Items22The creator’s order
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William Procter (industrialist)Born 7 Dec 1801A 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…0i - 2
Henry J. HeinzBorn 11 Oct 1844Heinz sold horseradish in clear glass bottles so customers could see there was no filler, a small decision that tells you everything about how he built trust. His first company went bankrupt in 1875; he started again, and by the 1900s was backing the US Pure Food and Drug Act when many rival food…0i - 3
Milton S. HersheyBorn 13 Sept 1857Hershey had several failed sweet shops before a caramel business in Lancaster gave him the capital to make milk chocolate cheaply enough for everyone. The Hershey bar of 1900 was a mass-produced product at a time when chocolate was a luxury, and he built a whole town in Pennsylvania around reliable…0i - 4
Henri NestléA pharmacist in Vevey who developed Farine Lactée in 1867, an infant food for babies who could not be breastfed, and sold it on the strength of doctors' recommendations rather than advertising alone. He used his family's coat of arms, a bird's nest, as the mark, and it still sits on the packs.…0i - 5
George CadburyGeorge and his brother Richard took over their father's struggling Birmingham cocoa business in 1861 and turned it round with a product shoppers could believe in: unadulterated cocoa essence, sold as absolutely pure at a time when rivals bulked theirs out with starch. The move to Bournville in 1879…0i - 6
William Lever, 1st Viscount LeverhulmeBorn 19 Sept 1851Before Sunlight Soap in 1884, grocers cut soap from long anonymous bars. Lever, a Bolton grocer by trade, sold his in wrapped, branded tablets of a fixed size, so customers knew exactly what they were getting wherever they bought it. That packaging idea, backed by relentless advertising, built…0i - 7
Thomas LiptonBorn 10 May 1848Lipton started with one Glasgow grocery and grew a chain of hundreds by buying direct and selling cheap. His big move came in 1890, when he bought tea estates in Ceylon and cut out the wholesalers, selling packeted tea in fixed weights under the promise of going straight from the garden to the…0i - 8
Jesse Boot, 1st Baron TrentBorn 2 Jun 1850His father John opened the Nottingham herbalist's shop; Jesse turned it into Boots by buying in bulk, cutting prices on medicines and employing qualified pharmacists so cheap did not mean risky. Making his own products gave him control over quality, and by his retirement there were over a thousand…0i - 9
Robert Wood Johnson IWith his brothers James Wood and Edward Mead Johnson, he founded Johnson & Johnson in 1886 to mass-produce sterile surgical dressings after hearing Joseph Lister argue that germs caused infection. Hospitals trusted the dressings because the company published guidance on antiseptic practice…0i - 10
Will Keith KelloggBorn 7 Apr 1860Corn flakes came out of the Battle Creek sanitarium Will ran with his brother John Harvey Kellogg, but the brand was Will's work. He split from his brother, founded his own company in 1906 and put his signature on every box with a warning that no other flakes were genuine, a direct answer to the…0i
