While recessions are usually associated with job losses and business closures, sometimes these tough conditions can create a gap in the market for a new product or business venture. From the household goods brand founded during a 19th-century recession to the global tech companies started up in the 2008 financial meltdown, click or scroll through to see the huge global firms that were started in crises.

In the late 1800s the US experienced a financial crash known as the Panic of 1837, which kickstarted a depression that lasted more than a decade. That same year, William Procter and James Gamble started a soap company named Procter & Gamble. Deciding to base their business in Cincinnati, Ohio, the pair benefitted from the city’s status as a meatpacking centre and used by-products from the meatpacking industry to produce their soaps.

The company survived the economic challenges, going on to supply soaps to the Union Army during the Civil War that ensued in the 1860s. The business has weathered multiple economic crises over its 184 years of business and today is the largest consumer goods company on the planet, owning brands including Fairy, Tide, Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Olay, and many more. 

Luxury jewellery brand Tiffany & Co. was also born during the Panic of 1837, when a 25-year-old Charles Lewis Tiffany opened a small stationery and goods store in New York City with his friend John B Young. The first day’s sales came to $4.98, which is equal to $135.12 (£99.21) in 2021, and the store quickly became a popular boutique for fashionable ladies on the hunt for elegant jewellery. Tiffany & Co. was recognised for its silver craftmanship in 1867 and in 1878 the company established itself in the world of diamonds with the acquisition of a 287.42-carat yellow diamond from the Kimberley mines in South Africa. 

The Tiffany & Co. flagship store opened on the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York in 1940 and the company made its cinematic debut in 1961 with the release of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, starring the late Audrey Hepburn. The opulent retailer continues to be a global symbol of luxury more than 180 years after its founding and reported revenues of $53.67 billion (£39.41bn) in 2019. In September 2020 it was bought by French luxury giant LMVH for $16.2 billion (£11.8bn).

In 1907 in the US, there was a financial panic which led to a recession lasting between 1908 and 1910. Automaker General Motors (GM) was founded in 1908 by William Durant and Charles Stewart Mott in Flint, Michigan. GM’s launch was well-timed in many ways. After surviving the Panic, GM was able to buy many other companies that had struggled – including Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Catercar, Elmore, Ewing and Oakland (later Pontiac) – as the economy bounced back.

By 1929, GM was the largest passenger carmaker in the US. The company continued to grow throughout the following decades, but its luck began to run out from the 1990s, facing tough competition from Japanese car companies including Toyota and Honda. Financial troubles were worsened by the 2008 recession, which saw it bailed out by the US government. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2009 but reorganised and went back to being the largest automaker in the world in 2011, albeit only briefly.

In 1929, the world suffered an economic downturn unlike anything seen before. Triggered by the US stock market crash, the decade that followed saw rampant unemployment, deflation in almost every country and millions of people living in hardship. In 1934, Hendrik Meijer, a barber in Greenville, Michigan, saw opportunity among the adversity and bought $338.76-worth of merchandise on credit, the equivalent of $6,543 (£4.8k) in today’s money, to sell on to customers at his barber shop. The budding business was then officially opened as Meijer’s Grocery.

Seven years later, the second Meijer Grocery store opened in Cedar Springs, Michigan and in 1962 the company expanded its sights to general merchandise, opening its first Thrifty Acres store, with the idea of stocking everything customers needed under one roof. By 1988 there were more than 50 Meijer stores and the company was rapidly expanding across the US. Fast-forward to 2021 and there are now more than 250 stores nationwide. After making $17.71 billion (£13bn) in sales in 2019, Meijer was named as the 28th biggest retailer in America in 2020.

Walt Disney didn’t have the best track record when it came to business, having already seen his first animation and film studio, Laugh-O-Grams, fall into bankruptcy in 1923. The first sketch of Mickey Mouse appeared five years later and Disney incorporated Walt Disney Productions in 1929, which luckily didn’t fall victim to the same fate as his first venture, despite its launch coinciding with the onset of the Wall Street Crash and the ensuing Great Depression. In fact, Walt pushed ahead and in 1937 produced his first feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for a whopping $1,499,000. It was a risk that paid off, and the film was a box office hit as Disney's adventures kept Americans' spirits up during this tough economic period.

Now one of the best-known media companies in the world, today The Walt Disney Company is valued at a staggering $313.88 billion (£230bn). Before his death in 1966, Walt Disney accumulated a total of 26 Oscars for his work and his legacy comprises not just an impressive film catalogue, but also other studios that have since been acquired by the brand, including Marvel and Pixar, as well as 12 theme parks and the hugely-successful streaming service Disney+.

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The UK also bore the brunt of the Great Depression following the Wall Street Crash as world trade collapsed and the value of British exports plummeted. Against the odds, James Kemsey Wilkinson and his fiancé Mary Cooper opened household goods retailer Wilkinson Cash Store in Leicester, England in 1930, selling homewares, textiles, cleaning products and DIY essentials. Just two years later the couple opened a second store, and a total of nine branches were up and running by the start of World War II in 1939.

Wilkinson Cash Store became Wilkinson Hardware Stores in 1941, before morphing into the modern-day UK retail staple Wilko in 2015. Half of the Wilkinson family decided to sell their share in the business in 2015, making Lisa Wilkinson, the founder’s granddaughter, the sole owner of the company for the price of £63 million ($85.8m). Wilko is one of the biggest private companies in Britain, with more than 400 stores and having generated £1.51 billion ($2.1bn) in turnover in 2019. However, this was a 5.6% decline on 2018, and the company was facing difficulties even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, reporting a 65% drop in pre-tax profits for the year to 1 February 2020. 

The US had a recession which lasted 13 months between 1937 and 1938. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began working on the company that would become Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 1938, officially founding the company a year later. HP started out producing electronic test and measurement equipment, including the radio oscillator used by Walt Disney to test audio equipment for the film Fantasia. This early contract with Disney was the firm’s first big break.

HP moved into computers in 1966, releasing the HP 2116A computer to control its equipment. By the 1980s, the company had produced a range of personal computers and calculators. 

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Although the post-war period is generally associated with economic growth and prosperity across much of the world, there was a recession between 1953 and 1954 in the US which saw unemployment rise to 6% and GDP fall by 2.2%. Fast food giant Burger King was founded in 1953 by Keith Kramer and Matthew Burns, with the first restaurant opening in Jacksonville, Florida. It was originally called Insta-Burger King, taking its name from the “Insta Broiler” ovens used to cook the burgers.

The name was changed to Burger King in 1959 when the franchise was taken over by new owners, who restructured and reorganised the company. Today, Burger King is one of the biggest fast food companies on the planet with more than 18,000 restaurants in 100 countries. The company has opened many branches across the world on a takeout basis as restrictions on dining in continue in many countries as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hotel chain Hyatt was founded two months into the eight month-long 1957-1958 recession, which saw the US GDP decline by 3.3% and unemployment rise to 6.2%. It all started when entrepreneur Jay Pritzker bought a motel in Los Angeles called Hyatt House for $2.2 million (£786k), equivalent to $20 million (£16.3m) in today’s money. It wasn’t exactly the safest business decision, given the reduction in economic activity during the recession which had impacted the travel and tourism business.

Yet the risk clearly paid off, as Hyatt and his family were able to successfully grow the business over the following decade, setting up its international arm Hyatt International in 1968. Nowadays the company has more than 900 hotels and resorts and is valued at $6.81 billion (£4.9bn). 

Delivery company FedEx was founded in 1971, although it didn’t begin formal business operations until 1973, when its founder moved operations to Memphis, Tennessee. That meant it coincided with the 1973-1975 recession, which caused global economic decline, with unemployment in the US peaking at 9% in May 1975, two months after the recession had ended. Despite these challenging circumstances, FedEx thrived almost immediately, delivering 186 packages to 25 US cities on its first night of operation.

The business went from strength to strength, purchasing seven Boeing 727 aircrafts in 1977 and reaching $1 billion (£664m) in revenues by 1983. The current pandemic has brought a shift for the business, with reduced demand for its high-margin business deliveries and increased demand for its low-margin residential deliveries. The company took out a $1.5 billion (£1.2bn) loan in April last year to mitigate these impacts.

Microsoft was set up by Bill Gates (pictured) and Paul Allen on 4 April 1975 – technically one month after the 1970s recession ended, although the US economy was still slowly recovering from its effects. The company, originally named Micro-Soft, started out producing software for an early personal computer and by 1978 it had sales of more than $1 million (£512k), or $3.9 million (£3.2m) in today’s money.

Gates and Allen brought their first personal computer to the market in 1981 and by the late 1980s Microsoft had become the biggest personal computing company in the world by sales. It’s helped Bill Gates to become the current third richest person in the world with a net worth of $131 billion (£95.7bn) according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates had held onto second place for quite some time before Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk’s wealth exceeded the Microsoft magnate’s fortune in November.

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At the beginning of the 1980s there was a global recession triggered by an energy price crisis in 1979, with the recession lasting between July 1981 and November 1982 in the US. Despite the economically challenging circumstances, Apple employee Trip Hawkins (pictured left) decided it was time to leave his stable job and start up a software firm, founding Electronic Arts (EA) in May 1982.

Fortunately for Hawkins, he was entering the market at a boom time for personal computing. It shipped its first games in the spring of 1983, which included Hard Hat Mack, Pinball Construction Set, Archon, M.U.L.E., Worms?, and Murder on the Zinderneuf. The company quickly rose to prominence and it looks set to weather the storms of the coronavirus pandemic too, with many more people playing video games during periods of lockdown. The company’s share price has grown by 36% between 3 February 2020 and end of January 2021.

Another company founded during the early 1980s recession was broadcaster CNN. On 1 June 1980, CNN went live, introducing audiences to the concept of round-the-clock news for the first time. Founded by media mogul Ted Turner, in 1991 it became the only broadcaster to communicate from inside Iraq during the Persian Gulf War – an inside scoop that helped it to get ahead of the traditional “Big Three” American broadcasters.

Since then, CNN has stood out for its 24-hour rolling coverage of live news events, significantly being the first cable news channel to break the news of the 9/11 attacks. In 1996, CNN was absorbed by entertainment conglomerate Time Warner Inc. for $7.3 billion (£4.8bn).

In 2007 the world was in the middle of the worst recession since the 1930s. At this time roommates Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky stated renting out the floor space in their San Francisco apartment to earn some extra cash, letting visitors stay on air beds – hence the name Airbnb. Joining forces with their former roommate Nathan Blecharczyk, they officially launched the company in August 2008. 

The company actually benefitted from the difficult economic circumstances, with Airbnb providing low-cost, short-term accommodation at a time when many people were unable to afford hotels. After gaining a $600,000 (£441k) seed investment from Sequoia Capital, the firm’s growth was explosive. However, Airbnb was hit hard by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with the Financial Times reporting in April that Airbnb had lowered its internal valuation by 16% to $26 billion (£21bn). But it turned things around, and as overnight stays started to bounce back in the summer months the company went on to secure a valuation of almost $100 billion (£73.4bn) when it went public in December.

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Founded in November 2008 in the middle of the Great Recession, Groupon specialises in allowing companies to provide deals and incentives to customers. Entering the market at a time when people were more budget-conscious than ever, Groupon helped businesses to continue to sell their products while easing people back into spending on non-essentials.

By the end of 2009, Groupon had spread to 28 US cities and it showed no sign of slowing down. When it hit its IPO in June 2011, Groupon was worth $16 billion (£13bn) – although the company may have peaked at that time. Nowadays, the business is worth $1 billion (£734m) and its stock price has fluctuated throughout 2020. The company says its turnaround strategy will involve shifting away from deals and towards local experiences.

Uber was founded towards the end of the Great Recession in March 2009 by friends Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. Initially named UberCab, the idea for the now-ubiquitous taxi app was dreamed up by a pair after they struggled to hail a taxi in Paris in 2008. The company successfully received funding in a $1.25 million (£1m) round led by First Round Capital in October 2010 after testing out its service and launching in San Francisco earlier that year.  

Despite accelerating through the tough economic times of its launch, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride for Uber since. It reported a global loss of $3.8 billion (£3.1bn) in 2016 after making losses from the Chinese arm of the business, which it subsequently sold off for $7 billion (£5.7bn). The company has also faced opposition from traditional cab drivers around the world, who argue that the company is taking their business and avoiding licensing fees to cut costs. The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns across the globe have hit the company hard, and last year Uber reported a 75% drop in ride bookings across April, May and June compared to 2019, and a marginally better 53% drop in rides across July, August and September compared to the same quarter in 2019. The company has also been forced to lay off 3,700 employees, the equivalent of 14% of its permanent workforce.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey started payment processing system Square in 2009, along with Jim McKelvey. At the time, much of the world was still in the grip of a historic recession. The idea came when McKelvey was unable to complete a sale as he didn’t accept credit cards, so the pair decided to develop a mobile-based credit card reader – named the Square Reader – which could take payments via a phone’s audio jack.

The business clearly weathered the storms however, and today Square is used by more than 30 million people worldwide and is worth $97.13 billion (£70.9bn). The company recorded losses in the first quarter of 2020 as fewer payments were taking place at bricks-and-mortar stores, but the rise in online purchases led its value to soar by 211% by November 2020 and its stock price hit a record high.

Another now-ubiquitous tech company founded during the Great Recession is WhatsApp. The messaging app was started by former Yahoo employees Jan Koum (pictured) and Brian Acton. By allowing users to get in touch even if they didn’t have the same mobile network, it quickly gained global popularity and reached a billion users in 2016 – just seven years after it launched.

The company was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for an enormous $19 billion (£15.5bn). In February 2020, the company announced it had reached two billion users. However, the platform has seen a sudden drop in downloads at the start of 2021, following an announcement that users must agree to its new privacy policy before 8 February or lose access to the app. There has been a mass exodus to rival apps such as Signal and Telegram as users reject WhatsApp’s new data-sharing agreement with parent company Facebook.

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