Merchandising: Johnson’s Wash-‘n’-Wax

A shining exception to the rule that family-owned companies no longer achieve great growth is S. C. Johnson & Son, the household-wax titan from Racine, Wis. In an industry where Pride is a product and Pledge outsells competing furniture polishes 2 to 1, Johnson has cleaned up millions. Yet it has never had to sell a share to the public, never made an acquisition in its progress to the top floor of the $200 million-a-year wax and polish business.

This week, in a tradition-breaking move, Johnson’s Wax will announce that it has put up an undisclosed part of its ample cash resources to buy control of General Autowash Systems of Grand Rapids, Mich. Using chemical sprays instead of brushes to wash cars, General’s system trims labor costs by at least 50%, according to Johnson’s estimate. Johnson intends to add wax ing to the operation for an extra charge, open 300 wash-‘n’-wax drive-ins around the country.

Three Leaders. Johnson’s Wax has done things differently ever since the late Samuel Curtis Johnson, a salesman of wood flooring, sent along a can of wax with each parquet floor he sold 78 years ago. That proved to be a shrewd idea, for parquet dropped out of fashion a few years later, and Johnson went into wax fulltime. Today the company that he founded is led by a troika. Grandson H. F. (for Herbert Fisk) Johnson, 64, board chairman, directs marketing. Great-Grandson Samuel Curtis Johnson, 36, is executive vice president in charge of new products—and has been the obvious heir to the top job ever since he was in the crib. Finance is handled by Howard Merrill Packard, 54, the only non-Johnson ever to serve as president.

Though the family does not publish company statistics, industry insiders reliably estimate Johnson’s Wax sales at close to $150 million, on which it earned at least $11 million last year. Smart merchandising counts most in the wax business, and Johnson is usually a stride ahead of competitors. It was among the first to switch from natural waxes to lower-cost synthetics in 1950, turned to aerosols (now 70% of industry sales) while competitors clung to older wipe-on waxes and polishes. The company raised its research and development staff from 100 to 300 in the past ten years, now markets 750 products. They are put to some unusual uses in unlikely places. Finnish yachtsmen have discovered that Johnson’s ordinary Paste Wax keeps barnacles off boat bottoms, and Buganda tribesmen have found that its Off insect repellent deters the Nile River gnats.

Culture Conscious. Johnson’s Wax has more than prosperity; it has culture. It has spent more than $750,000 to assemble and to exhibit its “Art: U.S.A.: Now” collection, which features 102 contemporary American paintings. The firm has also invested $3,000,000 in one of the least commercial and most appealing exhibits at the New York World’s Fair.

A generation ago, when it was really avantgarde, Frank Lloyd Wright built the famous Johnson home office in Racine—a windowless, block-long building, framed on the outside by 43 miles of glass tubing; on the inside columns taper from the ceiling like giant golf tees. Wright’s aim was to create “as inspiring a place to work in as any cathedral ever was to worship in.” He might have had something there. The paternalistic, nonunion company has never suffered a strike, never laid off a worker. Even during the Depression it kept everybody working, though some men did nothing but wax floors at headquarters all day. Guess whose products they used.