I once lived in Finland only about 12 miles away from the town of Nokia where the company originally began. The company owner was a much loved eccentric locally and back in the 1970’s he gave every person residing in the town some free shares as a gesture. At the time Nokia made wellington boots and other rubber products. About half the town had a giggle about it behind his back and sold their virtually worthless shares and cashed in for what they could get. 30 years later Nokia was making TV’s under both the Nokia and Salora brands and the shares were now worth a lot more.

Then in the 1990’s they collaborated with Ericsson in Sweden to pioneer the first commercially available mobile phone networks. Of course their handset manufacturing was also pioneering and they dominated that market for the best part of 15 years. At one stage Nokia shares were worth $80 a piece and many of the people in the town of Nokia finally sold their shares at up around those levels. To this day the place is like a town of two halves- a sizeable proportion are multi-millionaires who drive around in Ferraris and other high end cars and then the other half are regular people who are far from wealthy.

The whole episode just goes to show that you should never laugh at an eccentric – they might seem strange or weird to most people but they think differently to the general population and have the potential to achieve things that the average person wouldn’t.

Reminds me of the late, great Mitch Hedberg: “I think Pringles’ initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles was a laid-back company. They said “F*ck it. Cut ‘em up.”"

Lamborghini didn’t make sports cars at the beginning, instead manufacturing tractors, gas boilers and air conditioners. He only started making sports cars after he asked Ferrari to install a better clutch in one of his cars (he discovered they were the same as the ones in his tractors) – they told him he was just a tractor manufacturer and what did he know. Well, he showed em (sort of)!

IKEA started out with furniture before they moved in the large jigsaw puzzles business.

Don’t the abercrombie boys all look very bad ass with exactly the same tear in their jeans.

AIB, Bank of Ireland and other financial institutions were regulated banks until early 2000 before becoming casinos and active members of the gambling industry.

Cool facts .

Useless information alert: the first product scanned with a barcode was a pack of Wrigleys Juicy Fruit Gum,no idea why i just remembered that but anyway!!

The one I knew about didn’t make the list LG (Lucky Goldstar) started out making toothpaste.

IBM (Industrial Business Machines) started out making meat slicers for butchers among other things before mving to ‘blue chip’ areas.

Peugeot made salt and pepper grinders, then bicycles before making cars. Kia made washing machines.

Also, Apple once made computers.

What about RTE? Weren’t they previously into impartial broadcasting of issues of national interest?

And now you can get breakfast at Tiffany’s.

No car companies? a lot of them made other stuff, from bicycles, textiles and gears to guns, planes and tanks

All the avon products in your picture are from the old branding of that range!