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Clorox Company

Type	Public (NYSE: CLX)
Founded	1913
Headquarters	Oakland, California, U.S.
Industry	Food, Chemicals
Products	Food, cleaners
Revenue	▲ $4.58 billion USD (2006, June)
Net income	▲ $457 million USD (2006, June)
Employees	7,600 [1]
Website	www.thecloroxcompany.com

Clorox's diamond-shaped headquarters in Oakland

The Clorox Company (NYSE: CLX) is a manufacturer of various food and chemical products based in Oakland, California, which is best known for its bleach product, Clorox.

[edit] History

The product and the company date to May 3, 1913, when five entrepreneurs, Archibald Taft, a banker; Edward Hughes, a purveyor of wood and coal; Charles Husband, a bookkeeper; Rufus Myers, a lawyer; and William Hussey, a miner, invested $100 apiece to set up the first commercial-scale liquid bleach factory in the United States, on the east side of San Francisco Bay.^{[citation needed]} The firm was first called the Electro-Alkaline Company.^{[citation needed]} The name of its original bleach product, Clorox, was coined as a portmanteau of chlorine and sodium hydroxide, the two main ingredients. The original Clorox packaging featured a diamond-shaped logo, and the diamond shape has persisted in one form or another in Clorox branding to the present. In 1917, the company developed a less concentrated version for household, rather than industrial, use, and sales took off.

In 1928, the company went public on the San Francisco stock exchange and changed its name to the Clorox Chemical Company. "Butch," an animated Clorox liquid bleach bottle, was used in advertising and became well-known, even surviving the 1941 transition from rubber-stoppered bottles to ones with screw-off caps.

During World War II, when chlorine gas shortages forced many bleach manufacturers to reduce the concentration of sodium hypochlorite in their products, Clorox elected to sell fewer units of a full-strength product, establishing a reputation for quality.^{[citation needed]}

In 1957, Clorox was bought by Procter & Gamble, a purchase that was challenged by the Federal Trade Commission, which feared it would stifle competition in the household products market. The FTC won, and in 1969, Clorox again was made independent.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Clorox pursued an aggressive expansion program in which it attempted to establish itself as a major diversified consumer products conglomerate, like P&G. During that period, Clorox experimented with many different types of products, including detergent (Clorox Super Detergent), bottled water (Deer Park), paint (Lucite), wood stains (Olympia), cereal (Cream of Rice), canned mushrooms (Country Kitchen Foods), frozen food (Moore's and Domani's), bar soap (Satine), and restaurant equipment (Prince Castle). For a while it even owned a small restaurant chain (Emil Villa's). However, all these enterprises did not pan out and were eventually sold or spun off. The brands which did prove profitable and were retained in Clorox's portfolio are listed below.

[edit] Brands

The stylized Clorox logo used on Clorox bleach and other Clorox consumer products.

The Clorox Company currently owns a number of other well-known household and professional brands across a wide variety of products, among them:

• Brita water filtration systems (only North and South America)
• Burt's Bees Natural cosmetics
• Glad storage bags, trash bags, Press'n Seal, and GladWare containers (joint venture with P&G as 20% minority shareholder)
• Green Works natural cleaners
• Hidden Valley Ranch, Kitchen Bouquet, and KC Masterpiece salad dressings and sauces
• Kingsford charcoal
• Lestoil, Pine-Sol, Tilex, and S.O.S cleaning products
• Liquid-Plumr clog remover
• Formula 409 hard surface cleaners
• Fresh Step, EverClean and Scoop Away cat litters
• ArmorAll and STP automotive products
• The iRobot Scooba floor-cleaning robot's standard cleaning solution is manufactured by Clorox

For historical reasons, in some markets the company's namesake bleach products are currently sold under regional brands. Clorox acquired the Javex line of bleach products sold in Canada, and similar product lines in parts of Latin and South America, from Colgate-Palmolive in late 2006.^[2] In Canada, where Clorox-branded products were not previously available, the acquired products have since been known as "Javex by Clorox", suggesting the eventual retirement of the Javex brand.

[edit] References

1. ^ Standard and Poor's 500 Guide. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. 2007. ISBN 0-07-147906-6. 
2. ^ Clorox press release, December 20, 2006

[edit] External links

• The Clorox Company
• Clorox (consumer products portal)
• Clorox ProResults Composite Deck Cleaner Demo (Easy2 Demo)