The company`s old ad slogan-”Hey, Culligan Man!”-is as much a part of America`s collective memory as drive-in movies, Davey Crockett coonskin caps or ”I Like Ike” campaign buttons.
Now called Culligan International Co., with its 1,350 water treatment dealers spread across 92 countries, the Culligan Zeolite Co. started more than 50 years ago on an abandoned Northbrook street. That`s where the company`s founder, Emmett J. Culligan, poured zeolite, a synthetic form of green sand that, once dried, was used to make cheaper water softeners.
The company has since become much more. It treats water for everything from manufacturing processes and dishwashers to car washes and ice-cube machines, and now it is fighting for a bigger share of the bottled-water market.
A look at the history of Culligan, on its way from entrepreneur`s idea to multinational operation, is a look at modern American history, from the surge in the standard of living after World War II to today`s takeover mania on Wall Street.
It`s a history that Jean Culligan has seen much of. The widow of Tom Culligan, one of Emmett`s seven children, she watched the company grow as her own family grew, to 11 children, in their home near Naperville.
The family`s last formal ties to Culligan the company were broken within the last two years when Jean sold her remaining stock, the result of a series of Culligan changes that began when Beatrice Foods Co. acquired the firm in 1978.
The reasoning behind the move: Culligan`s founders owned substantial amounts of company stock; as they retired, present management control would decrease and likely open the company to a hostile takeover. They wanted to find a suitor with a strong interest in water treatment, and Beatrice was it. Last year Beatrice spun off Culligan as part of E-II Holdings, which in turn was acquired by American Brands in February. Just this month, American Brands sold E-II Holdings to McGregor Acquisition Corp., a subsidiary of New York-based Riklis Family Corp. Not quite what Emmett Culligan, who died in 1970, had in mind, says Jean Culligan.
”I don`t know if he would have liked it,” she says, relaxing recently in the front room of the family home, a portrait of Tom on the wall behind her. ”When you start something on your own, you like to see it continue to prosper on its own.”
Locally, the firm now is in for another change, albeit one with more symbolic than practical significance: Decades after Culligan and its competitors began softening the hard water that Du Page County residents are cursed with, softer water is coming.
Its source is Lake Michigan, by way of a system with 160 miles of pipeline, two major pumping stations and more than 90 million gallons of storage capacity at six sites. Approved by the state legislature in 1985, the $379 million system is being built by the Du Page Water Commission and promises to be the largest fresh-water public works project in the United States. The system is expected to begin serving 24 Du Page communities in 1992.
”If you`re going to have continued economic growth in Du Page County, you`re going to have to have a viable source of water,” says Robert Martin, assistant to the commission`s general manager.
The drought of 1988, with its municipal water bans, has added urgency. But the problem runs deeper. ”Current aquifers can only support 60 percent of the county`s population,” Martin says.
The bad news about the pipeline is that water rates will double or triple for Du Page residents served by it.
What do they get for their money? Most significantly, a more reliable source of water than the depleting aquifer used by most municipal and private wells in Du Page. Quality is the other major issue: Though it varies by community, the county`s well water is much harder than Lake Michigan water.
That`s not exactly good news for people in the water-softening business.
”I`m sure some people will keep their water softeners, but I bet you`ll find that the majority won`t,” Martin said.
Jean Culligan isn`t so sure and says Du Page dealers needn`t worry. ”You lose a percentage of your customers” when lake water arrives, she said, ”but you don`t go out of business because those who like soft water realize lake water is not zero-soft.”
She should know. Her husband owned franchises that covered several west suburbs around Brookfield, and some customers there stopped their water-softening service when their towns got lake water. But soon after, she says, many decided the lake`s softer water wasn`t soft enough.
It is still unclear what effect the new pipeline will have on dealers in Du Page, where an estimated 90 percent of homeowners have softeners, one of the highest concentrations in the country, according to Don Mahlstedt, vice president for marketing for Culligan U.S.A.
The county`s residents, for one, can more easily ”afford the luxury of a water softener” than some of their counterparts in suburban Cook County, says Dennis Marotta, the former owner of a Culligan dealership in south suburban Glenwood.
In any case, though, the importance of the pipeline is undeniable.
”It has tremendous significance,” Mahlstedt says. ”Obviously everyone has their own turf to protect . . . . The concern we have is that those sponsoring lake water have implied to the user that it is suitable for all uses and doesn`t need to be softened.”
Says dealer Tim FitzSimons, whose father in 1938 opened Culligan`s first franchise, in Wheaton: ”Initially, it`s going to have some effect only because people have been convinced that Lake Michigan water is soft when in fact it`s not.”
Technically, he`s right. As defined by the U.S. Geological Survey, hard water is any that has more than 120 parts per million of calcium and magnesium, the elements that give water its hardness. Municipal well water in Du Page ranges from 330 to 720 parts per million of those elements; most water softeners take it down to less than 17 parts per million. Lake Michigan water has about 130 parts per million.
”It`s better,” Jean says, ”but it`s not perfect.”
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Jean Woodbury met Tom Culligan in 1941 when she was a high school freshman in La Grange and he was a senior at Fenwick High School in Oak Park. Theirs became ”a romance by letters for four years,” Jean says, as Tom went off to the University of Santa Clara in California and then enlisted in the Naval Air Corps.
They were married in 1945, and after World War II both attended the University of Southern California, but never received degrees. Tom went straight into his father`s business.
”He was too anxious to start working,” Jean recalls. ”He wanted to be a soft-water man. He wanted to be in Culligan.”
As a boy, Tom would hide away in his father`s car to go to the original Northbrook plant. Later, Tom worked during the summer at the plant sweeping up the dried zeolite used in the first water softeners. (Most softeners now use more effecient ion-exchange resins.)
That summer job was the closest he would get for some time to being directly involved with the company`s home office. Emmett insisted on an anti- nepotism rule that prohibited family members of those on the company board from holding management positions; so Tom became a franchisee.
”(Emmett) just felt the business would run better if there wasn`t a lot of family in it,” Jean says.
For a few years after they were married, Tom and Jean lived in San Bernardino, Calif., where Emmett started a new plant in 1943, initially to help the war effort. Culligan was under contract with the government to produce silica gel, a material similar to zeolite that was used in packaging military parts to ensure they weren`t damaged by moisture.
Southern California was perfect for producing the gel because it allowed drying year-round. But it wasn`t ideal for raising children, Tom and Jean decided. They moved back to Chicago.
”There were roots back here,” Jean Culligan says. ”We liked the stability of the Midwest, as opposed to the unsettledness of California.”
After homes in Brookfield and La Grange Park, Culligan and her family moved in 1957 to their current Naperville house, where the youngest of her 11 children still lives.
With 10 of the children in the house at one time, the demand for soft water was so great that they installed a commercial unit.
An independent dealer for more than 20 years, Tom quickly moved into the company`s upper management after Emmett`s death in June, 1970. The company then asked Tom to become a director, and, after selling his dealerships to avoid any conflict of interest, he did.
So Tom was on the board on June 4, 1978, the day Beatrice acquired Culligan. But three years later the reorganization under Beatrice forced him to step down. With reluctance, he submitted his resignation.
After that, he ran his other business interests, including Burger King and Wendy`s franchises, out of an office on the second floor of the family home. He also continued to serve on the board of Illinois Benedictine College in Lisle.
Doctors diagnosed a brain tumor in November, 1982. He died 11 months later at the age of 60.
”He accepted it. He put people at ease,” Jean says of that period.
”They dreaded visiting, but they went away feeling uplifted. That`s the effect he had on them.”
Tom`s upstairs office now pays testimony to a man who was proud of his Irish heritage, his religion and his business. On one wall, next to a crucifix, hangs the flag of Ireland; pinned to it is a smaller red and white flag with the words ”Hey, Culligan Man!”
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In terms of water quality, what`s at stake with the arrival of softer water in Du Page, of course, is not critical. It`s a matter of individual preference.
”Water softening levels are very personal things,” says MaribethRobb of the Water Quality Association, a national trade association headquartered in Lisle that represents 2,200 water-conditioning dealers and manufacturers.
”It`s likely that people who are used to soft water will decide to continue to soften their water,” Robb says. ”When you`ve become accustomed to soft water, it`s hard to go back.
”People who are used to soft water” and abandon their softeners ”will likely notice a difference, a difference in the way the soap and shampoo in your shower lathers,” she adds. ”Your clothes may not look as clean or bright.”
Cosmetics isn`t the only issue. Hard water also produces scales in pipes that often make water heaters less efficient, Robb says.
Yet hard water isn`t always bad. ”As far as drinking, the hard water is probably better for you than soft water,” says Charles Bell, manager of field operations for the state Environmental Protection Agency`s Division of Public Water Supply in Springfield.
The reason: Hard water, by definition, contains more calcium and magnesium, both of which are required in the diet.
But how exactly is hard water produced?
The limestone aquifer used in Du Page, for instance, consists mainly of calcium and magnesium carbonates, the most significant elements in hard water, explains Jim Whitney, a chemist with the Illinois State Water Survey in Champaign.
As water flows through such rock, it picks up the carbonates and thus its hardness. Water softeners, in turn, exchange sodium for those elements.
All of which means little to the consumer, like Jean Culligan. She simply won`t tolerate the stuff.
”I can`t stand hard water,” she says. ”I absolutely hate it.”
