Industry History | Ecolab — A Carpet Stain in the Endicott Basement
· 1923
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Industry History | Ecolab — A Carpet Stain in the Endicott Basement
kevin
People treat Ecolab as a Saint Paul tower that always sold water chemistry and hospital soap.
The first company sold a powder that cleaned a hotel rug in place.
In 1923 Merritt J. Osborn, a traveling salesman who had watched hotels close rooms while carpets went out for cleaning, opened Economics Laboratory in the basement of the Endicott Building on East Fourth Street.
He hired one employee, Ida Koran, who had been a Saint Paul Winter Carnival princess, to run the office.
The first product was Absorbit.
The market was thin.
In 1924 Osborn incorporated and bought a non-sudsing compound from a University of Minnesota chemistry student, Leonard H. Englund.
The powder worked in the mechanical dishwashers restaurants were just installing.
He named it Soilax, soil plus lax, and tinted it so a correct mix turned from pink to green.
A dispenser followed in 1928.
By the mid-1930s his son E.B. Osborn turned the salesmen into dishwashing consultants who also repaired the machines.
The firm listed in 1957, bought Klenzade in 1961 and Magnus in 1964, and took the name Ecolab in December 1986.
The Osborn Building at 370 North Wabasha opened as headquarters in 1968.
The Endicott, designed by Cass Gilbert, still stands on the National Register with the Pioneer Building next door.
The mechanism that survived is the one Soilax taught: sell the chemistry with the dispenser and the service call, so a kitchen never has to guess the dose.
Photo: Endicott Building, Saint Paul, Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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