Fritz Maytag
| Frederick Louis Maytag III | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 9, 1937 Newton, Iowa, U.S. |
| Occupation | Businessman, brewing magnate, viticulturist |
| Employer |
Anchor Brewing Company Maytag Dairy Farms York Creek Vineyards |
| Parent(s) | Frederick Louis Maytag II |
| Relatives | Frederick Louis Maytag I, great-grandfather |
Frederick Louis "Fritz" Maytag III (born December 9, 1937 in Newton, Iowa) is the former owner of Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco and is Chairman of the Board of the Maytag Dairy Farms (maker of Maytag Blue cheese). He is also the owner of York Creek Vineyards in St. Helena, California. His revival of Anchor Steam beer inspired many other brewers to follow, and he is often considered the father of modern microbreweries. As an active trustee of a small college down the road from Newton, Maytag also helped shape Grinnell College, recruiting among others Apple Computer's Steve Jobs to the Grinnell Board of Trustees.
Maytag is the great-grandson of Maytag Corporation founder Frederick Louis Maytag I and son of Maytag Dairy Farms founder Frederick Louis Maytag II. He is a graduate of Deerfield Academy (1955) and attended Stanford University (1959).
In its April 2005 article "26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs", Inc. magazine named Maytag seventh-most fascinating "for setting limits".
Maytag won the 2008 James Beard Foundation's Lifetime Achievement award for his work at Anchor Brewing.
Hearing that the Anchor Brewing Company was about to close and looking for a fitting business challenge outside his family's vast appliance, Maytag bought the company in 1965 and made enhancing its fortunes his mission. This venture did not initially meet with enthusiasm from his family back in Iowa. The Maytag family fortune grew dramatically over half a century as the family managed a vast appliance international manufacturing and distribution enterprise based in central Iowa. Its backbone was an extensive, technology-leading line of clothes washing machines. Significantly, the clothes washer is credited as one of the greatest time-, labor-, and money-saving improvements to home life. It is one of the technologies defining what the rest of the world saw as the admired, relaxed, American lifestyle. In the 1920s, clothes washing was generally an arduous task done by hand; the Maytag company was on the vanguard of automating this task. By the late 1930s Maytag machines became noted for their high quality, a more costly but especially long-lasting product--the opposite of "planned obsolescence." Meanwhile, on the marketing front, the company's highly recognized Lonely Maytag Repairman advertising promoted the brand and explained Maytag's higher price. Company advertising never veered from this central theme. Without overspending, the ad resonated and its message stuck, reinforcing the brand's most noteworthy competitive advantage. The Lonely Maytag Repairman is recognized as one of Madison avenue's most successful, longest-running and most cost-effective ad campaigns of the last century.
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