Old-time remedies still do the trick
Little did young entrepreneur W.T. RAWLEIGH realize, when he started peddling medicinals door-to-door in a mortgaged buggy in 1889, that his medicinals would still be selling more than a century later
Published on
Sep 01, 2007
It was the vaulting horse in the YWCA kids' gymnastics class that did it. I had sailed from the springboard, grabbed the handles with left leg tucked neatly against my chest and the right extended to the side, but forgot to let go with my right hand and landed squarely on my arm.
"Here," said my dad, as I nursed the sprained wrist. "I've used this all my life."
He produced an old-looking round tin that, to my younger self, seemed to confirm that it was indeed something he had used all his life, bearing little resemblance to the other tubes and jars that inhabited our medicine cabinet. It contained a creamy ointment that smelled like nothing in my experience, although not unpleasant, an odour I now associate with camphor. On my wrist the ointment felt warm and soothing. In record time, the pain diminished and then disappeared.
I had become a lifelong fan of Rawleigh's Ointment.
I'm still using the product, some four decades later, for a host of ailments from sprains to headaches to cold and flu relief (rubbing it on your feet before bed, as well as on the chest and throat, works wonders for those symptoms).
I'm not alone in my devotion to the product, says Harry Hersey III, president of Florida-based Goldshield Elite, the company that purchased W.T. Rawleigh Co. in 1989. Despite the fact that the products are not sold in stores but by a network of individual distributors around the world, "we find it has such a high demand," he says.
The distribution harkens back to Rawleigh's beginnings, more than a century ago, when W.T. Rawleigh began peddling medicinals he had developed door-to-door in a mortgaged buggy pulled by Bill, an old, blind horse.
That was in 1889. Three years into his business the young entrepreneur -- he was just 18 when he started out -- had a new horse and wagon and a net worth of about $5,000, a fortune for the time.
By the turn of the century, says Hersey, Rawleigh had created a significant sales force and a "deeply vertically integrated" company, controlling all aspects from owning the glass bottle manufacturing plant to selling the wagons to his salesmen. "They actually sourced all the raw materials with representatives around the world and brought them into their own factories. The company was so large that, at one point in time, it had a monopoly on the worldwide pepper market."
In later years, the "Rawleigh man" continued to bring a growing line of medicinal, cosmetic, nutritional and household products to homes across North America. Today the Rawleigh men and women sell their wares at markets and fairs and, of course, in cyberspace.
"We're one of the few companies that can say we have truly time-tested products," Hersey says.
The reason for the continued popularity, he maintains, is the fact that the products work and that he attributes to the quality of the ingredients and the way the formulations are put together, something that has changed little since Rawleigh's day. The company always took pride in scouring the world for the best ingredients. For example, Hersey says, camphor is available from many sources and can range in grade "and that's going to make a difference in the effectiveness of the product."
While research and development is ongoing, the company won't fool around with the century-old favourites. For pain relief these include the ointment, a rub-on oil, camphor balm and a deep-heating lanolin rub.
And these products look exactly the same as they did for most of the last century. In the seventies, Hersey says, the company decided to modernize the tins and bottles but Goldshield has returned them to their original look. It's a heritage to be proud of, he maintains.
For moreon the Rawleigh legacy, visit rawleigh.net on-line.