System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!William Wrigley
1861 - 1932
William Wrigley Jr., the man synonymous with chewing gun and the Chicago Cubs, died January 26, 1932. He was 70.
Wrigley was born September 30, 1861 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At age 13, he began work as a salesman for his father's soap company.
By 1891, Wrigley's primary business was selling soap in Chicago. As a premium to soap buyers, he offered baking soda as a premium. And when he began selling baking soda, he offered chewing gum as a premium.
So popular was the gum that he dropped both soap and baking powder in 1893 and began to manufacture and sell only chewing gum. His Wrigley's Spearmint gum had gross sales of $1 million in 1908.
In 1910, Wrigley's spearmint gum was the number one chewing gum in America. Wrigley was a firm believer in advertising. In 1915, he sent every telephone subscriber in the country four free sticks of gum. Four years later he duplicated that feat, but this time the number of telephone subscribers had risen to seven million, over four times the number in 1915.
When he died in 1932, Wrigley had spent over $100 million in advertising, making him the biggest advertiser of his era.
And even though his chewing gum sold for only a nickel a pack, Wrigley's profits went through the roof. By 1932, annual profits were exceeding $12 million.
As his wealth increased, Wrigley began to diversify his empire by buying interests in real estate, hotels, railroads and baseball teams. In 1919 he purchased the entire island of Santa Catalina where he established a large resort. About this same time, he bought controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
Wrigley was the last team owner to continue to play major league games exclusively during the daytime. Lights were finally added to Wrigley Field in the 1960's.
When he retired in 1925, Wrigley was manufacturing gum in the United States, Canada and Australia.
Wrigley died in Phoenix, Arizona on January 26, 1932.
