How to create a business concept and set your priorities
• Knowing when to expand and when to slow growth so that demand doesn’t overwhelm your operations or supplies
• How to counter the naysayers and deal with adversity
Today, as at the company’s founding, achieving a better balance between work and family remains central to The Pampered Chef’s mission. The Pampered Chef brings Christopher’s recipe for success to women, and men, everywhere.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 19, 2005

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415954690
      • File size: 232484 KB
      • Duration: 08:04:20

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Doris Christopher could be the poster child of entrepreneurs. As a young mother, she looked for a source of income that would provide maximum flexibility. In doing so, she applied what she knew of successful home-based sales businesses and her background as a home economist to develop her own business. The story of how the business developed will be interesting, and not only to those thinking of starting one of their own. Kimberly Farr's narration keeps the book moving at a nice pace. Her upbeat tone is consistent with the positive message and the go-getter attitude that helped Christopher to succeed in building a successful enterprise of which she is clearly proud. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      An impressive and cheerful foreword by Warren Buffett lays the groundwork for Pampered Chef founder Doris Christopher's account of how a mom-and-pop sales company, first housed in the family basement, grew into a giant commercial operation by selling superior kitchen utensils. Listening to the full background of accomplishments, as well as stories of the occasional wrong step, could be helpful to anyone thinking of starting his/her own business. Like Columbus, Christopher set out for one destination and ended up in another, finding herself the owner of a successful business with a good balance between work and family. A bonus interview with the author and daughter Julie, now part of the management team, is informative and interesting. L.C. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 23, 2005
      Christopher's multimillion-dollar kitchen tools company, the Pampered Chef, was recently acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway; her book documents how she turned a $3,000 initial investment into a thriving direct sales business that today employs tens of thousands. After a perfunctory foreword by Buffett, the book progresses more or less chronologically from Christopher's initial idea in 1980 (to sell high quality tools by way of TV infomercials), through her business development and hiring her first employees, to her quick expansion into a large international company. Along the way, Christopher shares the lessons learned from her business, including tips on starting up, handling organizational growing pains, customer service advice and wisdom on how to treat employees. Yet while Christopher's guidance is useful to aspiring entrepreneurs, her business advice is fairly basic, and written in a tone that is modest to a fault. Despite her tremendous business success, Christopher continuously downplays her own drive in favor of the assertion that her only desire was to put her kids through college and help her family. For those with other motivations, it will quickly become tiresome.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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