Leonard Marsh and Hyman Golden were window washers and their friend Arnold Greenberg ran a small health food store.
In Arnold's health food store, there was strong customer demand for his fresh fruit juices. What he proposed to his buddies was for the three of them to each invest $6,000 to create and market fresh fruit juices to other health food stores.
In 1972, with little formal education or business training, these three Brooklyn, New York buddies co-founded what at first was a struggling little company.
They tried Arnold's idea but sales were bad and everyone kept his day job.
Yet they didn't quit and in the late 1970's wiser from the experience, they tried again.
Leonard Marsh
They introduced a soft drink made with natural juice and gave it an easy to remember name by combining "snappy" with "apple" and calling it "Snapple." Today that name is recognized around the world.
Did Snapple become an instant success? No, because they didn't know how to mass produce it, and their carbonated bottled apple juice fermented and began blowing off its bottle caps.
It was an embarrassing, money losing failure but the guys still refused to quit.
Eventually they solved their production problems and Snapple began to sell. Soon they expanded it into a broad line of juices and carbonated drinks made with natural ingredients.
During the 1980's Snapple became a hit and in 1987, they added bottled ice teas, and those also became popular.
By 1994 Snapple was so successful with annual sales approaching $700 million, the Quaker Oats Company bought the firm for $1.7 billion. This made each of the three guys a fortune.
Today Snapple is owned by Dr Pepper Snapple Group, and it offers a product line of more than 50 flavors of juices, teas and fruit punches.
As for Leonard, nearly 20 years later on May 21st, 2013 at the age of 80, he passed away in his Manhasset, Long Island New York home.
He is survived by his wife of 57 years, the former Marian Ebner, their daughter Robin, their sons Bradley and Peter, and eight grandchildren.
But Leonard is also survived by budding entrepreneurs all over the world, many of whom have limited educations and little money to start a business and yet can look to Snapple and Leonard, Hyman and Arnold for inspiration and a path to success.
