Rebranded Wallpaper Cleaner 🤔
The story of one of the most unusual pivots in business history led to one of our most popular toys.
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The problem with running a company is that it’s not always clear that you’re in the right business when you’re getting started.
Perhaps the product that you’re making has another use case that you haven’t considered at all. Perhaps the industry you’re in is going to change eventually, and if you can’t pivot, you won’t survive.
This is the fate that faced Kutol, a company that had invented a non-crumbling wallpaper cleaner, which is designed to remove dirt stains from walls. There was a very specific reason for wallpaper cleaner to exist—see, people used to heat their homes with coal, which meant that sediment would get on the walls. As people moved to other heating methods, Kutol’s wallpaper cleaner—a solid, doughy substance—would become less relevant.
Fortunately, a friend of the Kutol family had stumbled upon an idea. Kay Zufall, whose brother-in-law ran Kutol, had stumbled upon an article suggesting the wallpaper cleaner made a good crafting tool. Zufall, a teacher, tried this use case out, and found it effective and fun. On top of that, Kutol had an advantage that few cleaning products could claim at the time—it was non-toxic.
Soon enough, Kutol had rebranded its wallpaper cleaner as Play-Doh, and sold it under a separate brand name that was friendlier to crafting. Soon enough, that company was bought by the toy company Kenner, and then Hasbro bought Kenner. Play-Doh, a product intended to clean walls, had been reframed as a product of imagination.
Not a bad corporate pivot. Sure beats cleaning soot off walls.
» Wanna learn more? Check out our 2022 piece on corporate pivots, which also highlights how a major vacuum manufacturer built its name on music boxes.