World's Oldest Brands | CBC Radio (2023)

This week, we search for some of the world's oldest brands. 80% of companies fold after 18 months, the ones that survive average a 50 year life span - then there are the ones that manage to last 100, 300 or sometimes even 600 years. We'll look at a retail store that began in 1670, a brewery that poured its first beer in 1366, and the oldest fast food joint that used root beer to attract drinkers during Prohibition. Join us as we look for the magical ingredient in companies that last centuries.

One day in 1858, a man by the name of Hymen Lipman had an idea.

He was in the stationery business, and something had always bothered him.

When he wrote with a pencil, he was always searching for misplaced erasers. So he thought, why not put an eraser on the top of the pencil?

So he did.

As a matter of fact, he embedded the India rubber inside the pencil, taking up 25% of the pencil's length. So in order to use the pencil and eraser, you had to sharpen both ends.

An entrepreneur named Joseph Reckendorfer saw the pencil, and immediately offered Lipman $100,000 for the rights to the invention.

Reckendorfer must have had visions of untold riches dancing in his head, because $100,000 in 1858 is the equivalent of $2 million today.

But Reckendorfer was convinced he was holding a revolutionary invention in his hand. He actually improved the pencil by creating a receptacle at the top to hold the eraser, so writers no longer had to sharpen the pencil to expose the pink rubber.

In 1875, pencil maker Eberhard Faber started manufacturing built-in erasers, so Reckendorfer sued the company to protect his patent.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Reckendorfer, stating that all Lipman had done originally was combine an eraser, which was a known commodity, with a pencil, which was a known commodity – and the combination didn't result in a patentable invention.

That meant any company could now manufacture pencils with built-in erasers without paying any royalties.

While Reckendorfer lost a considerable fortune, the world gained an invaluable writing instrument.

The typical lead pencil looks so simple, yet it is capable of drawing a line 35 miles long, the equivalent of 45,000 words.

So many of the world's great companies were hatched as a pencil doodle on the back of an envelope or napkin.

And you can't overstate the importance of the eraser in those doodles, allowing ideas to be polished, reworked and refined.

The humble pencil with eraser… an indispensable product born over 158 years ago.

In the world of marketing, there are a surprising number of companies that were also nearly 100 years old.

There are some companies still in business today that are over 300 years old. And - there are even a few that have been marketing their products for over 600 years.

It takes a special company to survive a century, to weather economic ups and downs and to outlast bitter rivals.

What is the magic that makes them the world's oldest brands…

According to Forbes Magazine, 8 out 10 new businesses fold in the first 18 months.

That's an 80% crash and burn rate.

Most companies have a life span of 50-60 years.

You need a great product, visionary leadership, and maybe most difficult – you need a succession of good leaders over the years.

That's why you have to raise a beer to the companies that not only survive, but thrive.

The beer category boasts some of the longest-lasting companies in the world.

For example, the Stiegl Brewery was founded in 1492. Grolsch was started in 1615. And Smithwick's poured its first Irish ale in 1710.

But one of the oldest is Stella Artois, which goes all the way back to the year 1366.

The company was originally called the Den Hoorn Brewery, and was known for quality taste and high brewing standards.

In 1717, a man named Sebastian Artois bought the brewery, and renamed it Stella Artois. "Stella" was the Latin word for "star" – implying quality.

And that was the Stella Artois story, and it enjoyed a prosperous and fruitful existence for the next 285 years.

One day in the early 2000s, Stella Artois made a fateful decision that would have a serious impact on its reputation.

It decided to begin selling its beer in supermarkets.

It made sense on paper – supermarkets gave the brand thousands of new selling locations, and the weekly trips to grocery stores might turn into weekly purchases of Stella.

But then an unexpected thing happened.

Supermarkets began heavily discounting Stella Artois. They treated it as a loss leader, using it as a way to attract people into the grocery stores, hoping they would spend their money on other more profitable items.

With that steep discount, Stella's typical buyers changed almost overnight. Suddenly, heavy drinking young men began buying Stella.

The price was now cheap – and more importantly – the alcohol content was high. Stella had 5.2% alcohol, versus the usual 4.7%.

A high number of these young men were binge drinkers, or soccer hooligans, as the press called them. They were prone to anti-social behaviour, and many photographs of vandalism showed the men brandishing cans of Stella Artois.

When that image spread, three things happened:

First, the upper scale market quit buying Stella.

Second, respectable pubs stopped carrying the brand, because it attracted an undesirable crowd.

And third, the long-time slogan of "Reassuringly Expensive" didn't make any sense anymore.

Stella Artois found itself at odds with its own image – after 630 years of success.

Stella Artois was now one of the oldest brands in the world, and one of the most stigmatized.

The solution was to reclaim its heritage.

So a new advertising agency was hired to rebrand Stella Artois. First, the brewery pulled its brand out of certain supermarkets and low-end pubs. Then it created powerful marketing that highlighted its quality ingredients and high brewing standards - and told that story consistently in a series of beautifully-filmed television commercials with the new theme line:

Stella then launched a lower-alcohol content lager, to battle the binge drinker.

It also printed a widely distributed "9-step pouring ritual" poster:

Then the brewery had a special glass designed to pour its lager into – and called it the Stella Artois chalice.

From the new theme line to the new advertising, to the 9-step pouring instructions to the chalice, to the lower-alcohol lager to the rethink of its distribution, Stella Artois convinced the public to look at the beer in a brand new way.

In other words, it changed the conversation.

With that, Stella reclaimed its premium status, the upper scale market came back, the vandals went away, and a now 650-year old brewery – that had survived centuries, and wars and feast and famine – had survived its greatest test yet:

Supermarkets.

In Canada, the oldest major brewery was started by a young man from England.

His name was John Molson.

Remarkably, he was just 22 when he started his brewery on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. And he did it 80 years before Canada became a country.

Molson was a man of vision, and built his brewery into a major corporation. He also built a hotel, Montreal's first theatre, the first Canadian-made steamboat and helped build Montreal's first public hospital.

When John Molson died at the age of 72, he had just begun construction on his biggest project yet – Canada's first railroad.

The Molson family continued his legacy, and even opened the Molson Bank in 1855, which operated until 1925 when it merged with the oldest bank in Canada – the Bank Of Montreal.

Molson has been closely associated with hockey in this country since 1957, when Senator Hartland Molson bought the Montreal Canadiens, which led to Molson becoming a big sponsor of Hockey Night In Canada.

As a marketer, Molson has created some well-known commercials over the years. In the '60s, a famous Molson Canadian song was created, and was sung by a bevy of stars, including Paul Anka:

And of course, Maybe the most famous Molson Canadian commercial of all time is titled "The Rant" performed by none other than Jeff Douglas, co-host of CBC's As It Happens:

It was a commercial that probably made Labatt swallow a little hard back then.

Today, Molson has merged with Coors to become the fifth largest brewery in the world.

And it all started when a 22-year old had an idea 230 years ago.

When it comes to retailers, Canada boasts the oldest store in North America.

The Hudson's Bay Company - established in 1670.

It all began when two French fur traders recognized there were riches to be had in the Hudson's Bay area, but they couldn't get any backing from French or American interests.

So they asked King Charles II of England to fund a trading company. The King then granted a charter to his cousin and a group of associates, establishing the Hudson's Bay Company, then called, "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson's Bay."

The charter also granted a million and a half square miles of western and northern Canada to the company. It was more than 40% of the modern nation, and a sixth of North America.

What's interesting about that enormous land grant was that Charles believed it was his to give – simply because no other Christian monarch had claimed it.

So, for all intents and purposes, the Hudson's Bay Company owned Canada for the next 200 years. For much of that time, it issued its own money. It built and maintained forts across the country.

Then, in 1870, three years after Confederation, the Hudson's Bay Company signed a Deed of Surrender, giving up its governmental powers and most of its vast land holdings to the now self-governed Dominion of Canada.

In terms of land area, it was one of the largest real estate transactions in history.

Historically speaking, the Hudson's Bay Company should have been lost to the sands of time, like most other companies from that era.

Yet it had a stubborn adaptability. It survived brutal weather, wars between the English and French, and bloody clashes with rival traders. But the Hudson's Bay Company was still run by a group of tough adventurers, and it provided necessary outposts in the early days of the country.

As the population grew and gold prospectors rushed to the Klondike, the trading posts turned into stores. Over the ensuing years, you could buy apparel at HBC stores, as well as house furnishings, floor coverings, appliances, sporting goods, jewellery, china and whiskey. It was once the largest distributor of tobacco in Canada. You could rent a canoe from one store and return it to another. You could even get a marriage licence from the Winnipeg location.

At one point, HBC owned the Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas Company.

Today, there are 90 Hudson's Bay locations across Canada. From its establishment back in 1670, the company has sold its goods continuously for nearly 350 years.

Making it – by far - the oldest retailer in North America.

When it comes to fast food, what do you think is the oldest company?

The answer…

Originally, Roy Allen was in the business of buying and renovating hotels.

One day while arranging a deal in Tucson, Arizona, a pharmacist gave Allen a taste of a new drink called Root Beer, and he was so enamoured with it, he bought the rights to the recipe in 1919.

With that, he opened a root beer stand in Lodi, California.

The stand turned into a success – but the reason why is most interesting.

That very year, 1919, the Volstead Act was passed.

If you don't recognize that law, you may know it by its other name: Prohibition.

That's when Roy Allen saw an opportunity. Because the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages was outlawed, Allen capitalized on the name Root BEER. He knew the word beer would attract customers, and soldiers returning from World War I flocked to his establishment to swig a Root Beer.

Allen even went as far as decorating his stand like a tavern, with bar and stools.

With business booming, he opened a second location in Stockton, California. In 1920, Allen formed a partnership with an employee named Frank Wright, and together they open five more outlets.

Using their initials, Allen and Wright branded their product "A&W ROOT BEER."

America was now on the move with the emergence of the automobile, so the partners come up with the idea of transforming A&W Root Beer stands into A&W drive-in restaurants.

They borrowed the idea of bellhops from hotels and created carhops to bring the food out to customers, who ate in the comfort of their cars.

Allen eventually bought Wright out in 1924, he registered the A&W logo, and established a franchise chain. While growth slowed during the Depression years, the company continued to expand, and by the end of the '30s, there were 170 A&W franchises.

By the late 50s, there were over 1,900 A&W restaurants in the U.S., and the first Canadian restaurant opened in Winnipeg in 1956.

With their famous frosted mugs, the Burger Family, and the Root Bear, A&W today has 800 locations in Canada, and 1,200 in the USA.

And it all started with a root beer recipe – during the heart of prohibition - nearly 100 years ago.

Speaking of drive-in restaurants and automobiles, what do you think is the oldest vehicle still being produced in North America?

The answer… is the Chevrolet Suburban.

During the Depression, the prevailing vehicles for moving people and goods around were car-based wagons.

Most of those wagons had wooden siding and canvas roofs, and were easily damaged, so Chevrolet decided to build a steel wagon body mounted on a truck frame.

They called it the "CarryAll Suburban" and launched the truck in 1935. It was an instant hit with commercial buyers. During the Second World War, Chevy and GMC continued to build Suburbans for military use.

But what really fuelled Suburban sales after the war, was – fittingly - the birth of suburbs. Growing families were leaving city centres for more affordable housing in outlying areas, and they needed spacious vehicles to navigate those sprawling new neighbourhoods.

Plus, as the highway construction increased, people could move across the country like never before. Even though the term SUV was quite a few decades away, the Suburban became the utility vehicle of choice for families.

Like the Hudson's Bay Company, the Suburban had a stubborn adaptability. Its design moved with the times, and it also appealed to police fleets, emergency response units, school bus companies, commercial businesses and more.

Even today, rather than slowing down in its old age, the 81-year old Chevrolet Suburban is still a big seller despite a lot of competition.

It's the oldest automotive nameplate still in production, and it carries the distinction as the only vehicle sold today that was actually tested by founder Louis Chevrolet himself.

When it comes to companies that have survived for hundreds of years, it's always interesting to discover the reason for their existence.

For example, the London Gazette newspaper has been published since 1665.

It was born because of the great plague in Britain.

When the disease was ravaging London, King Charles II - the same King Charles who would charter the Hudson's Bay Company five years later – removed his court from London and relocated to the relative safety of Oxford.

Because he was out of the country's capital, he ordered the publication of a paper in order to communicate with his subjects.

Hence, the birth of the London Gazette – 350 years ago.

A lot of the products we take for granted every day have managed to survive for over 100 years.

And when you think of that achievement, you have to take into account all the competitors these products have had to fight off to survive

Take Tabasco Sauce, for example.

Tabasco is actually a brand name.

It was developed by a banker named Edmund McIlhenny in 1865, after the Civil War destroyed his financial business.

So he began growing peppers on Avery Island, near the eastern salt marshes of Louisiana.

He crushed the peppers, mixed in island salt, added French white vinegar and let the mixture age for 60 days.

He then sold his creation in small perfume bottles.

McIlhenny chose the name "Tabasco" – which was a Mexican word for "a place where the soil is humid."

It was a humble start – but now people go through 450,000 bottles of Tabasco sauce every day – totalling over 160 million bottles annually.

Every bottle is fitted with a top that only allows one drop at a time – after all, it is hot sauce.

And just so you know, each bottle of Tabasco contains 720 drops.

The brand has survived for over 147 years in the ultra competitive condiment category.

But Tabasco – along with all the other remarkable companies we've talked about today - understands the secret to longevity.

You just have to make the competition sweat…

As an entrepreneur myself, I know – firsthand – how difficult it is to get a company off the ground, and keep it off the ground.

When you realize that 80% of new companies fail in the first 18 months, and the ones that do make it usually last for about 50 years – the fact some companies survive for over 100 is remarkable.

Let alone the ones that have lasted over 300 years.

Or 600.

No company sails effortlessly through time. There are financial headwinds, economic shoals, leadership storms, and a never-ending convoy of hungry competitors eager to torpedo you and take your lunch money.

But in each of the stories today, the companies shared a unique ability to seize surprising opportunities and overcome adversity.

A&W saw an opportunity when Prohibition was announced. King Charles II created the London Gazette when the plague forced him out of the city.

Then there's that stubborn adaptability. The Hudson's Bay Company survived against all odds to celebrate 346 years. The inventor of Tabasco sauce decided to grow peppers when his banking business failed.

And Stella Artois had to solve a serious setback in its 636th year of existence, proving no matter how experienced a company is, it is never immune from pitfalls.

Maybe stubborn adaptability really is the key to all business success.

It's the ability to sharpen that pencil every morning, erase the failures, and never give up…

…when you're under the influence.