0816_TOEFL-Test-and-Score-Manual-1997

134 ● 201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business
For more information, visit www.yet2.com or contact Tim Bernstein
at (781) 972-0600.
GREAT
Have Your Product Mandated
for Use by the Government
IDEA Keeping clients who get their hair cut healthy and safe
is the sole mission of King Research.
In the 1940s, Maurice King, founder of King Research Inc. in Brooklyn,
cornered the market on a disinfectant used in barbershops and salons.
King, who developed Barbicide, the bright-blue disinfectant for haircutters,
traveled around the country with his younger brother, James, pitching state
health officials on the virtues of his sanitizing liquid.
“Sure enough, state officials began to pass rules that there be a disinfectant
[in barber shops] and in some cases, they said, ‘Sure, Mr. King, but
can you suggest a product?’” recalls Maurice’s son, Ben King. “ ‘Why, yes!’
my father replied. ‘Barbicide! It’s germicidal and fungicidal.’ ”
When the product was mandated, sales took off, according to Ben King,
who serves as chief executive officer and president of the business.
Barbicide sales soared when states required haircutters to soak their
tools between customers. Although there are competitors now, Barbicide
is still the industry standard.
The company celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in the late 1990s with
a party at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American
History. The company presented the museum with a jar of Barbicide—and
a donation. Maurice King, who died of a heart attack in 1988, would have
gotten a big kick out of the ceremony, which included, of course, a performance
by a barbershop quartet.
King’s employees now make 20 different products, including talcs, hospital
disinfectants, and creams. But bright, almost neon blue Barbicide is
still the flagship brand.
“My father’s secret joke was that he had a rash on his scalp and whenever
barbers pricked him, it hurt like the devil,” says Ben King. “When he
developed Barbicide, he decided to name it as such because it translated
into ‘kill the barber.’ I don’t think he ever put that into his advertising.”