From childcare centers and hospitals to hotels and restaurants, you play a critical role in making your environments healthier. Clorox Professional Products can help you meet your workplace challenges with confidence.
On May 3, 1913, five California entrepreneurs invested $100 apiece to set up Americas first commercial-scale liquid bleach factory, which they located in Oakland, on the east side of San Francisco Bay. In 1914, they named their product Clorox bleach.
The Clorox Company – as it is now known – has grown into a worldwide manufacturer and marketer of consumer products.
Their ambitious plan was to convert the brine available in abundance from the nearby salt ponds of San Francisco Bay into sodium hypochlorite bleach, using a sophisticated and technologically demanding process of electrolysis. They called their new undertaking the Electro-Alkaline Company.
During its outfitting, an engineer for an equipment supplier, Abel M. Hamblet, suggested a name for the new product. From the words chlorine and sodium hydroxide, which in combination form the bleachs active ingredient, he proposed the amalgam Clorox.
He also sketched a diamond-shaped design…with the word Clorox in bold letters in the center and appropriate wording on the four sides. Pleased, the founders immediately registered Hamblets design as the company trademark. The appropriate words inset in the diamonds four facets were Liquid Bleach Cleanser Germicide.
Horse-drawn wagons began clopping between the bleach plant and Oakland laundries, breweries, walnut processing sheds and municipal water companies. These were the first customers for the original high-strength Clorox liquid bleach, which contained 21 percent sodium hypochlorite, and which was sold in 5-gallon jugs.
In 1916, plant chemists developed a less concentrated household version of the industrial-strength Clorox bleach formula, and Mrs. Murray decided to give free samples to her customers. Her idea would prove to be a key to the companys ultimate prosperity.
The 5.25-percent sodium hypochlorite household bleach solution, bottled in 15-ounce amber glass pints, quickly gained popularity as an effective and reliable domestic laundry aid, stain remover, deodorant and disinfectant.
In 1921, the first cargo of Clorox bleach destined for Eastern store shelves was loaded aboard ship at the Port of Oakland. By 1928, thanks to extensive national advertising and sales promotion campaigns stressing its purity, versatility and dependability, the rubber-stoppered glass pint of Clorox bleach had become a commonplace sight in American laundry rooms, kitchens and bathrooms.
That year, the company went public for the first time. Registered as the Clorox Chemical Company in the state of Delaware, its stock began trading on the San Francisco Exchange.
Although chlorine was in short supply during WWII, Clorox curtailed production rather than dilute its product.
Mr. Roth, meanwhile, had also torn up pre-war contracts that would have enabled Clorox to purchase scarce chlorine at prices unfair to suppliers. The consequent cuts in production to maintain the bleach at full strength and the expenses of paying suppliers the going rate proved costly in the short run.
But Clorox emerged from the war with a reservoir of good will and high public regard for the consistent quality of its bleach.
Clorox Chemical Company had garnered the largest share of the U.S. household bleach market by the mid-1950s. In 1957, that attracted a buyer - the huge Procter & Gamble Company, whose panoply of laundry products found in Clorox bleach a natural complement.
In April 1969, Clorox pooled all its available cash and credit to buy Liquid-Plumr drain opener. In September 1969 the company introduced its first internally developed new product, Clorox 2, a dry non-chlorine bleach.
Products for the World
Clorox has become a major corporate presence throughout the world. The companys laundry additives and home cleaning products are sold in more than 100 countries.
Cloroxs sodium hypochlorite bleach remains unrivaled as an affordable, effective water purifying and bacteria-killing agent. More than half of all the bleach sold internationally under the Clorox label is used for household cleaning and disinfecting.
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