Life Begins at 60

One day last summer, President Elmer Holmes Bobst of the Warner-Hudnut drug and cosmetic company phoned the head of Maltine Co., $3,000,000-a-year maker of drugs. "How about lunch today?" he asked. Replied Maltine's James Chilcott: "I'm just about to take off on a fishing trip. Is it really important?" Answered Bobst: "I just want to talk to you about buying your company."

Last week the talks which began in July ended successfully for President Bobst. In a stock swap deal, he bought control of the Maltine Co., set up its Chilcott drug-producing laboratories as a separate division of Warner-Hudnut, Inc. With the addition of Maltine, Bobst hopes to bring Warner-Hudnut's sales of drugs, now 30% of its total, into closer balance with its cosmetics sales.

The Old Folks. An art collector, tropical fish fancier and medical hobbyist (he has a library of 1,000 medical books), Elmer Bobst, 67, is also a keen student of geriatrics, has great faith "in the vast potential inherent in some 12 to 15 million people [in the U.S.] past the age of 65." Bobst himself is a testimonial to his faith. For him, life began anew at 60, when he came out of retirement to take over Warner-Hudnut. He also breathed new life into the company. Bobst launched a big expansion program, in six years boosted the company's sales by 70% to $45 million, its net from $2,639,000 to $3,300,000 for 1951.

Bobst got his start as a $3-a-week pill pusher in Philadelphia, studied pharmacy at night, and got his license at 20. After managing a number of drugstores in the city, he landed a job as Philadelphia representative for Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc., a big pharmaceutical house. Bobst called on all the doctors in the area, sold so many drugs that when Hoffmann-La Roche was going under in the 1920 depression, he was made general manager. He promoted new products, cut overhead, soon had the company in the black. He was made president, boosted to $300,000 a year, and retired in 1944--but not for long.

The head of Warner-Hudnut (then William R. Warner & Co., Inc.), a longtime Bobst friend, was ailing, and thought his company needed someone new at the top; he asked Bobst to take over. "The business was dominated by cosmetic cooks," Bobst recalls. "They built their products on the basis of sight, smell and feel. They had no regard for the needs of the skin and hair." Bobst changed all that by putting a top chemist in charge of Warner's cosmetics research.

The New Products. He started to broaden Warner's lines by buying up companies at bargain rates. He picked up Courtley's men's toiletries for $1,500,000 (last year's sales: $1,200,000), got a cut-rate deal on Chen Yu (nail polish and lipstick), and paid $1,000,000 for Raymond Laboratories, maker of Rayve shampoos and home permanents (later sold to Lever Bros, for $5,000,000). Bobst also brought out Hudnut's own line of men's toilet goods and heavily plugged such oldtime Warner standbys as the famed Sloan's Liniment and the DuBarry Success Schools.

In the drug field, Bobst brought out an antihistamine, candy-coated vitamins (for children), an anticoagulant used in thrombosis cases ($125 a shot) and a new preparation for ulcers. Company gagsters like to say that Bobst worries his competitors into ulcers, then supplies the relief.

Nevertheless Bobst does not think he has yet realized his own "vast potential." Last week, having set up Maltine as a separate Warner-Hudnut division, he was looking over two more companies that he would like to buy.

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