The story of William Wrigley Jr.

- soap
salesman who became the world’s best
gum manufacturer
Nov 28, 2016 Goran Blazeski

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The story of William Wrigley Jr.- soap
salesman who became the world’s best
gum manufacturer
Nov 28, 2016 Goran Blazeski

William Wrigley Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September

30th, 1861, at the height of the Civil War.

He was the son of William and Mary A. Ladley. His father was the founder
and president of the Wrigley Manufacturing Company. The main product of
the company was Wrigley’s Scouring Soap.
 ADVERTISING

inRead invented by Teads

Even in his early years, William Wrigley Jr. was interested in his father’s soap
business and when he was 13 years old, he became a soap salesman for his
father, selling soaps from a basket in the streets of Philadelphia.
 William Wrigley Jr.

In 1891, when William Wrigley Jr. was 30 years old, he moved to Chicago with
his wife Ada and their young daughter Dorothy, opening a new branch of his
father’s company where he continued to sell soap and offered baking powder
as a premium.

He soon realized that baking powder became a huge hit as a freebie and that
customers were more interested in getting baking powder than soap, so he
and his partner decided to switch to baking powder business.
Now baking powder became the primary product of William Wrigley Jr.
Company, but he also offered gum as a premi

A newspaper ad from 1920 for three types of Wrigley’s gum

As baking powder’s popularity used to surpass that of the soap, so did the
chewing gum packages offered with every baking powder became more
popular than the baking powder itself.
Wrigley soon abandoned baking powder, entered the gum industry and in
1893, he offered two new gum brands, Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint.

Since the chewing gum business was highly competitive in the late
1800s, William Wrigley Jr. spent more than a million dollars a year in
advertising. He combined gum with other items like lamps, pocket knives,
cookbooks and fishing tackle.

William Wrigley Jr. on the cover of Time in 1929.

In 1907, during the economic depression, Wrigley showed that he was

prepared to take a risk, mortgaging everything he owned in order to launch a
massive advertising campaign.
The gamble paid off and by 1908, sales of Wrigley’s Spearmint were more
than $1,000,000 a year and in total, the general sales for the company leaped
from $170,000 to $3 million.

Wrigley was a master of advertising and in 1915, the Wrigley Company kicked
off a campaign in which it sent free samples of its gum to a total of more than
8.5 million Americans listed in phone books.

He also started another campaign and every child received two sticks of gum
when they turned two, reaching 750,000 children.
 The Wrigley Lofts, formerly Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. Ltd. located in Toronto,
Canada. Photo Credit
Soon Wrigley became the biggest gum manufacturer in the world
and established gum companies in Canada, Australia, Great Britain and New
Zealand.

We have another fun read for you:The Caesar Salad is unrelated to Julius
Caesar – it was allegedly invented on the Fourth of July by Italian-American in
Tijuana, Mexico
William Wrigley Jr. died on January 26th, 1932, at the age of 70 and his son
continued to run the company.