W. Atlee Burpee & Co. continues to top the industry in sales of consumer packaged goods and in seeds and plants sold through the mail and online, the owner and CEO said.
Washington Atlee Burpee died relatively young, but managed a long career in the seed business anyway.
Burpee had not yet graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1876 when he started selling poultry by mail and corn to feed the birds.
Customers began asking for vegetable seeds. Mail-order and horticultural history was about to be made.
Over time, Burpee, a self-taught scientist and born marketer, painstakingly adapted vegetables from Europe for the American climate and threw in his lot with native species such as tomatoes, peppers and corn.
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