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History of Wrigley's Chewing Gum

William Wrigley Jr. was born in 1861 in Pennsylvania and started working in his father's soap business as a young boy. In 1891, he moved to Chicago and started selling soap and baking powder, realizing customers preferred the free baking powder. He switched to solely the baking powder business but also offered gum as a premium. Gum became more popular than baking powder, so he entered the gum industry. In 1907 during an economic depression, he risked mortgaging everything to launch a large advertising campaign, which paid off successfully. By 1915, Wrigley was the largest gum manufacturer in the world with operations in several countries.

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520 views1 page

History of Wrigley's Chewing Gum

William Wrigley Jr. was born in 1861 in Pennsylvania and started working in his father's soap business as a young boy. In 1891, he moved to Chicago and started selling soap and baking powder, realizing customers preferred the free baking powder. He switched to solely the baking powder business but also offered gum as a premium. Gum became more popular than baking powder, so he entered the gum industry. In 1907 during an economic depression, he risked mortgaging everything to launch a large advertising campaign, which paid off successfully. By 1915, Wrigley was the largest gum manufacturer in the world with operations in several countries.

Uploaded by

nerissa acero
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

“Wrigley’s Chewing Gum”

William Wrigley Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 30th, 1861, at the
height of the Civil War. He was the son of William and Mary A. Ladley. His father was the
founder and president of the Wrigley Manufacturing Company. The main product of the
company was Wrigley’s Scouring Soap. Even in his early years, William Wrigley Jr.
was interested in his father’s soap business and when he was 13 years old, he became a soap
salesman for his father, selling soaps from a basket in the streets of Philadelphia. In 1891, when
William Wrigley Jr. was 30 years old, he moved to Chicago with his wife Ada and their young
daughter Dorothy, opening a new branch of his father’s company where he continued to sell
soap and offered baking powder as a [Link] soon realized that baking powder became a
huge hit as a freebie and that customers were more interested in getting baking powder than
soap, so he and his partner decided to switch to baking powder business. Now baking powder
became the primary product of William Wrigley Jr. Company, but he also offered gum as a
premium. As baking powder’s popularity used to surpass that of the soap, so did the chewing
gum packages offered with every baking powder became more popular than the baking powder
itself. Wrigley soon abandoned baking powder, entered the gum industry and in 1893, he
offered two new gum brands, Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint. Since the chewing gum
business was highly competitive in the late 1800s, William Wrigley Jr. spent more than a million
dollars a year in advertising. He combined gum with other items like lamps, pocket knives,
cookbooks and fishing tackle. In 1907, during the economic depression, Wrigley showed that he
was prepared to take a risk, mortgaging everything he owned in order to launch a massive
advertising campaign. The gamble paid off and by 1908, sales of Wrigley’s Spearmint were
more than $1,000,000 a year and in total, the general sales for the company leaped from
$170,000 to $3 million. Wrigley was a master of advertising and in 1915, the Wrigley Company
kicked off a campaign in which it sent free samples of its gum to a total of more than 8.5 million
Americans listed in phone books. He also started another campaign and every child received
two sticks of gum when they turned two, reaching 750,000 children. Soon Wrigley became the
biggest gum manufacturer in the world and established gum companies in
Canada, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand. William Wrigley Jr. died on January 26th,
1932, at the age of 70 and his son continued to run the company.

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