In announcing The Clorox Co.’s plan to purchase GOJO Industries for $2.25 billion, CEO Linda Rendle underlined the strengths of the Akron-based hygiene company she will soon acquire: its deep commitment to innovation, its strong customer and distributor relationships and its steady sales growth.
“GOJO has a stellar management team and talent base with world-class manufacturing facilities,” Rendle said in a conference call with analysts Thursday after the purchase was made public.
She went on to call the two businesses a “compelling combination,” saying she was excited about the opportunities each company would help the other create. In a LinkedIn post, Rendle said GOJO has “a talented team with like-minded values.”
“I have deep admiration for how they lead,” she said of GOJO’s management.
Her optimism about GOJO, which makes Purell and other soaps and sanitizers, was reassuring to Steve Millard, the president and CEO of the Greater Akron Chamber. In an interview Thursday evening, Millard said he thought Clorox, based in Oakland, California, would make investments to help GOJO grow its business, expanding its presence and employment in the region.
“I didn’t hear anything that makes me think there’s going to be a major bloodletting here in Akron,” Millard said. “They want GOJO to continue to do what it does well.”
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Hoping GOJO’s sale is good for Akron
The nearly 80-year-old, family-owned company will remain in Northeast Ohio, GOJO’s executive chair, Marcella Kanfer Rolnick, and former CEO, Joe Kanfer, said in an open letter to former and current employees posted on the company’s website.
“We chose this path because it allows GOJO to grow at the scale and speed needed to continue leading our industry and to expand the impact you make every day,” Rolnick and Kanfer said in the letter.
They added that Clorox leadership “has been very clear about how much they value the significant assets we have developed within GOJO,” including the company’s culture and people.
Millard said he was confident the family was thoughtful about what the sale would mean for Akron.
“If they thought this was going to be bad for the region, they wouldn’t have done it,” he said.
In a post on LinkedIn, Rolnick called the sale a “major milestone” both for the company and her family. She said the agreement will let the company grow faster, reach further and deepen its impact.
Akron Mayor Shammas Malik said in a statement sent via text message that he was grateful for the Kanfer family’s contributions in the city and “hopeful the City of Akron will be an important part of the GOJO/Clorox story for many more years to come.”
Expanding the reach of Purell
GOJO’s Purell is a “clear market leader,” Rendle said in the call, and is aligned with Clorox’s push to increase its health and wellness offerings.
Despite Purell’s strengths, Rendle said, there’s room for higher sales.
While 80% of Purell’s business is to other businesses, like hospitals, it has just 14% penetration in households. At the same time, 80% of Clorox’s business is to consumers.
Rendle said she thinks that, in combination with Clorox, she can “meaningfully accelerate Purell’s growth” and lean in to their complementary strengths.
Despite its relatively low sales to consumers, Rendle said Purell is a household name — during the coronavirus pandemic, GOJO stopped distributing Purell to stores entirely, sending its consumer market share to zero. When it returned to the shelves, consumers didn’t stick with the other hand sanitizers they had been using, many of them private label. Instead, she said, Purell’s market share returned.
“It’s the power of the brand,” Rendle said.
She said Clorox’s strengths in marketing and consumer insights are “really going to help us accelerate this business.”
In a LinkedIn post, GOJO CEO Carey Jaros said she has long admired Clorox’s ability to create great consumer brands, adding that the company has the resources to help GOJO’s retail sales grow.
“I’m incredibly excited about what’s ahead as we combine our leading brands, talented organizations and complementary capabilities to deliver best-in-class health and hygiene solutions to customers across the world,” Jaros wrote.
A responsibility to grow GOJO
GOJO executives had explored the possibility of a sale previously, Reuters reported, but in 2023 could not get the price they wanted from companies like Georgia-Pacific. Instead, Reuters said, GOJO took on $500 million in new debt from Silver Point Finance to refinance existing debt and support operations.
Millard said this sale, which will keep operations in the region, is a better outcome for Akron than others that would have taken operations outside the area. Rendle wouldn’t comment to analysts about whether Clorox was a suitor at that time, but she said the company was recovering from a cyber attack in 2023 and had held both GOJO and Purell in high regard for some time.
“They see so much opportunity, and they need a partner to help them do it,” Rendle said.
In their letter to employees, Rolnick and Kanfer said as leaders, they were responsible for continuously working on the next source of growth for the business.
“With The Clorox Company, GOJO can grow in ways we envision but simply cannot achieve within the capital structure of our Family Enterprise,” they wrote. “The Clorox Company brings investment capacity, global reach, world-class consumer expertise, and a bold Vision that extends our GOJO Purpose by combining our strengths.”
Rendle said GOJO had invested in significant manufacturing capacity during the pandemic, giving the company plenty of room to grow. The excess capacity will allow Clorox to use some of the manufacturing capacity for its own products.
That switch is expected to contribute to about $50 million in savings Clorox expects as part of the acquisition, which is expected to close by the end of Clorox’s fiscal year, in September.
In addition to the ability to complement each other’s businesses, Rendle said she admired GOJO’s level of inventiveness, with its 680 patents and cutting-edge dispenser technology.
“Innovation matters in this space,” she said.
Beginning in an Akron rubber factory
The history of GOJO is innovation.
The company was founded in 1946 by Goldie and Jerry Lippman, the first of three generations of family ownership.
It dates back to Goldie Lippman’s time as a supervisor in an Akron rubber factory that was manufacturing life rafts and rubber products for use in World War II, the company said on its history page. Men who worked in the rubber factories before the war removed graphite and carbon black from their hands by dipping them in chemicals like kerosene and benzene, which were harsh on workers’ skin. Goldie Lippman wanted to find an alternative.
With a Kent State professor, Clarence Cook, Jerry Lippman invented GOJO Hand Cleaner and sold it from the trunk of the family car in repurposed pickle jars.
When Jerry Lippman learned workers were using too much of the hand cleaner to make it cost-effective for companies to stock it, he developed and patented the first portion-control dispenser in 1952, making it easier for businesses to supply the hand cleaner to their employees.
The company invented Purell in 1988 and touch-free dispensers in 2006. Now, GOJO has nearly $800 million in annual sales.
“We are so proud of all we have accomplished with the incredible members of Team GOJO over three generations,” Rolnick wrote in her LinkedIn post. “Our founders, my great[-]aunt and [great-]uncle Goldie and Jerry Lippman, would be in awe.”