Euromonitor International's data for 2005 showed Procter & Gamble with a 12.8 percent share of the global market, followed by L'Oréal Group with 10.2 percent, Unilever Group with 7.5 percent, and Colgate-Palmolive with 4.1 percent. Each of these is profiled in order of market share. According to Market Share Reporter 2007, Procter & Gamble also came out on top of the U.S. deodorant and antiperspirant market in 2005, taking a 29.2 percent share. The Gillette Co. was in second place with 18.9 percent, followed by Mennen Co. at 12.5 percent, Helene Curtis at 9.6 percent, and Church & Dwight at 6.3 percent.
Procter & Gamble
This market leader is a multinational consumer goods company. With operations in nearly 80 countries, Proctor & Gamble derives more than half its revenues from overseas and markets its nearly 300 brands in more than 110 countries. It divides its business into two main global units, health and beauty, and household care. For a period following its acquisition of The Gillette Co., it had a third category which it called Global Gillette. Its Gillette unit was incorporated into its two other units in July 2007. The company had sales of $68.2 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2006 and employed 138,000 workers.
Formed in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1837, Procter & Gamble began as a partnership between William Procter, a candle maker, and James Gamble, a soap maker. Both men were immigrants, Procter from England as an adult and Gamble from Ireland as a child. They had married sisters Olivia and Elizabeth Norris and their father-in-law urged them to form a business together. Though candle making and soap making might seem an odd coupling, both products at the time relied on the same key ingredient, lye. Lye was made from animal fat and wood ashes, and Cincinnati, home to a booming pork trade, provided ample resources for pork fat.
In 1875, the company hired its first full-time chemist, and in 1878 it introduced a new soap product which it called White Soap, later renamed Ivory. Affordable and yet of a quality equal to expensive Castile soaps, Ivory soap became the first of what would be many innovative products introduced by Procter & Gamble. Some of these products were Crisco vegetable shortening (1911), the first synthetic detergent (1933), Tide (1946), Crest toothpaste (1955), and Pampers disposable diapers (1961). Procter & Gamble introduced its Secret deodorant and antiperspirant line in 1960.
Procter & Gamble aggressively acquired companies in the mid-1950s, purchasing the Charmin Paper Company, the Clorox Chemical Company, and the Nebraska Consolidated Mills Company all by the end of that decade. In 1988 it took its first step into the cosmetics industry with its purchase of Noxell Corporation, producers of Cover Girl cosmetics and Noxema products. Other cosmetics and toiletries purchases included the Old Spice line of fragrances, skin care products, antiperspirants, and deodorants from the Shulton Company in 1990; the Max Factor and Betrix brands from Revlon Inc. in 1991; and the Clairol hair preparations business from Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2001.
The Gillette Company
In the late 1890s, King Gillette, already a successful salesman, inventor, and writer, set out to bring an inexpensive and effective disposable razor to market. In 1901 William Nickerson, a machinist who had been educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took an interest in developing the product with Gillette. That same year, Gillette formed the American Safety Razor Company to raise money for the development of the razor. He renamed the company the Gillette Safety Razor Co. in 1903 and in 1904 the company received a patent for its new razor.
The Gillette Company, based in Boston, Massachusetts, became a world leader in men's grooming products. Though its business remained grounded in the production of razors and blades, which it marketed to both men and women, it was equally successful as a manufacturer of toiletries. Three mainstays in the antiperspirant and deodorant market, Right Guard, Soft & Dri, and Dry Idea, were Gillette products.
In October 2005 Gillette became a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, which purchased the company for approximately $57 billion in stock. The European Union and the United States Federal Trade Commission approved the merger with the condition that overlapping products be divested. Accordingly, in 2006 Gillette's Right Guard, Soft & Dri and Dry Idea product lines were sold for $420 million to The Dial Corporation, a subsidiary of Germany's Henkel KGaA.
Mennen Company
The Mennen Company, producers of the highly successful Mennen Speed Stick line of antiperspirants and deodorants for men, became a subsidiary of the Colgate-Palmolive Company in 1992. Mennen had been launched earlier in the century with a talcum based powder invented by its founder Gerhard Heinrich Mennen, a German immigrant. Originally based in New York, the company moved its headquarters to Morristown, New Jersey, in 1954. Among other products manufactured by Mennen were its Baby Care products, a line of toiletries for babies, the aftershave lotion Skin Bracer, and Lady Speed Stick, a line of antiperspirants and deodorants for women.
