Corporations: A Bit Much For a Lighter Company

“He’s going to carve roast beef with his Ronson!” gasps the sloe-eyed young thing in a recent ad for Ronson Corp. “Isn’t that a bit much for a little cigarette lighter?” Of course it is, but that shows how much she knows about him — or Ronson. He’s going to slice the roast with his Ronson Carve ‘n’ Slice electric knife, just as he shaves with a Ronson shaver, shines shoes on a Ronson electric buffer, and brushes his teeth with a Ronson electric toothbrush.

Now he — or she — will be able to do a lot more with four new products that Ronson is bringing out this week. The four: a rotating electric hairbrush that massages as it grooms; a combination blender-cooker that whips up omelets or sauces; a butane-fired chafing dish; and a somewhat improved butane cigarette lighter, with the first do-it-yourself replaceable spark wheel. Such innovations are expected to help raise sales from last year’s $69 million to $77 million in 1965. That’s quite a bit for a company started 70 years ago by a tinkerer named Aronson, who invented a one-motion cigarette lighter, dropped the A from his family name to make Ronson synonymous with lighters.

Company President Louis V. Aronson, grandson of the founder, does not want only a light-up image. Lighters and accessories represented 87% of the firm’s $26 million sales when he became president in 1953; now they account for 64%, and the proportion is steadily decreasing. Faced with the necessity of diversifying or perishing in the 1950s after Ronson patents expired and imports undersold it, the company has moved into such activities as refining rare earths for color TV tubes and making hydraulic parts for jet planes and space satellites.

Affable Aronson, a Naval Academy graduate (’45) who still talks of market testing in terms of “shakedown cruises,” has gotten considerable mileage out of his fuel. Ronson’s butane lighters led to butane candles, basement workshop torches, and the butane chafing dish. Just as Gillette sells razors cheaply and counts on blade refills for profit, Ronson prices its butane appliances modestly, profits from refill sales of the fuel.

Aronson has also brought out an electric-appliance line that includes regular blenders, can openers, hair dryers and knife sharpeners. Next year he plans to introduce a mixer-sized “food-preparation center” that combines beating, blending, whipping, grinding, juicing and ice crushing, and disappears into a kitchen counter when not in use. It will sell for less than $100. Also on the boards: a dispenser for use in autos that will pop up a lighted cigarette ten seconds after a button is pushed.