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The Everyman’s Desk

Brought to you by

The Larkin Idea

all this and more just for buying soap

An antique Larkin golden oak desk by Judy Gonyeau, managing editor
with mirror and shelves in very good
condition selling on eBay for $650
photo: eBay

The Larkin Soap Company A few days later the ‘slinger’
would return and collect
The Larkin Soap Company (aka Larkin Company) began as a payment for whatever the lady
small soap-making factory located in Buffalo, New York. As the cared to buy.”
“Manufacturer of Plain and Fancy Soaps,” founder John Durrant Larkin hired a second
Larkin began his career working at the soap factory owned by his salesman for the Boston area
brother-in-law, Justice Weller. He stayed with the company, becoming in 1878 by the name of
a partner when it moved to Chicago. In 1875, he sold out his interest Darwin Martin. Martin
and moved back to Buffalo quickly gained his footing
with his wife, Frances within the company and
Hubbard, and established became Larkin’s first office
his own soap factory. worker in 1880, helping
The business started out Larkin with the administrative
slowly, but every aspect of work that to that point had
the administrative and been done solely by Larkin.
development tasks were The hiring of Martin in
Elbert Hubbard was a businessman-turned-
focused on its first product 1878 was also a time when the marketing guru who, after climbing to the highest
– a yellow laundry soap diversity of products offered ranks of the Larkin Soap Company before the age of
called “Sweet Home Soap.” had expanded to nine differ- thirty, decided he was spiritually empty.
Larkin had one salesman, ent soaps, including Boraxine He moved to East Aurora, a country town south
his brother-in-law Elbert soap powder, an Elite toilet of Buffalo, and established an Arts and Crafts
“Bert” Hubbard. According soap, and the creation of a community called Roycroft. The movement was in
to the biography John D. Glycerine soap. With the protest to the industrial revolution, he said, which
Larkin: A Business Pioneer, variety of soap products was rendering handcrafted goods obsolete. Roycroft
“Bert was out on the road expanding, Hubbard created a soon became a site for the meetings of socialists,
most of the period from marketing product that would freethinkers, and suffragists.
1875 to 1878, when he get information about Larkin products into more consumer’s hands –
entered into a partnership the use of mail-order with buying incentives. The concept took off,
with his brother-in-law. but Hubbard was looking in another direction after the concept
With his growing army of proved itself to be a hit marketing tactic.
[contract] salesmen, he When Hubbard resigned from the company and cashed out his
spread the news about stock, Darwin Martin purchased it and assumed Hubbard’s title of
Larkin soaps from Boston Secretary of the company. After Martin experienced a severe nervous
John Durrant Larkin (September 29, 1845 - to Chicago and from collapse in 1897 and took eight weeks off from work, Larkin, realizing
February 15, 1926) was an American business Milwaukee to New Orleans. that more help was needed and hired family member William Heath,
magnate who pioneered the mail-order business At first the method of sell- a Chicago attorney, who was married to Mary, a sister of Elbert
model, developed (with business partner and ing, which the salesmen Hubbard and John Larkin’s wife, Hannah Frances.
brother-in-law Elbert Hubbard) the marketing referred to as ‘soap sling-
strategy of offering premiums to customers, ing,’ was a simple matter of Hubbard, meantime, went on to found the free-thinking, eccentric
introduced revolutionary employment innovations, Roycroft Arts and Crafts community in East Aurora, New York in
and commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's first major going door to door and 1895. He wrote prolifically and published his own books along with
public work, the Larkin Administration Building; offering a box of soap for two magazines as the leader of what was called “The Roycrofters” or
and founded Buffalo Pottery in 1901. the lady of the house to try. “The Roycroft Shops.”

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