History & Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Early Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Global Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Modern Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Company Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Recent Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Company DNA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Social Media Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . 23

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Jeremiah Colman, a miller by training, who man-aged a mill in

Norfolk, England before buying his own mill in 1803

In 1814, he bought a mustard business and added the crushing of

mustard seeds to that of wheat kernels

By 1829, he had extended his reach to London

By 1854, three years after Jeremiah’s death, Colman’s had

constructed Britain’s first mill dedicated entirely to mustard.

Jeremiah’s nephew James (Jeremiah being childless) had taken over

the firm

Having been co-opted as a partner in 1823 and, clearly sharing his

uncle’s partiality for asset-driven expansion into new categories,

he took the firm into the manufacture of starch, laundry blue and

corn flour, all leveraging the company’s investment and expertise

in milling.

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Entry into the starch category brought Colman’s into competition

with another trained miller, Isaac Reckitt

Isaac Reckitt’s mill, after twenty years of unsuccessfully running a

series of flour milling businesses and losing all his capital, borrowed

enough from his obviously loving relatives to rent a starch works in

the north of England

There he yet again failed to make his mark, until his four sons,

including a chemist and a salesman, took over the key roles

For the first seven years, the business lost money and it was only

when the product range was extended beyond starch that the

business became viable

It took the business a full eighteen years to pay back Isaac’s

relatives, whom he only outlived by four years.

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The third 19th-century industrialist involved in the genesis of

Reckitt Benckiser was Johann Adam Benckiser, who founded an

industrial chemicals manufacturing business in Pforzheim,

Germany in 1823

In 1851, Johann co-founded a chemical plant with chemist Ludwig

Reimann

Seven years later relocating the business to Ludwigshafen, where it

also began the production of phosphates, citric acid and other

commodity chemicals.

This unlikely trio of mustard cook, household products

manufacturer and chemical industrialist would bring something

different to the Reckitt Benckiser party

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The mustard maker’s great nephew would be one of 19th-

century Britain’s most innovative advertisers, building leading-

edge marketing skills in selling a product half of which was

scraped off plates uneaten at the end of meals.

The household products maker’s sons recognised that a huge

business could be built on the insight of making the

homemaker’s life easier, and embarked on a late-19th-century

acquisition spree of all kinds of household goods brands while

internationalising the business as early as 1864

The German industrialist’s descendants, who would spend well

over a century in the commodity chemicals sector, were

exceptionally astute business strategists who knew how to

revolutionize a business

The two firms finally buried the hatchet in 1913 when they formed

a joint company

The two companies combined all their overseas businesses in order

to generate the critical mass to run manufacturing operations in

Australia, Canada and South Africa

Dettol had begun as a project in 1929, to develop an antiseptic

disinfectant that could be safely applied to open cuts and wounds

The deal catapulted Reckitt & Colman into the top four globally, but

to fund it the company had to sell off the bulk of the food side of

the business

The iconic Colman’s mustard brand itself, sold to Unilever in 1995

for £250 million

The Benckiser was now a relative minnow with annual sales of only

$250 million

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Benckiser continued to acquire strong local brands, such as Italy’s

Mira Lanza and Panigel together with Spain’s leading detergent

company, S.A. Camp Group

Benckiser competed with the multinational giants such as Unilever

and P&G

The company significantly increased its US presence with the

acquisition of SmithKline Beecham’s North American household

products division for $106 million in 1990

The company buy the Margaret Astor and Lancaster cosmetics

business from Smithkline

The Benckiser set about expanding its new cosmetics arm picking

up Jovan, Germaine Monteil, Bogner Cosmetics and Joop! Perfumes

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Benckiser became US market leader in mass-market cosmetics

with the $400 million purchase from Pfizer of the Coty business

Exclamation, Lady Stetson, L’Effleur, Sand & Sable and Wild Musk;

this pushed the share of total company sales of $3.4 billion coming

from cosmetics and fragrances

The Benckiser now has over $3 billion annual sales

Benckiser organized all its businesses into one single holding

company called Coty Inc.

Reckitt was selling its products in some 180 countries and had

operation in 60 countries

In 2003 sales were split by region

Western Europe – 47%

North America – 27%

Asia-Pacific – 12 %

Latin America – 4%

Rest of world – 10%

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On the 27th July 1999 the merger of Reckitt & Colman and

Benckiser created a business with sales of more than £3 billion

The world’s fourth-biggest manufacturer of household cleaning and

personal care products

Reckitt Benckiser had three overriding priorities: To focus the

brand portfolio and to reduce costs

Deploying the Benckiser strategy and operating style on the

Reckitt & Colman brand portfolio

The remit of Squeeze was to look at the detailed design of

products and find ways to squeeze out costs without adversely

affecting the utility or efficacy

The X-trim team focused on saving costs elsewhere in the business

A disproportionate focus on brands that were either number one or

two in categories with above-average growth prospects

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Grow categories and brand share via an unrelenting program of

incremental improvement innovations, executed with great speed,

and above-average marketing spends

Focus was mainly on organic growth

Acquisitions, as had been the case soon after the merger, would

only be considered if targets had a great strategic fit

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Reckitt Benckiser began life in 1999 with a regional management

structure in which country managers reported into regions or sub-

regions

In 2003, the company got a handle on the different issues in the

different markets, it moved to a hybrid regional/market

development structure

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2004

Reckitt Benckiser celebrated five years of unbroken success since

its formation with 10% growth in the year at constant exchange

rates

The growth was fairly evenly spread around the world with Europe

growing by 8%, North America & Australia by 9% and Developing

Markets by 16%

Operating margins expanded a full 1.3 percentage points up to

19.6%

The company having almost tripled its annual operating profit since

1999

The increase in margins came from increases in gross margin, up

from an industry-trailing 46.4% in 1999 to an industry-leading

54.8%

2005

Reckitt Benckiser’s sales grew by 8% but only by 6% at constant

exchange rates

New to the elite club was Bang, sold under the Cillit brand in

Europe and Easy Off in the rest of the world.

Reckitt Benckiser had been looking for a major acquisition within

OTC healthcare, which conformed to the specification for

outstanding long-term growth prospects in an ageing populations

The largest acquisition in the company is that of Boots Healthcare

International for £1.9B

2006

In eleven months of BHI sales in 2006 Overall revenues grew by

18% to a shade under £5 billion

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Reckitt Benckiser owned and had the US distribution rights for, and

its related drug Subutex, which grew by 30% in to £165

The European bias of BHI further increased the area percentage of

Reckitt Benckiser sales up to 53%

2007

Seven percent increase in reported revenues whilst 10% on a like-

for-like basis gave the eighth consecutive year of above-average

industry growth

The product sales grew by 10% in the first full year of Reckitt

Benckiser ownership

The excellent start in a year when all but one of the eighteen

Power brands gained market share

The new improved Reckitt Benckiser now had 75% of its revenues

from brands that were number one or two in their markets

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The company was now worldwide number one or two in several

categories

Reckitt Benckiser had substantially increased its sales

infrastructure and received an immediate payback sales rising by

42%, delivering a staggering 56% margin the area average for all

other products was just 21%

2008

The Adams acquisition not only added to the top line but grew by

12% in the eleven months

The company posted a 25% increase in sales to £6.5 billion, its core

business having grown by 13% and its power brands by 17%

The company yet again increased its gross margin by a full

percentage point to 59.3%

This increase is driven by better-than-average performances by the

higher-margin categories, continued ‘Squeeze’ cost savings.

The continued explosive growth of the now renamed

Pharmaceuticals Unit, whose sales increased another 45% up to

£341 million, delivering an eye-watering £193 million operating

profit which added nearly two whole percentage points to the

entire company’s operating profit margin

2009

With over 80% of sales coming from developed markets, the

company was more vulnerable than many to the slowdown

The company grew by an impressive 18%, 8% at constant

exchange rates, to reach £7.8 billion – a top-class performance in

the economic circumstances

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The company had deliberately added some areas of the portfolio in

recent years specifically to protect against economic downturn as

well as to make money in healthier times

Savings had pushed the gross margin over 60% for the first time in

the company’s 10-year history, an increase of almost fifteen

percentage points over the period

2010

Another 9% on the top line took sales to nearly £8.5 billion, like-for-

like growth of 6% and still a respectable 5%, excluding

pharmaceuticals

Once again, Health & Personal Care performed strongly, helped by

a good piece of cross-category innovation with the Surface Care

brands Dettol and Lysol each launching the No-Touch Hand Soap

System

Coming a year after the H1N1 scare Home Care increased by 8%

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RB Pharmaceuticals sale rise to £737 million

The RB Pharmaceuticals sales had also been boosted by the

company’s £100 million re-purchase of the European distribution

rights

Reckitt Benckiser was now most definitely in pharmaceuticals;

business the unit contributed 9% of the year’s total sales

The addition of SSL would increase the size of the Health &

Personal Care category by 36% and add two new brands to the

power brand list

2011

The Reckitt Benckiser’s M&A strategy had got the company into

higher-margin categories

Reckitt Benckiser had been far more focused on taking more power

brands into existing markets than in opening up new markets for

all the company’s brands

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2012

The machine they’re using had adjusted well to its new settings.

Top-line sales were up by barely 1% to £9.6 billion – all coming

from RB Pharmaceuticals – this masked a more robust like-for-like

increase of 4% when exchange rates were factored out

Health grew by 6%, helped by the Durex brand increasing its reach

in China, a growth rate matched by Hygiene in which Dettol Daily

Care, Lysol No-Touch Kitchen System and the Quantum brand all

made significant gains

RB Pharmaceuticals put on an additional 10% revenue with strong

volume growth in the key US market, tempered by the switch from

Suboxone tablets to lower-margin film

RUMEA was up by 8% primarily because of Russia and the rest of

the CIS

Reckitt Benckiser had been the most consistently managed of all

the world’s major packaged goods companies

Reckitt Benckiser strategy is to focus on the brands that were

advantaged in both profitability and growth prospects

The key elements of the company’s DNA are Consumer Focus,

Speed and Creative Tension

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Reckitt Benckiser has been one of the biggest consumer goods

success stories of the early 21st century

During their first twelve years its share price increased five times

more than Unilever’s

The company has been the subject of countless case studies in its

approach to innovation, not surprising, as it has set new

benchmarks for the level of innovation sustainable by a large

packaged goods company

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