Word: luckmans
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...table already loaded with $12 million worth of recently bought companies, Lever Bros. President Charles Luckman this week tossed a $10 million newcomer: the John F. Jelke Co., sixth largest* U.S. maker of oleomargarine (Good Luck). Said "Chuck" Luckman: "That will be all for a while, until we digest what we've already...
...Luckman has been worried about keeping the present level of sales in the face of resistance to high prices. He decided that the best way to keep volume high was to add to his products. For $5 ½ million, he picked up the Harriet Hubbard Ayer line of cosmetics (TIME, July 21), spent another million renovating its factory and hiring Raymond Loewy Associates to dress up its packaging and display. For $1.2 million, Luckman added a lower-priced cosmetic line (Luxor) to be sold through drugstores...
...Luckman had enviously watched the fantastic profits of Toni (home permanent wave) Co. When Gillette grabbed up Toni for $20 million, Luckman spent $5 million for another (Hedy Home Wave) that was less well known, planned to change all that by thumping advertising. In branching out last week into food products, Luckman had not gone afield: oleomargarine uses many of the same raw materials as soap (Lever's British parent company, Lever Bros. & Unilever, Ltd., and its Dutch twin already dominate the world margarine market...
Some wondered if Luckman was blowing up an impressive but fragile soap bubble. So far the figures have proved otherwise. In two years, he hiked both sales & profits at Lever Bros, by more than 40% (a $20 million net on $350 million gross). Luckman claims that Lux, which had dropped to third place in the toilet soap field, is No. 1 again. So, says he, are Lever's Rinso and Lux Flakes. In the first quarter of 1948, when U.S. soap shipments slumped 17%, Luckman managed to boost...
...Under Luckman, Lever Bros, productivity has increased over 10%. Luckman gives much of the credit to suggestions from the workers themselves, under the worker-management "joint plant committees" he set up with his unions. Luckman himself is behind such morale-boosting devices as meals at cost (average price 37?), liberalized vacations (up to three weeks for ten years' service), insurance and pension systems, abolition of time-clock-punching for salaried workers...