The Story of Purell
The rest of the story.........
In 1988, a family-owned hand-soap company in Ohio invented an alcohol-based hand cleaner, which was meant to be used by health-care workers when soap and water were unavailable. Joe Kanfer, the company’s C.E.O., told me recently, “There were a couple of other alcohol products out there, but they were really ugly. Either they were greasy or they turned your hands white, the way rubbing alcohol does.” Kanfer’s product took a year and a half to develop. It was a clear gel that contained emollients to protect skin, and it was visually appealing because the machinery that squirted it into bottles left bubbles suspended in it. Still, Kanfer lost money on it for more than a decade. “It opened a lot of doors for us, and we sold more soap because of it,” he said. “But, actually, nobody bought it. The salesman would squirt some into a customer’s hands, and then they’d talk and they’d talk and they’d talk, but people couldn’t get their minds around it. They didn’t know what it was for.” Kanfer liked it, though—he kept a bottle on his desk and for years made it twenty-five per cent of his salesmen’s annual sales targets. “That drove the sales guys crazy,” he said. “They couldn’t sell the stuff.”
The product was called Purell.
These days, I'll betcha 80-90%+ of households have some type of Purell product (or generic version) sitting on the counter or in the medicine cabinet.
Who would have guessed it lost $$$ for over a decade before catching on?
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt
