Leading Manufacturers and Producers of Antiperspirants and Deodorants

Euromonitor International’s data for 2005 showed Procter & Gamble with a 12.8 percent share of the global market, followed by L’Oréal Group with 10.2 percent, Unilever Group with 7.5 percent, and Colgate-Palmolive with 4.1 percent. Each of these is profiled in order of market share. According to Market Share Reporter 2007, Procter & Gamble also came out on top of the U.S. deodorant and antiperspirant market in 2005, taking a 29.2 percent share. The Gillette Co. was in second place with 18.9 percent, followed by Mennen Co. at 12.5 percent, Helene Curtis at 9.6 percent, and Church & Dwight at 6.3 percent.

Procter & Gamble

This market leader is a multinational consumer goods company. With operations in nearly 80 countries, Proctor & Gamble derives more than half its revenues from overseas and markets its nearly 300 brands in more than 110 countries. It divides its business into two main global units, health and beauty, and household care. For a period following its acquisition of The Gillette Co., it had a third category which it called Global Gillette. Its Gillette unit was incorporated into its two other units in July 2007. The company had sales of $68.2 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2006 and employed 138,000 workers.

Formed in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1837, Procter & Gamble began as a partnership between William Procter, a candle maker, and James Gamble, a soap maker. Both men were immigrants, Procter from England as an adult and Gamble from Ireland as a child. They had married sisters Olivia and Elizabeth Norris and their father-in-law urged them to form a business together. Though candle making and soap making might seem an odd coupling, both products at the time relied on the same key ingredient, lye. Lye was made from animal fat and wood ashes, and Cincinnati, home to a booming pork trade, provided ample resources for pork fat.

In 1875, the company hired its first full-time chemist, and in 1878 it introduced a new soap product which it called White Soap, later renamed Ivory. Affordable and yet of a quality equal to expensive Castile soaps, Ivory soap became the first of what would be many innovative products introduced by Procter & Gamble. Some of these products were Crisco vegetable shortening (1911), the first synthetic detergent (1933), Tide (1946), Crest toothpaste (1955), and Pampers disposable diapers (1961). Procter & Gamble introduced its Secret deodorant and antiperspirant line in 1960.

Procter & Gamble aggressively acquired companies in the mid-1950s, purchasing the Charmin Paper Company, the Clorox Chemical Company, and the Nebraska Consolidated Mills Company all by the end of that decade. In 1988 it took its first step into the cosmetics industry with its purchase of Noxell Corporation, producers of Cover Girl cosmetics and Noxema products. Other cosmetics and toiletries purchases included the Old Spice line of fragrances, skin care products, antiperspirants, and deodorants from the Shulton Company in 1990; the Max Factor and Betrix brands from Revlon Inc. in 1991; and the Clairol hair preparations business from Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2001.

The Gillette Company

In the late 1890s, King Gillette, already a successful salesman, inventor, and writer, set out to bring an inexpensive and effective disposable razor to market. In 1901 William Nickerson, a machinist who had been educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took an interest in developing the product with Gillette. That same year, Gillette formed the American Safety Razor Company to raise money for the development of the razor. He renamed the company the Gillette Safety Razor Co. in 1903 and in 1904 the company received a patent for its new razor.

The Gillette Company, based in Boston, Massachusetts, became a world leader in men’s grooming products. Though its business remained grounded in the production of razors and blades, which it marketed to both men and women, it was equally successful as a manufacturer of toiletries. Three mainstays in the antiperspirant and deodorant market, Right Guard, Soft & Dri, and Dry Idea, were Gillette products.

In October 2005 Gillette became a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, which purchased the company for approximately $57 billion in stock. The European Union and the United States Federal Trade Commission approved the merger with the condition that overlapping products be divested. Accordingly, in 2006 Gillette’s Right Guard, Soft & Dri and Dry Idea product lines were sold for $420 million to The Dial Corporation, a subsidiary of Germany’s Henkel KGaA.

Mennen Company

The Mennen Company, producers of the highly successful Mennen Speed Stick line of antiperspirants and deodorants for men, became a subsidiary of the Colgate-Palmolive Company in 1992. Mennen had been launched earlier in the century with a talcum based powder invented by its founder Gerhard Heinrich Mennen, a German immigrant. Originally based in New York, the company moved its headquarters to Morristown, New Jersey, in 1954. Among other products manufactured by Mennen were its Baby Care products, a line of toiletries for babies, the aftershave lotion Skin Bracer, and Lady Speed Stick, a line of antiperspirants and deodorants for women.

Colgate-Palmolive Company

The Colgate-Palmolive Company, based in New York, New York, is one of the most powerful consumer goods companies in the world. Its international presence includes operations in over 200 countries and it reported sales of over $12 billion for the fiscal year ending December 2006. Its brands include such mainstay products as Colgate toothpaste, Palmolive and Irish Spring soaps, Fab laundry detergent, and Ajax cleanser. It is also a major player in the manufacture of pet care products.

The company began as a manufacturer of soap, candles, and starch. Founded by William Colgate in 1806, it was originally incorporated as the Colgate Company. Upon the death of William Colgate in 1857, the founder’s son changed the company’s name to Colgate & Company. The company’s name changed again in 1928, when it merged with soap manufacturers Palmolive-Peet to become Colgate-Palmolive-Peet. In 1953 the company dropped Peet from its title.

The Colgate-Palmolive Company was the first manufacturer to produce toothpaste in tubes. It was also a pioneer among U.S. companies in expanding operations abroad, creating a Canadian subsidiary in 1913 and a French one in 1920. Following throughout the 1920s were operations in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico, the Philippines, and Argentina, among others.

Major acquisitions in the personal care category for the company have included the purchase of cosmetics manufacturer Helena Rubenstein in 1973 and the purchase of Mennen Co. in 1992. In 2006, the company announced its intended acquisition of Tom’s of Maine for $100 million.

Helene Curtis Industries Inc.

This wholly owned subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch consumer products giant Unilever is a personal care products company based in Chicago, Illinois. Helene Curtis’ best-selling toiletries include shampoos, conditioners, antiperspirants and deodorants, and hand and body lotions.

The company was first incorporated as the National Mineral Company in 1927. Its founders, Gerald Gidwitz and Louis Stein, soon recognized that their one product, a facial mask made of clay mined in Arkansas, would not be enough to sustain them in an increasingly competitive market for women’s toiletries. They turned to haircare products and in the 1930s introduced the first ever mass-produced hair-waving pads for the creation of permanents as well as one of the first detergent-based shampoos ever to be manufactured in the United States. Innovation became a hallmark for Helene Curtis, which was renamed as such after Louis Stein’s wife and son. In the 1940s and 1950s the company’s Suave shampoo brand took the market by storm, followed by an aerosol deodorant, Stopette, that was a bestseller for several years. It was also during this period that Helene Curtis coined the term hairspray with the introduction of its aerosol hair product Spray Net.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Helene Curtis expanded on the success of Suave shampoo, introducing creme rinses and wave sets under the Suave name. In the deodorant and antiperspirant category, it launched Secure, a powder deodorant, which was followed by a Suave brand roll-on. The 1980s saw the company begin producing skincare lotions and make two new highly successful haircare launches, Finesse conditioner and the Salon Selectives line of products.

The launch of the Degree brand of antiperspirants and deodorants in 1990, garnered the company a large share of the antiperspirant and deodorant market. However, the 1990s found Helene Curtis struggling to keep up with larger competitors such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever, and in February 1996 it announced that it would be sold to Unilever for approximately $770 million.