Henkel Corporation
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Consumer brands and industrial technologies |
| Founded | 1888 |
| Headquarters | Scottsdale, Arizona, United States |
| Products | Persil, Dial, Purex, Renuzit, Right Guard, Soft Scrub, Twenty Mule Team |
| Parent | Henkel AG & Co. KGaA |
| Website | www |
Henkel Corporation, formerly Dial Corporation, is an American company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is a manufacturer of personal care and household cleaning products, and is a subsidiary of the German company Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (Henkel Consumer Goods Inc.).
As Dial, it began as a brand of deodorant soap manufactured by Armour and Company, a Chicago, Illinois, meatpacking firm, and through a series of mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, emerged by the 2000s as a stand-alone personal-care and household-cleaning products company. The company's former namesake, Dial soap, remains one of its major brands. In 2004, the company was purchased by Henkel, a German consumer-products firm. The company's president, Stefan Sudhoff, took control in 2010 following the resignation of Brad Casper.
Dial was the first antibacterial soap introduced in the United States. It was developed by chemists from Armour and Company and introduced in the Chicago market in 1948. Armour had been producing soap since 1888; soap was made from tallow, a by-product of the meat production process. The name Dial was chosen because the soap advertised "'round-the-clock" protection against the odor caused by perspiration. Demand for this new soap exceeded expectations due to its deodorant effectiveness, its non-medicinal clover-like smell and bright golden yellow color. The brand was rolled out nationally in 1949, and in time became the leading deodorant soap brand in the U.S.
Because of the popularity and strong sales of Dial soap, fueled by magazine, radio, and television advertising, by the 1960s Armour's consumer-products business became known as Armour-Dial. In 1970, intercity transit company Greyhound Lines, as part of a diversification strategy, purchased Armour & Company for $400 million and relocated its headquarters to Phoenix, Arizona, the following year. It was for a time known as Greyhound-Dial, and informally referred to as Greyhound-Armour.
...
Wikipedia