Clean

Chapter 8DIVESTITURE: SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH SUBTRACTION

Mistakes are how we learn.

—M’Shelle Lundquist Dixon¹

On October 24, 1947, MJ submitted his annual letter to EL shareholders. He opened with a description of the difficulties the company faced as the US moved from a war to peacetime economy: four strikes, one lasting 50 days, drove up materials prices and made deliveries difficult. MJ compared the year's challenges to the dark years of 1931–1932, the early years of the Great Depression. Later, an upbeat MJ reported on changes in the postwar world. Procter & Gamble had convinced consumers to purchase dishwashing soaps and cleaners in grocery stores, rather than hardware stores. To capitalize on that trend, EL introduced a new product for home dishwashing machines: Electrasol.

EL had spent a decade's worth of research to develop Electrasol, a product designed to provide the same high-quality cleaning that Soilax provided commercial customers. In 1948, MJ reorganized his company into two divisions, Kitchen (institutional) and Package (consumer). EL entered a burgeoning consumer market fueled by the US Government's Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, known popularly as the GI bill, which, along with other tax changes, lowered the cost of owning a home. The percentage of households owning a home grew from 44% in 1940 to 62% just 20 years later.² Those new homes usually featured the latest in labor-saving technologies, including a mechanical dishwasher.

EL dived into the ...