The Clorox Company: Bringing High Quality Consumer and Professional Products for Over a Century

The Clorox Company is an S&P 500 Component founded in Oakland, California in May 3, 1913. It was founded by Archibald Taft, Edward Hughes, Charles Husband, Rufus Myers, and William Hussey. It caters to the consumer household, healthcare, and food industries. The company has operations and distributions worldwide, primarily operating from its headquarters, at the Clorox Building in Oakland, CA.

The company and its first bleach product, Clorox, have a history that dates back to May 3, 1913. It came into inception after the five founders invested $100 each to set up the first commercial-scale liquid bleach factory in the US. Initially, the company was called the Electro-Alkaline Company. The name of its first product Clorox was formed from the portmanteau of chlorine and sodium hydroxide, which are the two main ingredients of the said product.

However, back then, the public did not know much about liquid bleach. The initial company, Electro-Alkaline Company started slowly and was about to close down quickly, but when William Murray took over as general manager in 1916, he convinced his wife Annie to give away samples to the customers at their family grocery store in Oakland. Word about the product spread and by 1917, Clorox was already being shipped out to the East Coast via the Panama Canal.

In 1928, the company was renamed to the Clorox Chemical Company and began publicly trading on the San Francisco Stock Exchange. The company proved to be strong enough to survive the Great Depression. During the World War II, however, because of scarcity of materials, the company had to indulge to the decline and sell fewer units of the full-strength Clorox product, affecting their reputation for quality.

In 1957, the company was acquired by Procter & Gamble who renamed it to The Clorox Company as its subsidiary. As of 2013, the company has about 8,400 employees worldwide, with net sales of $5.6 billion.