In 1892, Wrigley Jr. began packaging chewing gum with each can of baking powder. Thechewing gum eventually became more popular than the baking powder and Wrigley's reoriented the company to produce the gum.
Wrigley decided to produce his own gum, introducing his flagship products, Wrigley’s Spearmint® and Juicy Fruit®, two years later.
His big sales pitch was offering cash registers and coffee makers to merchants who bought lots of gum. Seeing that the confection was an impulse buy, he created display cases and made sure stores placed them near cash registers.
Wrigley methodically carved out a niche for his company. With numerous advertising techniques, Wrigley rose to the top of the industry
Spurred by an American financial panic in 1907, William Wrigley Jr. mortgaged everything he owned to purchase advertising at rates that had dropped drastically with the crisis.
By 1908, sales of Wrigley’s Spearmint were more than $1,000,000 a year. In 1911 Wrigley took over Zeno Manufacturing, the company that made his chewing gum, and established the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.
Wrigley launched a major eort to take its operations global after World War II. Between 1960 and 2000, the company opened production facilities in nine new countries. The company was acquired by Mars in 2008 for $23 billion.
The Wrigley Company
