Adorable Story #60: How Aristotle Onassis built his shipping empire

How a small-time entrepreneur struck it big

Aristotle Onassis, circa 1967 — Photo © by Everett

Aristotle Onassis, born in 1906 in Smyrna, was a Greek shipping magnate who built a substantial shipping empire from the ground up. His success story is a combination of shrewd business acumen, timing, and a bit of audacity.

With this Adorable Story we will try to understand how he did it.

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Early Life

Onassis was born on January 20th, 1906 in Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey) into a middle-class family: his parents were Socrates Onassis and Penelope Dologou.

In Smyrna, Socrates Onassis was a quite successful tobacco merchant and provided a relatively comfortable life for his family until the start of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922).

Greco-Trukish War

At the time, Smyrna was a cosmopolitan city with a diverse population of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and other ethnic groups.

During the Greco-Turkish war, the Great Fire of Smyrna of September 13-17, 1922 devastated the Armenian and Greek quarters of the city, forcing hundreds of thousands of non-Turkish civilians to flee to the waterfront, where many were evacuated by ships from the Allied powers.

The Onassis family lost much of their wealth and were forced to move to Greece as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

Naturally, the displacement had a profound effect on the young Aristotle.

Argentina

After escaping the Great Fire of Smyrna and being forcibly relocated to Greece, Onassis, like many poor Europeans at the time, emigrated by transatlantic boat to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1923, and it was there that he made his initial fortune.

When Aristotle Onassis arrived in Argentina, he was only 17 years old and he initially took on a variety of jobs to support himself and begin his ascent in the business world.

Here are some of the jobs and business ventures he undertook:

1. Telephone Operator: one of his first jobs was as a telephone operator for the Buenos Aires City Telephone Company. This position did not last long but provided him with a start in the new country.