Company Overview

Founded in 1837, the Procter & Gamble Company has grown to become the most formidable force in the consumer packaged goods industry. The company’s portfolio includes leading brands in a range of categories from laundry detergent to health care, pet food to water filters. Its brands include more than 20 billion-dollar sellers, including Always/Whisper, Braun, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Downy, Folgers, Iams, Olay, Pampers, Pantene, Pringles, and Tide. Its business is divided into three global units: beauty, health and well being, and household care. Procter & Gamble attributes consumers' time-tested loyalty in large part to its sophisticated brand advertising and market research capabilities.

In 2005, it shelled out $57 billion to acquire Gillette, owner of the Gillette, Braun, Oral-B, and Duracell brands, the biggest deal in the company’s history. This deal positioned P&G as the world’s largest consumer products company, ahead of competitor Unilever.

Because of the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009, P&G decided to focus greater resources on its 43 best-selling brands, which generate more than $500 million annually and represent some 85 percent of sales.  It sold off non-core brands like Noxzema, Infusium 23, and Folgers coffee. The Folgers sell-off to The J.M. Smucker company also included the Millstone and Dunkin Donuts brands—although all three represent strong brands, P&G said it dropped its coffee products to focus on healthcare and beauty products. In other efforts to cut costs in 2009, P&G shed 15 percent of its management staff, mostly through attrition (resignation and retirement).

In 2007, P&G renewed its commitment to sustainability and announced new related five-year goals, including generating at least $20 billion in cumulative sales of products with reduced environmental impact over the next five years; reducing CO2 emissions, energy and water consumption, and disposed waste per unit of production 40 percent by 2012; deliver another two billion liters of clean water through its Children’s Safe Drinking Water program over the next five years; and continue to work with external stakeholders, such as the Centers for Disease Control, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and Populations Services International, to create new opportunities and solutions for the world’s sustainability challenges.

In an interesting portfolio twist, P&G also contributes to the broadcast television industry.  The company produces CBS soap operas “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light,” the latter of which will end its 72-year run on TV in September 2009—the longest airing TV drama in history.