Colgate-Palmolive Company

• Date Founded: 1806
• Industry: Consumer Products (Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care, and Pet Nutrition)
• Corporate Headquarters: New York, New York
• Type: Public

Overview

The Colgate-Palmolive Company manufactures consumer products and is headquartered in New York, New York. Founded by William Colgate in 1806 as William Colgate & Company, it began as a soap and candle maker. It has evolved into a major global manufacturer and marketer of oral care products, especially toothpaste. It also sells many personal care products, such as soap and deodorants, household cleaners, and pet food.

When William Colgate passed away in 1857, his son Samuel Colgate took over the business, renaming it Colgate & Company. The current name of Colgate-Palmolive Company was adopted in 1953.

Since 1914, Colgate has sold products outside the United States. It began in Canada but soon expanded further. Colgate derives approximately two-thirds of its revenue from countries outside of North America. Colgate-Palmolive’s major competitors are Procter & Gamble Company and Unilever NV.

History

At the age of twenty-two, William Colgate founded William Colgate & Company in 1806 in New York to make soaps, candles, and starches. Separately, B. J. Johnson started a soap manufacturing plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1864. This eventually became the Palmolive Company, named after the brand of soap Johnson created that contained olive and palm oils. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Palmolive made the world’s best-selling soap. In the twenty-first century, the company sells dozens of variations of its soap in countries around the world. In addition to bar soaps, Palmolive also makes liquid hand soaps, body wash, and dishwashing soaps.

In 1866, Colgate expanded its product line to include perfumes and scented soaps. Cashmere Bouquet, the original milled perfumed toilet soap, followed in 1872. It entered the oral care market, for which it is now best known, the following year when it launched dental cream, now known as toothpaste, packaged in jars. An early innovation of the company was to sell dental cream in tubes instead of jars. The product was called Colgate’s Ribbon Dental Cream and was first sold in 1896.

By 1906, one hundred years after the company was formed, Colgate & Company made and sold more than 800 distinct products. The company had a major impact on the spread of tooth brushing as a regular practice for personal hygiene and health. For example, in 1911, Colgate gave schools two million toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste and sent hygienists into the schools to show students how best to care for their teeth.

Over the years, Colgate and Palmolive have participated in various mergers and acquisitions. Palmolive merged with Peet, another manufacturer of soap, in 1926. Then, in 1928, Palmolive Peet merged with Colgate to become the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company. The official name of the company was changed to the Colgate-Palmolive Company in 1953. Later, in 1976, Colgate-Palmolive bought Hill’s Pet Nutrition. In 1987, it bought the Softsoap brand of liquid soap. The company went public in 1930, and its shares have since been traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Colgate-Palmolive has manufactured a variety of successful household products over the decades. For example, it introduced the popular Ajax home cleaning products in 1947. By the 1990s, it had become a major maker of all-purpose wipes, sprays, and cleaners for use in the home.

In 1955, Procter & Gamble Company launched Crest, the original fluoridated toothpaste, in response to research that proved the role of fluoride in promoting oral hygiene. It surpassed Colgate-Palmolive in toothpaste sales for the first time in the 1960s. In response, Colgate-Palmolive added fluoride to its toothpaste in 1968. The company continued developing oral care products, and in the 1990s, launched Colgate Total, a toothpaste that protects teeth and gums against gingivitis and other conditions, first in Europe and then in the United States.

Colgate’s business strategy is to focus on manufacturing and selling only a limited range of products instead of continually expanding into new product markets. For example, in 2006, the company declined to buy Pfizer’s consumer health-care subsidiary, which included the Listerine oral care products business, because it would have had to buy several other unrelated products, including some over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. The plan is to concentrate on a few areas where the company knows it can compete, according to former Colgate CEO Reuben Mark, who led the company for twenty-three years. Ian Cook was appointed CEO in 2007. In 2019, Noel Wallace became CEO of the company.

Colgate-Palmolive has branched into making products with natural ingredients. In 2006, it acquired Tom’s of Maine, a well-established maker of all-natural toothpaste. The following year, it introduced several soaps in Brazil using ingredients derived from plants native to South America. This effort was in keeping with its strategy to tailor products sold overseas to consumer tastes in regions where it operates. Colgate-Palmolive is using social media to market its products to the Gen Z and millennial generations; for example, it launched a channel on YouTube, "Colgate Optic White," featuring two beauty stylists.

In October 2012, Colgate announced a four-year restructuring plan, which included layoffs of 6 percent of staff worldwide. The goal was to save hundreds of millions in costs and to consider the slowing growth rate of economies worldwide. That plan was extended in 2016, and job cuts continued into 2017.

In 2024, the company employed 5,440 individuals and ranked fifty-eight on the Forbes list of best employers for women. Additionally, Colgate reported revenue of $19.8 billion and profits of $2.6 billion, showing the company's strong momentum toward their long-term goals for multiple years in a row. A strong performance in the second quarter of 2024 led to a significant increase in the company's stock price.

Impact

Colgate-Palmolive’s oral hygiene program, Bright Smiles, Bright Futures, reaches out to communities, schools, and governments worldwide. Through those relationships, it has given free dental screenings and education to over half a billion children and their families worldwide. 

In 1999, Colgate-Palmolive established a moratorium on animal testing for its adult personal-care products after years of criticism and boycotts by animal-rights groups.

In 2009, Colgate was charged with participating in covert price-fixing in several European countries, colluding with other large consumer goods companies, including S. C. Johnson and L’Oréal. These actions violated competition law in those countries, and several companies, including Colgate-Palmolive, had to pay heavy fines in damages to the governments of France and other countries.

Colgate University, located in Hamilton, New York, was renamed from Madison University in 1890 to acknowledge the significant financial contributions of the Colgate family.

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