The Man Behind The Brand – In The Bathroom
by Doug Gelbert
published by Cruden Bay Books at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 by Cruden Bay Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Open a copy of the Information Please Almanac and turn to the chapter on famous people. 4000 names and you won't know hardly any. But what about names everyone knows? Pillsbury, Kraft, Maytag, Hertz, Kellogg, Gerber. Nowhere to be found. How many names are more famous than Howard Johnson? Milton Bradley? Oscar Mayer? But who were these folks? Let’s take a look at the men behind the names we see in our bathroom...
Bausch
and Lomb
Braun
Breck
Cannon
Colgate
Gillette
Jergens
Johnson
& Johnson
Kimberly Clark
Kohler
Mennen
Schick
Dr.
Scholl's
Scott's
And the man behind the brand is...
John
Bausch and Henry Lomb
1849
was a big year for John Jacob Bausch. He made a wrenching decision to
leave his homeland in Germany and come to America. He met his future
wife and got married. He lost two fingers to a buzz saw, met his
partner - and discovered his life's work.
Bausch was born in 1830, one of seven children who lost their mother when he was six. Germany was a poverty-stricken land suffering from a series of crop failures. Bausch's older brother turned wood to eke out a meager living and decided to try his hand at spectacle manufacture. John Jacob helped his brother with the grinding and polishing and became interested in the activity.
Somehow in 1848 young Bausch heard of a job in an optical shop in Berne, Switzerland. He went to Berne on foot, occasionally catching a ride in a passing stage, carrying his life's belongings in a knapsack. He got the job and started out at 36｢ a day. It was a good start but Bausch was overwhelmed by the poor times and oppressive poverty. It was a lawless age of political upheaval. Reluctantly in 1849 he decided to come to America.
He found the same conditions in his new country. Upon landing in New York he was immediately advised to leave and seek better opportunities. Bausch went to Buffalo where he worked as a cook's helper before borrowing $5 to go to Rochester. He was married before the year was out and shortly afterwards his hand became twisted through a buzzsaw where he was working as a wood-turner.
Henry Lomb, a Rochester friend brought him food while he recuperated. Unable to continue woodworking Bausch sent home to his brother for optical materials which he peddled around Rochester. He met minor success and borrowed $60 from Lomb to open an optical shop in 1853. Bausch began grinding lenses by hand.
By 1861, after eight years of hard work, Bausch's business debts about equaled his resources, not counting the $1000 he owed Lomb. Lomb, aged 32, volunteered for the Union army and rose to the rank of Captain.
During the war Bausch found a piece of vulcanized rubber lying in the street. He took it home and adapted it into frames and also the first known nosepiece. He acquired exclusive rights to make optical products from the hard rubber.
When the Civil War ended Bausch & Lomb formed the Vulcanite Optical Instrument Company which became Bausch & Lomb Optical in 1868. With Bausch's vision and drive the company grew and diversified. Lomb was not a practical mechanic and had nothing to do with the factory but he worked well with the employees.
Bausch's son returned from Cornell in 1875 and perfected the microscope.
In 1893 they purchased the patents for field glasses. Bausch & Lomb supplied the lens for the first Kodak camera. At the time of his death Bausch & Lomb was one of the largest manufacturers of optical equipment in the world. He had lived long enough to see the culmination of a complete optical business for both personal and scientific needs.
Max
Braun
In his
apartment in Frankfurt, Germany in 1921 Max Braun began turning out
small electronic components which bore his name. But while all of
Braun’s creations disappeared anonymously into the assemblies of
bigger machines he had a dream for a consumer product - an electric
foil shaver.
Braun carried a prototype shaver with him constantly, making subtle alterations for years until he had a product which met even his demanding standards. Braun put his revolutionary electric foil shaver, the world’s first, on the market in 1949. It ushered in the popularity of electric shaving around the world.
Max Braun died unexpectedly in 1951, leaving the business to his sons, Arthur and Erwin. To the founder “form always followed function” and in 1955 when Dieter Rams came on board as chief designer he elevated the credo to an art form. Today more than 40 Eurostyle Braun appliances are maintained in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
John
Breck
Two
things happened to John Breck at an unusually early age. One, he was
made fire captain of the Chicopee, Massachusetts Fire Department in
1898 at the age of 21, becoming America’s youngest fire company.
Less happily he was also going bald by that time.
Distressed by his premature hair loss Breck began studying hair care and began attending chemistry classes at Amherst College in between fighting fires. At the time Americans washed their hair, if they did so at all, with multi-purpose bar soap. Shampoos were known in Europe, however.
Breck earned his doctorate and did succeed in developing a liquid shampoo. He sold some bottles to friends and through word-of-mouth but the handsome young firefighter-doctor was more interested in arresting his hair loss. Doctors assured him there was no winning this battle but Dr. Breck quit firefighting in 1908 and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts to open a scalp-treatment center.
He continued to sell Breck Preparations, mostly his shampoo, to local hairdressers. Breck had introduced the modern shampoo to America. For twenty years Breck continued his research into hair treatment and distributed his hair-care products in Massachusetts. In 1929 Breck teamed with a Boston-based beauty supply dealer to form the John H. Breck Corporation. Sales the first year hovered around $10,000.