Warner-Lambert

Warner-Lambert corporate history can be traces back to the 1850s when a Philadelphia pharmacist named William R. Warner began experimenting with a new tablet coating process to encase harsh-tasting medicines in a sugar shell.

William R. Warner & Company, a pharmaceuticals and cosmetic marker, was founded in 1920. For the next three decades, the company and its successor, Warner-Hudnut, Inc. acquired dozens of businesses in the consumer health care a and pharmaceuticals.

Meanwhile, in the American Midwest, Jordan Wheat Lambert launched Lambert Pharmaceutical Company in St. Louis. Lambert’s main product was Listerine antiseptic. He founded his company on what has become one of the most successful proprietary products in American marketing history.

On 31 March 1955, Warner Company and Lambert combined to form Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company.

Warner-Lambert’s aggressive acquisition strategy continued through the next two decades and onto the 1980s. In 1962, the company bought American Chicle a New York based company that was among the world’s largest producers of gums and mints.

The year 1970 was a turning point for the growth of Warner-Lambert, acquiring Parke-Davis, once the largest drug manufacturer.

Warner-Lambert entered the controversial transdermal nicotine patch market in 1992 with its Nicotrol brand. Nicotrol had early but short-lived success in an already-crowded sector.

In 2000, Pfizer acquired Warner-Lambert for $90.27 billion in stock. Pfizer then became the world’s second largest pharmaceutical company, right behind GlaxoSmithKline. In June of 2000, the Federal Trade Commission approved the merger.
Warner-Lambert

History of Pfizer

Two cousins, Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart, formed Pfizer in 1849 after they arrived in Brooklyn from Germany.

At first the venture was a small chemical manufacturer, but it achieved early success after developing a way to improve the palatability of a treatment for parasitic worms. After its discovery of Terramycin in 1950 Pfizer became a research-based pharmaceutical company.

Through the latter half of the 19th century citric acid - made from lemons, limes and oranges and used in soft drinks and cleaning fluids – became Pfizer’s central product.

For decades, citric acid was the company’s most popular product, but when the availability of the ingredients needed to make the product slowed during WWI, Pfizer was forced to find new supply sources. It did so after years of experimenting with fermentation, a process that eventually enabled Pfizer to produce penicillin on a large scale basis, as it did during WWII.

Pfizer’s first medicinal was a reformulation of santonin, an extract of Levant Wormseed, used as an anti-parasitic to treat intestinal worms.

Erhart, a confectioner, blended bitter-tasting santonin with almond-toffee flavoring, shaping it into a candy cone for palatabultiy and ’new santonin’ became a success for the company.

In 1998 the company launched Viagra, a novel erectile dysfunction drug that has become a $1 billion plus a year blockbuster and is often viewed as one of the most shrewdly marketed drugs of all time.

By 1999 it was among the world’s top producers of over-the-counter medicines and the leading producer of fish food and aquarium products.

In order to expand and strengthen its business, Pfizer has made numerous acquisitions, including Warner-Lambert in 2000, Pharmacia in 2003 and Wyeth in 2009.
History of Pfizer

Parke-Davis

In 1862 Dr. Samuel Duffield founded a small firm that sold compounded medicinal preparations to pharmacists.

In 1866 Hervey Coke Parke partnered with Duffield, forming pharmaceutical manufacturing company Duffield, Parke & Company. The firm of Duffield, Parke & Company remained small an unimportant during its first years of operation.

Although it served Detroit and the surrounding region, it presented no competition to manufacturers in New York and Philadelphia, the centers of the pharmaceutical industry.

A few years later A. F Jennings bought out Duffield, leading to the firm Parke, Jennings & Company.  When Jennings retired in 1871, George S. Davis joined with Parke to form Parke, Davis & Company.

It was Davis who recognized most clearly that the capacity of the industry might be turned not only to the production of those products that physician demanded, but also to the development of their own drug products, sparking medical interest through the publication of variable research results.

The firm embraced publishing, producing the Bulletin of Pharmacy, Medical Age, New Preparations, and the Therapeutic Gazette – in the 1880s – was promotional treatment by Parke, Davis.

Parke-Davis quickly recognized the importance of endocrine products, beginning to sell desiccated thyroid preparations as early as 1893 and adrenal gland preparations in 1895.

By the mid-20th century Parke-Davis was among the largest of global pharmaceutical enterprises.

In 1970 Parke-Davis was acquired by Warner Lambert, which in turn was bought by Pfizer in 2000.
Parke-Davis