Johnson, Samuel Curtis

(1928-)
S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.

Overview

Current patriarch of the business founded by his great–grandfather and namesake in 1886, Samuel Curtis Johnson molded S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. into one of the world's largest producers of chemical consumer products. The company, with annual sales of $4.5 billion, is the largest privately owned company in Wisconsin and one of the largest family–owned businesses in America. In 1966, when Johnson became its president, S.C. Johnson's annual sales totaled just over $170 million. The fourth–generation Johnson to head the company, Sam Johnson retired as chairman in 1999, but before leaving his post, he split the company into three units of varying size, giving three of his four children each a unit to operate. Johnson was instrumental in broadening the company's product base significantly during the 1950s and 1960s, overseeing the addition of such well–known brand names as Raid insecticide, Glade air freshener, and Off! insect repellent to the company's core line of wax products. Johnson's accomplishments are all the more remarkable because he triumphed over alcoholism while still at the helm of the family business, a struggle he dealt with frankly in an hour–long film released to the public in 2001.

Personal Life

Sam Johnson, now retired from the day–to–day leadership of the S.C. Johnson international business combine, keeps busy in his hometown of Racine, Wisconsin, where he lives with wife Imogene. Three of the couple's four children remain actively involved in the family business. Curt Johnson, the eldest child, heads S.C. Johnson Commercial Markets Inc., while his brother, Herbert Fisk Johnson, serves as chairman of S.C. Johnson & Son. Johnson Outdoors Inc., a manufacturer of recreational products, is headed by Helen Johnson–Leipold. Winifred Johnson Marquart, the couple's fourth child, is married and lives in Virginia with her husband and four children. Although she has done some consulting work for the family business from time to time, she is not actively involved in the day–to–day management of the company.

Son of Herbert Fisk Johnson and Gertrude (Brauner) Johnson, Samuel Curtis Johnson was born in Racine, Wisconsin, on March 2, 1928. His father was the chairman of S.C. Johnson and Son Inc., and young Sam enjoyed a childhood of privilege. From his early teens onward, he lived at Wingspread, the Racine family home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1941. Two years earlier, the family business had hired Wright to design its Administration Center in Racine, a structure noted for its vast open interior spaces and heralded in the press as a "center of creativity." In 1950 the company's Research Tower, also designed by Wright, opened. Both the Administration Center and Research Tower were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

When Johnson was only three years old, his father divorced his mother. The elder Johnson later told his son that his mother's drinking problem had been the main reason for the breakup of their marriage. Young Johnson resolved then and there that he would never be like his mother in this respect. As a boy, Johnson longed for more time with his father, a longing he described in the autobiographical film entitled Carnauba: A Son's Memoir, released in 2001. "For a long time I couldn't admit that my father wasn't around enough when I needed him. I guess my biggest doubt about my father was, Does he love me as much as the company?"

The family business was launched in 1886 when Johnson's great–grandfather, also named Samuel Curtis Johnson, bought the parquet flooring business of Racine Hardware Company. In response to demands from its flooring customers, the company brought out Johnson's Prepared Wax two years later. Before long the company's wax business had completely overshadowed its trade in flooring, and for the next several decades, the heart of the family business was its line of wax products. Johnson's father in 1935 made a landmark trip into the jungles of Brazil in search of a stand of carnauba palms that could provide a steady supply of carnauba wax, the hardest variety of wax available, for the company's wax product line. He eventually located a large stand of the carnauba palms near Fortaleza and established a plantation there to supply his company's needs. Years later, Sam Johnson came across a journal his father had kept during the trip to Brazil. It was inscribed, "To Sammy, I hope you make this trip someday."

After graduating from high school, Johnson attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, graduating in 1950 with a bachelor's degree in economics. Two years later he received his master's degree in business administration from Harvard University. After his graduation from Harvard, Johnson returned to Racine to join the family business. On May 8, 1954 he married the former Imogene Powers.

Chronology: Samuel Curtis Johnson

1928: Born.

1950: Graduated from Cornell University with B.A. degree.

1952: Graduated from Harvard University with MBA degree.

1954: Married former Imogene Powers and joined S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.

1956: Oversaw launch of Raid insecticide.

1966: Named president of Johnson Wax.

1967: Named chairman of S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.

1993: Sought treatment for alcoholism at Mayo Clinic.

2000: Retired from S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.

2001: Premiered film entitled Carnauba: A Son's Memoir.

Career Details

Johnson joined S.C. Johnson and Son as head of product development, and it was not long before he began developing products that would significantly broaden the company's product line. In a 2001 interview with the New York Times, Johnson told about his father's insistence that any new product bearing the family name had to represent a noticeable improvement over similar products already on the market. He recalled emerging from a company lab in the early 1950s with an idea for a new insecticide product. His father asked him to explain how it was different and better than other insecticides already available to the public. Johnson was forced to admit to his father that his proposed new insecticide was really not all that different from those already on the market, after which his father told him to go back and try again. Some time later, when he came back from the lab, it was with the formulation for Raid House and Garden Bug Killer, a water–based insecticide that could safely be used on plants. It soon became one of the company's best–selling products.

Johnson's success with Raid was soon followed by a number of other new products, including Glade air freshener; Pledge furniture polish; Edge, a gel–based shaving cream; and Off! insect repellent. Johnson's diversification of the company's product line was clearly one of his most valuable contributions to the business. He later confided to a reporter that family tradition dictated that each Johnson generation was expected to make a major contribution to the company's fortunes. "My grandfather set the tone in the 1920s, and my father came with international growth and technology. Each generation brings something different."

Early on, Johnson had witnessed the damage that could be done by failure to plan ahead for transition within the company. His grandfather, Herbert Fisk Johnson Sr., had died suddenly in 1928, leaving no will or plan for the transfer of control of the family empire. What followed threatened to rip the family and the company apart. Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., Sam Johnson's father, fought with his sister for nearly a decade to decide who would control the company. Eventually, a 60–40 split between brother and sister gave H. F. Johnson Jr. control. Sam Johnson vowed that he would do whatever it took to avoid such a rift within the family and company in the future.

In 1965 Johnson's father suffered a stroke, and the following year young Johnson took over as president. In 1967 he was given the added responsibility of chairman. Continuing along the path he had blazed when he first joined the company, Johnson moved aggressively to diversify the company. In the early 1970s he acquired manufacturers of outdoor recreational equipment to form the company's recreational products division. This was later spun off as Johnson Outdoors Inc., the company now headed by Johnson's daughter, Helen Johnson–Leipold. He also founded the Johnson Bank, one of Wisconsin's largest banks. The bank eventually spawned Johnson International, an 850–employee financial services company that Johnson continues to oversee. Of his large–scale expansion efforts in the 1970s, Johnson recently confided that most of this diversification was motivated by uncertainty about the company's core product line. "I thought the wax company might get smothered by Procter & Gamble," he told the New York Times. "I also thought these companies might make a good farm team for the children."

Like his mother before him, Johnson developed a serious drinking problem, but he refused to face it for a long time. Three times his family confronted him on the issue, urging him to seek professional help. The first two confrontations did little more than anger him. He said later he was convinced he didn't need help. During the family's third confrontation with Johnson over his drinking problem, "they said, 'honest to God, Dad, you've got to get this fixed,'" Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I was struggling with that. I was chairman of the Mayo Clinic." Johnson admitted that like a lot of alcoholics who had not had a "moment of truth," such as a drunk driving arrest or a drinking–related mishap, he was reluctant to admit to himself that there was any problem at all. Finally, however, he agreed to seek treatment at Mayo Clinic in 1993. Although his recovery has gone smoothly since his stay at Mayo Clinic, Johnson is a strong believer in the importance of continuing support for recovering alcoholics. To help others get the help that had put him on the path to recovery, he established All Saints Healthcare Center for Addiction Recovery in Racine.

For most recovering alcoholics, the twelfth and final step on the road to recovery is helping others. For Johnson, his twelfth step was the Racine addiction recovery center and the making of Carnauba: A Son's Memoir, the film in which he speaks candidly about his alcoholism and his difficult relationship with his father. Another important way station in his recovery was his retracing of his father's 1935 trip to Brazil in 1998. It was a family voyage of discovery. The Johnsons flew to Brazil in a replica of the S–38 Sikorsky amphibian aircraft flown by his father. His father's wish, unknown to him until years after the original journey, was at last fulfilled.

Social and Economic Impact

Sam Johnson's contribution to the family business goes far beyond his sound stewardship over more than three decades at the company's helm. As the company's president and chairman, he oversaw a sharp expansion in company revenue from about $170 million annually in 1966 to a total of more than $6 billion a year for all the Johnson family companies.

Even more important, his careful planning ensures that the company will remain under the control of the Johnson family, headed now by fifth–generation Johnsons. In advance of his retirement in 1999, Johnson laid out a plan to break the company into three separate units, each of which would be given to one of Johnson's three interested children to run.

Johnson has also been instrumental in seeing that another long–time family tradition has been upheld. The Johnson reputation for benevolence and generosity to employees and the communities in which it operates has been enhanced under Sam Johnson's direction. Long before such donations were fashionable, the company gave 5 percent of its pre–tax profits to charities, a practice it continues. In 1917 the company launched a profit–sharing plan that gives its employees 25 percent of the company's earnings. In the decade from 1990 to 2000, the company contributed more than $120 million and countless volunteer hours to charitable programs. The company has also been a pioneer in efforts to sustain and protect the environment, setting specific goals to reduce pollution and waste in its products and processes.

Sources of Information

Contact at: S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
1525 Howe St.
Racine, WI 53403–5011
Business Phone: (800) 494–4855
URL: http://www.scjohnson.com

Bibliography

Barboza, David. "At Johnson Wax, a Family Passes On Its Heirloom; Father Divides a Business to Keep the Children United." New York Times, 22 August 1999.

Barboza, David. "SC Johnson Promotes Corporate Family Values." New York Times, 13 November 2001.

Hajewski, Doris. "Johnson's Mistakes a Lesson for All." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 26 August 2001.

Johnson, Samuel Curtis. The Essence of a Family Enterprise: Doing Business the Johnson Way. Indianapolis: Curtis Publishing, 1988.

"Our Family Story: Samuel C. Johnson." SC Johnson, 11 November 2001. Available at http://www.scjohnson.com/family/fam_our_sam.asp.