John deere company biography formation timeline

When the American economic bubble burst in the s, John Deere headed west, soon to be followed by his wife and five children. Deere was an established blacksmith back in Vermont, but he would have to start over in his new home of Illinois. He soon realized the farmers in his community were not seeing success in the fields based on their hard work alone.

Families settling the area were having trouble with the sticky prairie soil, an unexpected challenge compared to the sandy soil of their homeland. Convinced a different material and shape would solve the problem, Deere found a broken steel sawblade and began crafting history.

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He reshaped the blade, paying great attention to the exact curvatures of the tool. In the dirt, it was a first-of-its-kind success. For the community it served, nothing was ever the same. Deere used the momentum from this single innovation to build a business and keep refining the product itself. With the help of research, customer feedback, and time-tested hard work, John Deere the business was booming by , producing 2, plows a year.

Now, nearly two centuries later, the company that grew from a single broken sawblade is a driving force in the world, from boots on the ground solutions to beyond the horizon of technology.