Founded in 1876 by Prussian immigrant Adolph Coors, the Coors Brewing Company prospered in its early years by focusing its full attention on making consistently great beer. A century later, Coors' business practices made it look as if were hopelessly stuck in the nineteenth century. Led then by the two staunchly conservative grandsons of Adolph (Bill and Joe), Coors did it's best to pretty much piss off everyone who had ever had anything to do with the company. The brothers were determined, at all costs, to run Coors the way they saw fit. This meant getting rid of the unions (through strong-armed
and often illegal tactics); shunning the concept of marketing (believing that Coors, because of it's strict adherence to quality, sold itself); completely ignoring modern business practices (no accountants, no legal department, no debt); alienating their network of distributors and retailers with idiosyncratic rules for handling Coors products; aggravating customers with nearly impossible-to-open beer cans; and, in the case of Joe Coors, spreading extremely conservative ideological venom wherever he went.
Joe Coors used profits from the brewery to establish the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing's answer to the Brookings Institution), and through this jackboot organization, pretty much got Ronald Regan elected President in 1980. Joe's politics, along with Coors treatment of its employees, minorities, women, gays, and the unions, led to one of the most successful, and still on going, consumer product boycotts in American history.
Citizen Coors tells the whole story from the beginning. It reads like a novel. That I have any sympathy for the Coors family, at all, is a testament to the careful writing of the author, Dan Baum. Coors, at times, is presented to the reader as the misunderstood protagonist; with the media, unions, and leftist groups out to destroy Coors for no good reason. And hindsight about the reality of modern marketing almost makes your heart pull for Coors as you read about every marketing misstep they took throughout the 1960's and 70's. By the early 80's, it would have been hard to find a company the size of Coors that was more poorly managed. Coors would more than likely have capitulated had Joe Coors' son, Peter, not learned to stand up to his father and to accept the reality in which Coors found itself in. Peter, though, was plagued with self-doubt about his own abilities as a leader, but to his credit, was smart enough to look outside the Coors cocoon for answers. In the end, the family had to acquiesce it's near-totalitarian control of the company to the slick marketers it had always loathed.
This is a remarkable book about family, the evolution of American business, and the failures of the labor movement coupled with the rise of conservatism in this country. Dan Baum has done his research. I question how he would be privy to a century's worth of private conversations between Coors' family members (as they did not cooperate very much with the author). But, I'm willing to suspend disbelief in favor of the overall story. If you're into history, politics, and enjoy a good beer now and again, you'll love Citizen Coors.