Small companies owned by big corporations

[noamnety]

This isn't late breaking news, but I was surprised by how many people jumped on the "I support burts bees" bandwagon after one of its former owners was in the news for a bit of philanthropy. Even after I posted way up in the thread that they're now owned by clorox, and supporting the brand has nothing to do with supporting the woman at this point, people have it so stuck in their head that they still react with planning to rush out to buy more of the product.

Burts Bees: bought out by clorox in 2007.
Ben and Jerry's: Bought by unilever
Odwalla juices: bought by coca-cola in 2001.
Naked Juice: bought out by pepsi in 2006.
Kashi Cereal: owned by Kelloggs
Back to Nature cereal: owned by Philip Morris
Cascadian farms: general mills
Mother's cereal: owned by Quaker Oats - which is owned by pepsi.
The Body Shop: Nestle
Tom's of Maine: Colgate Palmolive

[geckosfeet]

1. Another example of good branding.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. Kellogg's straight fucked Kashi beyond recognition.

I used to love eating plain old Kashi mixed grains.

You can't even find the original grain mixture in a box anymore, far as I know. Now it's all cereal bars and other crap laden with corn syrup and who knows what else.

[noamnety]

14. ooh, I hadn't noticed that.

I'm partial to the go-lean crunch, but I'm aware it has the corn syrup in it. I hadn't noticed the disappearance of the original one. :(

[Lindsay]

3. This is a topic that interests me a lot

since I began to realize that ownership by megacorps has actually come to deprive us of choice in the marketplace. (A food item I particularly liked disappeared from the market after the company was bought out by a larger one. I was not amused.)

Not to say that big companies are necessarily bad; I've actually been impressed with a couple of them that have kept up the quality of products I've depended on after buy-outs.

In general, though, I am not happy with this tendency toward consolidation of power and market share by the very rich and powerful corporations. It serves their interests and not mine. (And that's the way they want it.)

[SoCalDem]

9. Even though Toms of Maine is now colgate, I'll keep buying it since it has no artificial sweeteners

Most other toothpaste is made with the nasty stuff & it leaves such a bad taste in my mouth it's almost stomach turning to brush with their nasty stuff..

[noamnety]

15. That makes sense.

It's not like there are a lot of other great alternatives. But knowing they are owned by colgate might affect other buying decisions. If I get a bunch of coupons and can get a great deal, I have no guilt screwing a big corporation for free products repeatedly. I feel differently about that when it's a small company.

[Maat]

24. Or, you could do what I did ...

and learn how to make your own toothpaste (there are lots of ideas on the web). I make mine with organic spearmint extract and baking soda.

Doesn't Tom's now have sodium lauryl sulfate in it?
http://www.tomsofmaine.com/research/ingredients/ingredient-detail/sodium-lauryl-sulfate

Some natural health experts don't think that's a good idea (everyone should research the pros and cons of it).

[Phentex]

4. I did not realize this...

well, I knew about some of them but not others. Thanks for the info!

[xchrom]

5. Recommend

[formercia]

6. The Mega corporations are not buying the product

they are buying the Brand and the customer base that goes with it. At that point, the bean counters take over and figure out how to make a healthy ROI before people get wise to their cutting corners.

[LWolf]

7. Is there a list, anywhere, of small companies that have NOT been bought? nt

[cali]

8. Ben and Jerry's is the only Unilever company with its own board

and it still continues its mission of social and environmental responsibility. That was the deal Ben and Jerry made when they sold it. They're still a good corporate citizen in the state of Vermont and beyond.

[OneGrassRoot]

10. The Body Shop is owned by Nestle???

The late Anita Roddick would soooooooo not like that. :(

Thank you for this; I try to stay abreast of such buyouts, for the very reason you state.

I know that the hope (perhaps, for the idealists) is that they'll inject some humanity and integrity into the larger corporation, but our fear is that the larger corporations are just using this for green washing and other fake CRM.

I have a really hard time discerning how it's playing out in each case. :(

[yardwork]

18. That's a particularly egregious example - shocking, really.

Burt's Bees still has a lot of independence even though it is owned by Clorox.

[OneGrassRoot]

23. ...

So nice to see you again!

:hi:

[yardwork]

37. Thank you!

[noamnety]

19. Common dreams had a writeup on her reaction

"Dame Anita Roddick has admitted that she harbours concerns over the ethical record of Nestlé, a major shareholder in the French cosmetic giant L'Oréal, which bought the Body Shop for £652m.

She also suggested campaigners, determined to stage a consumer boycott, should target the Swiss multinational's leading brands such as Perrier, Kit-Kat and Nescafé, rather than the company she founded.

The entrepreneur has been repeatedly forced to defend herself over the controversial sale in March, announced amid a blaze of allegations that she had morally and financially sold out."

more: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0511-06.htm

[OneGrassRoot]

22. Whoaaa.....thank you for this! :) n/t

[Maat]

25. You know - I don't blame someone for selling out.

My hubby has sold two companies (taken the money and run). Fortunately, the public was not impacted. The owner frequently gets to the mental point at which he (or she) is very tired, wants to plan the personal estate, and doesn't want to run a large company. Moreover, sometimes one is being threatened or pushed by larger companies. So, having been through the experience at least twice before, I no longer blame someone for selling the company.

That being said, that is merely a factor to be taken into consideration. I fully respect a consumer's decision. I emphasize buying from smaller companies.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

34. I knew there was a reason I didn't shop at the Body Shop.

Bath and Body Works all the way baby. LOL

[Hannah Bell]

27. In March 2006, The Body Shop agreed to a £652.3 million takeover by L'Oréal.

It was reported that Anita and Gordon Roddick, who set up The Body Shop 30 years previously, made £130 million from the sale.<6>

L'Oréal is a listed company, but the founder's daughter Liliane Bettencourt and the Swiss food company Nestlé each control over a quarter of the shares and voting rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Or%C3%A9al

Bettencourt was born in Paris, France, the only child of Eugène Schueller, the founder of L'Oréal, one of the world's largest cosmetics and beauty companies.

During the early twentieth century, Schueller provided financial support and held meetings for La Cagoule at L'Oréal headquarters. La Cagoule was a violent French fascist-leaning and anti-communist group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Schueller

In 1950, she married French politician André Bettencourt, who served as a cabinet minister in French governments of the 1960s and 1970s and rose to become deputy chairman of L’Oréal. Bettencourt had been a member of La Cagoule...

After the war, her husband, like other members of La Cagoule, was given refuge at L'Oréal where he was able to successfully sanitise his past...

Forbes ranks Bettencourt at 15th in its list of the world’s wealthiest persons with an estimated fortune of US$23.5 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Bettencourt



The Body Shop does not recognise Trade Union membership.

Entine reported that Anita Roddick, founder of Body Shop International (BSI) in the UK, had stolen the name, store design, marketing concept and most product line ideas from The Body Shop.<2><3><4> founded in 1970 in Berkeley, California by Peggy Short and Jane Saunders who started the French-style perfume store, where customers could do their own blending. Roddick subsequently fabricated her story of traveling around the world discovering exotic beauty ingredients. In 1989, Roddick purchased the U.S. and Israeli rights to The Body Shop name, and the Berkeley-based chain of five stores renamed itself Body Time.

He reported that Roddick's "natural" products contained extensive amounts of artificial colorings, scents and preservatives. Despite Roddick's unsubstantiated claims and inaccurate reports in popular articles and even some university case studies that Roddick's The Body Shop "gave most of its profits to charity", documents from Britain's Charity Commission showed that Roddick's company gave nothing to charity over its first 11 years and was penurious in its philanthropy thereafter. The Body Shop also faced millions of dollars in claims by disenchanted franchisees, who believed they had been enticed to buy franchises by misrepresenting its potential revenue.

Entine referred to The Body Shop's marketing as "greenwashing," which was one of the first uses of that term. The article in Business Ethics (now defunct), which was cited with a National Press Club Award for Consumer Journalism in 1994, is still widely used in university business ethics classes and is generally credited with prompting companies claiming to be socially responsible to match their claims with operational practices and to increase transparency.

The "Shattered Image" article had originally been scheduled to be published as a 10,000 word feature in Vanity Fair earlier in 1994 but was dropped after legal threats by The Body Shop. The original article was eventually published in 2004 by The Nation Books in Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print<26>, edited by David Wallis. Business Ethics, which had featured Roddick on its cover just the year before, subsequently agreed to print a much shorter version of the exposé.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Shop

[OneGrassRoot]

30. I always appreciate what you share, Hannah. I'm torn about this.

Being interested in social entrepreneurship (before it even had a name), I followed Anita Roddick closely throughout the 80's and 90's, and she became a mentor of sorts in the mid-90's when we were in communication.

I admire her tremendously and really have a hard time believing the "Shattered Image" article. The myriad articles over decades about her travels and good works around the world would have had to have been fabricated as well. I don't know how The Body Shop itself evolved (I was more interested in her philosophy, not her business itself, although I loved The Body Shop back in the day), but during the 80's I believe they were definitely authentic in their mission.

Very interesting....

Thanks again. :)

[Hannah Bell]

31. who knows. but it seems that 99% of such ventures go for the big money once it's

offered.

which is disappointing to me.

[OneGrassRoot]

32. I agree.

I'm still desperately trying to find examples of how it has had a positive influence on the larger corporation, rather than it negatively influencing the smaller one brought into the fold.

I want to have hope that that can happen but the reality is -- as we both certainly know -- that huge corporations are truly only focused on the bottom line because, legally, that's what they are obligated to do.

:(

[mopinko]

11. goose island brewery was bought by annheiser-busch

just yesterday. :cry: :cry: :grr: :grr: :grr: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[Exilednight]

12. and annheiser-busch was bought by a european company. The American king of beers is not

even an American product. It's produced by InBev corp in Belgium.

[mopinko]

21. that can only be a good thing.

i mean, budweiser can't get any worse.

[A HERETIC I AM]

38. No. It's produced by Anheuser-Busch.

A-B is now a subsidiary of InBev.

It is produced in exactly the same breweries as it was before the merger. Saying that it is no longer an American product merely because ownership is now based in Belgium is incorrect.

[Exilednight]

39. Pocession is 9/10ths of the law. n/t

[Exilednight]

13. I'm going to miss their Summer Ale. I guess the goose is no longer loose. n/t

[mopinko]

20. they swear they are not going to change the recipes.

and that the problem was that they could not brew enough of the specialty beers to satisfy the market. those recipes do make a much smaller amount of beer per batch. and the newest release sold out in one day.
and $38 M is a lot of money to walk away from. we shall see, i guess.

[TBF]

16. This happens with pet food too - like Natura being bought by P&G

http://www.bornfreeusa.org/facts.php?more=1&p=359

"What most consumers don’t know is that the pet food industry is an extension of the human food and agriculture industries. Pet food provides a convenient way for slaughterhouse offal, grains considered “unfit for human consumption,” and similar waste products to be turned into profit. This waste includes intestines, udders, heads, hooves, and possibly diseased and cancerous animal parts."

"Other major pet food makers are not best known for pet care, although many of their household and personal care products do use ingredients derived from animal by-products:

Procter and Gamble (P&G) purchased The Iams Company (Iams, Eukanuba) in 1999. P&G shortly thereafter introduced Iams into grocery stores, where it did very well. Colgate-Palmolive bought Hill’s Science Diet (founded in 1939) in 1976 (Hill’s Science Diet, Prescription Diets, Nature’s Best)."

[Snoutport]

17. Nestle bought the Body Shop!!!

dangit! i love their kiwi lip balm!!

[Maat]

26. Thanks for this thread.

I have a list I update; but, sometimes I forget or don't notice what's happened.

[Hannah Bell]

28. Horizon Organic Milk = Dean Foods

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Foods

Products Milk, Dairy Products
Revenue USD $12.5 billion (2008)<1>

[Tabasco_Dave]

29. This hits home.

My step daughter was unemployed for 9 months then she got a good paying job with a local exterminator. Three months latter Terminex bought them out and laid her off.:mad:

[YellowRubberDuckie]

33. Is Clorox a bad company?

I use their bleach? :shrug:

[RegieRocker]

35. You should not drink it. It's not safe.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

36. LOL

I use it for laundry, silly.

[noamnety]

41. Probably not any worse than the average large company

I just hate to see people going out of their way to buy Burts Bees because they're under the delusion that they're supporting a small company. I don't know anyone who would buy it specifically because they want to "support" clorox.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

43. Me Either.

Honestly, I like the lip balm. And their hand salve is really awesome. :shrug: But who owns the company has little to do with why I buy it. If you were to say that the Koch Brothers owned it, I'd have demanded a refund and spit on it when I walked by. :evilgrin:

[fascisthunter]

40. damn... I had no Idea Coca-Cola owned Odwalla

[JFN1]

42. Tillamook Cheese

I guess Kraft bought them up - had their logo on the package, I couldn't believe it.