William Procter (industrialist)

A Cincinnati candlemaker who went into partnership with his brother-in-law, the soap maker James Gamble, in 1837. Procter handled the office side while Gamble ran production, and that split of selling and making is still a sound model. Their firm won large Union Army supply contracts during the Civil War, which spread its name far beyond Ohio, and the floating Ivory soap of 1879, sold with a printed purity claim, came under the next generation. Procter & Gamble later became the company that more or less invented brand management.