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

Elizabeth Arden

Florence Nightingale Graham was born in the village of Woodbridge, near Toronto, Canada. She arrived in New York from Canada in 1907. She changed her name to Elizabeth Arden.

In 1910 Arden opened up a shop in Fifth Avenue with her partner Elizabeth Hubbard where she developed a line of Venetian beauty preparations, and identity choice lending the pricey lotions and powders prestige. But the partnership soured and Arden went solo. She borrowed from her brother to pay the salon rent on Fifth Avenue.

She decorated the salon, including painting the door red. That became her trademark. She named the salon Elizabeth Arden. Elizabeth came from her former partner and Arden came from Tennyson’s famous poem ‘Enoch Arden’.

Arden formulated her marketing and product philosophy very quickly through research and experimentation.
In 1914 a chemist compounded Elizabeth Arden new formula, and it was named Amoretta. This was the beginning of Elizabeth cosmetic empire.

In 1925 the Arden Company topped $2 million in sales, and by 1929 that figure had doubled.

In bold move, Arden expanded during the Great Depression; she believed that women would still be seeking ways to lift their spirits, and brought out such innovations as a lipstick kit, which contained several different shades.

During World War II, Elizabeth Arden expanded her domestic market coast to coast and company lines went into all of the major department stores at that time.

In 1945, Arden entered into a new enterprise, couture clothing, and thereafter continued to challenge her competitors by adding men’s fragrances and opening a men’s boutique in the 1950s.

In 1977 Elizabeth Arden was inducted into the Junior Achievement National Business Hall of Fame.

The company was sold to Eli Lilly, who later sold it to Faberge for $700 million, who sold it to Unilever in 1998 for about the same price. In November, 2000 FFI Fragrance bought it from Unilever for $225 million.
Elizabeth Arden