On left: Laxakola packaging from Harvest of History; on right: photo from Mr. History’s Flickr Photostream
I usually post something here regularly, Monday through Friday, but yesterday I couldn’t quite manage it... I knew that I wanted to feature the “Laxakola” bottle above, but I was stuck on the idea of comparing or contrasting it with Coca-Cola, and it just wasn’t happening.
Then I found this story by turn-of-the-century adman, Charles Austin Bates, and thought it was way more interesting...
Story of a Patent Medicine That Was Introduced by an Advertising Expert.
I am invited to tell the story of Laxakola.
It is a sad tale.
It was in 1899 that I listened to the siren song of Samuel M. Crombie, and was lured into an effort to establish a patent medicine business.
Before that I had known that Dr. Pierce had an assortment of steam yachts, house boats, and other things that seemed to me desirable, and that Dr. Shoop owned the finest dogs and guns in the State of Wisconsin, and had sufficient leisure to enjoy them.
I knew all about how Dr. J. C. Ayer had made his millions in sarsaparilla, and how the inventor of California Fig Syrup was living on Nob Hill in San Francisco.
The patent medicine business certainly does look beautiful—from the outside.
Mr. Crombie had invented Laxakola, and had induced quite a number of people in Ypsilanti to use it. I tested it out on various unsuspecting friends, and it seemed all right.
There didn’t seem to be any reason why I should insist on keeping the good thing all to myself, so a prospectus was sent out, inviting subscriptions to the stock of the company. The capitalization was modest—only three million dollars.
The circular was headed: “A Rare Chance for a Gamble,” and in it was set forth the stories I had accumulated, which told of the fabulous wealth of all the patent medicine men and the ease with which it had been acquired.
Incidentally, subscriptions to the stock of the Laxakola Company were invited from people who were prepared to lose without weeping and wailing, and it was distinctly stated that we did not want money from any one who, if he lost his money, would wear sackcloth and ashes the balance of his life.
Pretty quickly, we had subscriptions for sixty or seventy thousand dollars, and, in addition to this, the company had on hand quite a large amount of space in newspapers over the country, this space having been accumulated in the course of my business as an advertising agent and publisher. That looked like a pretty good start, especially as we had in Mr. Crombie a man who had had long experience in the drug business, both as a retailer and as a salesman on the road for jobbing and manufacturing druggists.
Nevertheless, it seemed to me that we needed all the wisdom we could get. and, on the recommendation of John Adams Thayer and William C. Freeman, of the Journal, diplomatic negotiations were entered into with Joseph Hamlin Phinney, Jr., the then manager of the Cuticura business.
Mr. Phinney came over and talked to us, and his conversation sounded so good and positive that we were sure we could not get along without him.
We showed Mr. Phinney our bank book, and he said that if our stuff was any good, he couldn’t see any use for all that money—that five thousand dollars ought to be plenty. Also, he told us the story of the start of the Cuticura business, when Mr. Geo. R. White put some large vigorous ads in the Boston Sunday Globe, and on Monday morning had to call out the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, of Boston, to quell the riot of those seeking Cuticura at the doors of the Weeks & Potter Co.
When it came to terms, Mr. Phinney said all he wanted was a nice square chunk of money at the end of each month, and a larger oblong bundle of stock at the end of the year if he sold either fifty thousand or one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Laxakola—I don’t remember which was the sum, but that is immaterial, because the entire sales from that time to this day have not equaled either of them.
With all of our immense advertising ability, combined with the medicine knowledge of Mr. Crombie and Mr. Phinney, and with about forty thousand dollars of real money in the Chemical Bank, it looked as if we were ready to go ahead. So we turned the crank a few times and started off at the third speed.
Crombie was sure that our only salvation lay in co-operating with the Proprietary Medicine Association, the Retail Druggists’ Association and the Jobbers’ Association.
Phinney, having gone through several fights with these aggregations, knew of a very definite and very warm locality to which he was not only willing, but anxious, to consign them.
The result was that we tried out Laxakola in the West on the Crombie plan, and in Boston and New England on the Phinney plan.
Phinney’s idea was to put the ads in the papers and let the druggists “go to blazes.” He knew that if we sent in enough calls for the stuff, the druggists would have to buy.
Crombie’s idea was to canvass the druggist, sell him as much Laxakola as he would consent to buy, and then advertise to help him get rid of it.
I believe they are both good systems, but neither one of them created any excitement at the Laxakola office.
We did manage to place a few gross, but after a few months we found that we were not getting any re-orders. Instead, we were getting some complaints intermixed among the testimonials.
Various experiments seemed to demonstrate that when Laxakola was fresh out of the barrel it was all right, but, after a few months of close communion in the bottle, some of the other ingredients so acted on the senna, as to render it wholly ineffectual and thus eliminated the “early-rising” feature so essential in such preparations.
By the time we had this trouble located and corrected, and had exchanged new Laxakola for old, we had managed to get rid of a very large part of our cash.
We had proven to our own dissatisfaction that, in our case at least, Mr. Phinney’s plan wouldn’t work, so we employed some salesmen to go into the smaller towns, sell Laxakola to the druggist, make an advertising contract with the newspaper, and arrange for a distribution of booklets.
There were some weeks in which tht salesmen’s gross sales amounted to almost as much as their salaries. That was encouraging, but not profitable. However, we seemed to gain a little ground all the while, so that by the end of the third or fourth year, it looked as if there might be a week sometimes in which we would pay expenses—if we regarded the advertising expenditure as an investment and not as an expense.
We never did quite reach that delectable time, and it was continuously necessary to get more money to go ahead with.
At this point there came to the front a gentleman with a true sporting spirit—Mr. Hamilton Carhartt, of Detroit, who, when he is not touring the Continent in his de Luxe devil-wagon, is engaged in manufacturing clothing which only Union men are permitted to wear.
Mr. Carhartt originally came into the gamble with five thousand dollars. Later on. he added five thousand dollars more, and still later agreed to pay in two hundred dollars a week up to ten thousand dollars additional.
After paying this for a number of weeks, a slight frost set in in the region of his pedal extremities, and he expressed unwillingness to go ahead with the proposition unless some of the other four or five hundred stockholders would also chip in. None of them exhibited any wild desire to do so.
(The rest of the story & a Laxakola testimonial ad, after the fold...)
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