Word: firmness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...should an aggressive, well-managed firm want to buy Firestone, the most troubled tire company in the land? Ask Borg-Warner (1977 sales of $2.03 billion), which last week announced a proposed merger that is really an $870 million takeover of the much larger tire and rubber maker ('77 sales: $4.4 billion). The advantages are clearer for Firestone and its unhappy stockholders than for Borg-Warner, which makes auto parts, air-conditioning gear, chemicals and plastics...
Successful as the company has been, the market is so mercurial that no cosmetics firm can ever really be safe; a bad mistake can be ruinous. A classic example is Max Factor's "Just Call Me Maxi" fragrance, introduced last year to compete with Charlie. It came about four years too late, as taste was at the point of switching back to romance and mystery, and bombed so badly that Factor plunged deep into the red; the debacle is widely believed to have cost President Sam Kalish, a Revlon alumnus...
Geneen was then building ITT into the world's biggest conglomerate; in Europe the firm's satellite companies sold life insurance and made food products, auto parts and construction materials, among many other things?including a few cosmetics. Bergerac helped negotiate about 100 acquisitions of companies for ITT. In 1971, at the age of 39, he was promoted to the job of running all ITT European operations from a base in Brussels. By encouraging still more acquisitions and spurring the companies' internal growth, he doubled European sales during the next three years to $5 billion. He was a prime candidate...
...cosmetics industry, a gossipy and sometimes backbiting trade, the acquisitions have stirred talk that Bergerac intends to make Revlon another ITT. The president of one competing firm goes so far as to predict that in ten years Revlon will no longer be basically a cosmetics company but a conglomerate. Bergerac laughs off the idea, and his bubbling delight in the cosmetics business does make it seem farfetched. Some rivals and retailers also grumble that Revlon is cheapening its image by toying with the idea of selling in supermarkets. Bergerac replies that it is only testing that approach in Dallas, Denver...
...cover their skin with layers of makeup, cosmetics chiefs have begun to place more emphasis on the skin itself. The care of skin, particularly cleaning and lubricating, is the fastest-growing segment of the industry. Companies are replacing the old jar of cold cream with complete product lines to firm crepy necks, nourish the skin and control trouble spots...