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VIDEOCompanies That Almost Weren't: Wrigley's
The company scrubbed the idea of selling soap when its "free" gum proved more popular.
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Wrigley began selling Wrigley’s Scouring Soap in 1891. To help boost his sales, he decided to start giving away a free box of baking soda with every purchase of soap. The gimmick worked, so he quickly ditched the soap for baking soda and decided to throw in a couple of packs of gum as another free incentive. Soon the same cycle repeated itself and it wasn’t long before Wrigley’s chewing gum sales had blown baking soda out of the company's product offerings.
The young entrepreneur (he was only 29 when he began his business endeavors) was making the now well-known brands Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint gum by 1893. In 1910, the company expanded outside the US to Canada.
During World War II , when ingredients needed to make the gum were in short supply, Wrigley took the entire output of brands off the civilian market and dedicated all of the products to US troops serving the war effort.
But the brands weren't easily forgotten. The company continued to run ads for the popular gums until they were reintroduced to the civilian market in 1946 and 1947. By that time, the public was familiar with the company's "Doublemint twins" advertising concept, first introduced in 1939. The twins initially appeared on distinctive billboards and in radio ads, and didn't make the jump to television until 1960.
As if the Wrigley brand wasn’t already cemented in history, the company added to its fame in June 1974 when a store clerk in Troy, Ohio, scanned the first UPC barcode on a pack of Juicy Fruit. The pack currently resides in the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.
The Wrigley family played a major role in the running of daily operations at WM Wrigley Jr. until as recently as 2006, when a non-family member was named Chief Executive Officer for the first time. It also owned a majority stake in the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise until 1981 when they sold the team to the Tribune Company,The modern WM Wrigley Jr. Company -- which sells Doublemint, Life Savers, Big Red, Winterfresh, Hubba Bubba, and Orbit, among others -- is now a stand-alone subsidiary of Mars candy company. It has more than 19 production facilities around the world.
In 2007, its last full year as a publicly traded company, Wrigley saw sales of $5.4 billion. Mars bought the gum giant in 2008 for $80 per share in cash, valuing the company at $23 billion. Wrigley stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 6, 2008. The chocolate company added its Starburst and Skittles candies to the Wrigley line-up after the completion of the merger.
Prior to the Mars takeover, Wrigley had acquired the Life Savers and Altoids business from Kraft Foods (KFT) for $1.48 billion, beating out the likes of now-parent company Mars, as well as Cadbury (CBY), Nestle, and Hershey (HSY) for the candy-coated prize.
Wrigley has survived as one of the world’s largest gum manufacturers for more than 100 years by sticking to its founder's values -- that “even in a little thing like a stick of gum, quality is important.”
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