Chewing Off a Piece of Success: Wrigley’s Gum Starts to Taste Even Sweeter

That year, Wrigley Jr. introduced his first two brands: Lotta Gum and Vassar. This was soon followed by Juice Fruit and Wrigley Spearmint, two of the company's oldest and most successful brands.

Chewing gum was nothing new at the time. Indeed, there were over a dozen other companies in the U.S. manufacturing and selling their own brands of gum. In 1899, the six largest of these companies merged to form "the chewing gum trust."

Wrigley Jr. had only been on the scene for a few years, but his success was evident even to his competitors. It was not long before the baking powder and soap were a thing of the past for Wrigley Jr. In fact, despite being such a newcomer to the gum industry, his young company was offered a place in the newly formed trust.

The prospect of going up against six of the largest gum companies in the country was a daunting one for Wrigley Jr. Yet, he still refused to join the trust. He continued to plow ahead with his own vision and put everything he had into his own company. He came close to declaring bankruptcy and shutting operations down several times, but he always managed to bounce back.

Wrigley Jr. had made the right decision to stay his own course, and by 1910, he was able to open up his first factories outside the U.S. First, he expanded to Canada, and then overseas to Australia and the U.K. In 1914, Wrigley Jr. launched Doublemint, which remains one of the best selling gum brands in the world to this day.

Business was so successful that Wrigley Jr. felt confident enough to move forward with another one of his dreams in life: building one of the country's most architecturally impressive corporate headquarters. Before any other company had established itself on the north side of the Chicago River, Wrigley Jr. decided to make the move. The Wrigley Building, a world famous modern day symbol of Chicago, was completed in 1924, and launched the development of Chicago's "Magnificent Mile."

Wrigley Jr. passed away in 1932 at the age of 70. Today, the company he founded has become the number one maker of chewing gum products in the world, with over 16,000 employees and revenues in excess of $5 billion in 2007. Its brands include the ever-popular Big Red, Extra, Freedent, Juicy Fruit, Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape, Altoids, and Life Savers. In 2008, after being kept in the family for over a century, the Wrigley family decided to sell the company to rival candy company Mars.