William Wrigley Jr Quotes
100 William Wrigley Jr Quotes
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[On being a contrarian in his advertising when he built the Wrigley Building] It was better advertising not to plaster my name on the building. People talk more about it.
William Wrigley Jr
[On being able to produce the best advertising results by going against the herd] It is the unusual thing – the thing they didn’t expect me to do.
William Wrigley Jr
The first man I hired when I started selling chewing gum was paid seven dollars and a half a week and pushed a wheelbarrow around town.
William Wrigley Jr
He knew how to be loyal. He knew how to do his job and give the best he had. He sold himself to me all right.
William Wrigley Jr
People do not buy much from a man who fails to command their respect.
William Wrigley Jr
Even in a little thing like a stick of gum, quality is important.
William Wrigley Jr
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack run get your Wrigley stick!
William Wrigley Jr
He can go ahead and do anything so long as he doesn’t know he can’t do it.
William Wrigley Jr
[On tearing up contract when a vendor said he’d lose money because Wrigley had made himself such a good deal] We don’t want to do business with anybody who loses money on us. [You can’t win long-term at the expense of business partners.]
William Wrigley Jr
There’s no use leaving a baseball team to the tender mercies of an estate, or to be managed by a bank or trust company.
William Wrigley Jr
[On being asked about religion] What’s your superstition?
William Wrigley Jr
Every Chicago baseball fan owns a controlling interest in the Cubs – in his own mind.
William Wrigley Jr
Every man who ever made good with me as a salesman has been a sticker.
William Wrigley Jr
In the depression of 1907. Advertising of all sorts had fallen off. Everywhere among manufacturers you heard reasons for not advertising, for exercising less than the ordinary selling effort. The more I thought about the attitude, the more I wondered at it. It was not only that they were not taking advantage of the ordinary opportunities. They were missing something that looked to me tremendously like an extraordinary opportunity…
William Wrigley Jr
There was a time when the Cubs were in red ink to the extent of almost half a million dollars. It doesn’t require much imagination to realize how such a deficit would have affected an owner interested only in the financial outcome of the undertaking.
William Wrigley Jr
‘It’s a rainy day,’ said Caleb, ‘and there are no customers. I am keeping thee busy. Whether there is any sense in it or not, I pay thee thy wages, and can tell thee to do what I please.’
William Wrigley Jr
In 1902 I decided to storm New York with publicity. I spent $100,000 and hardly made a ripple. It was money dropped into a hole, so far as anyone could see… I tried a third time, after recuperating, and this time with a quarter of a million. I wanted to get the dropped $200,000 back. I did – plus.
William Wrigley Jr
I have no secrets. We’re all here to make this business go, and for no other reason. Every time a man walks in or out, I’ve made some more money.
William Wrigley Jr
The art of salesmanship can be stated in five words: Believing something, and convincing others. That is easy to say. But selling is not easy. A salesman has to master himself; he has to know human nature and like people; he has to be able to stand up and take it on the jaw; he has to stick when they call him a fool for sticking; he has to work hard, late, and long. Success is not easy. But it is worth the price.
William Wrigley Jr
When I was traveling among the tall-grass towns of Pennsylvania selling soap for my father, I used to drive a four-horse, six-spring wagon painted bright red, with a collar of sleigh bells on each horse. One horse would have been plenty to haul me. The bells were a great nuisance, for they chafed the horse’s necks, and if it was six or eight miles between towns, I always took them off. But when I put them on again and drove jingling up to a store; everybody inside would rush out to see what the circus was; most of them had never seen a six-spring wagon before. Nobody sold more soap in those parts than I did. Bunk? Yes! Sleigh bells had nothing whatever to do with selling soap. They got me a chance to tell my story. [Later when successful he always rode in bright red limousines]
William Wrigley Jr
I have sometimes been asked what single policy has been most profitable in our business, and I have always unhesitatingly answers, restraint in regard to immediate profits – going a bit further with the restraint than we might have gone. That has not only been our most profitable policy, it has been pretty nearly our only profitable one. It has been the inspiration of every distinctly successful method we have used…By a sort of paradox, however it has not been in prosperous times that we have been able to exercise this restraint most profitably… If we have been tempted in good times to take the profits immediately available by increasing our price, we have been tempted equally in poor times to take them by avoiding unnecessary expenses. And it is precisely by refusing to avoid unnecessary expenses, when the pressure for doing it was very great, that the business has been able to make it’s greatest strides. It was such a refusal that turned us from a comparatively small local business – local to a few of the larger cities – into a national one. That was in the depression of 1907. Advertising of all sorts had fallen off. Everywhere among manufacturers you heard reasons for not advertising, for exercising less than the ordinary selling effort. The more I thought about the attitude, the more I wondered at it. It was not only that they were not taking advantage of the ordinary opportunities. They were missing something that looked to me tremendously like an extraordinary opportunity, because so few people were advertising at that time.
William Wrigley Jr
[In the depression of 1907] Everywhere among manufacturers you heard reasons for not advertising, for exercising less than the ordinary selling effort.
[On purchasing a minority interest in the Cubs baseball team in 1915 and buying control in 1919, holding it until he passed away in 1932] There was a time when the Cubs were in red ink to the extent of almost half a million dollars. It doesn’t require much imagination to realize how such a deficit would have affected an owner interested only in the financial outcome of the undertaking. But it didn’t faze me, because I didn’t go into baseball for the purpose of making money; that motive was so secondary that it was given little consideration. I stuck because I loved the game itself and wished to contribute to its progress and its greater enjoyment by the American people. It’s a satisfaction to me to believe that I have, to a very considerable extent, accomplished this. Not only are the admissions to Wrigley Field 1,000,000 more than they were when I bought the team, but the attendance has come to include all classes of people.
William Wrigley Jr
The only product that the baseball business has to sell is goodwill. If you fail to furnish the kind of entertainment that results in general goodwill, you’re out of luck. There’s a catch in this business at every turn, because you’re playing with tricky, variable human nature, not inert physical commodities and mechanical methods… The trick is to find the star. I spent seven years and $300,000 to learn that the race of big-league stars on third base evidently had been exhausted.
William Wrigley Jr
I believe in the other [business] fellow’s right to live. I cannot expect to do well in my business unless he is able to do well in his business.
William Wrigley Jr
In no deal did I ever figure our own profit first. That’s the wrong end to start from. I always mapped out some proposition whereby the dealer or jobber would make a mighty good thing. If their profits were big enough they would do all our worrying for us. They would become our salesmen through the natural desire to reap rewards that would come from a large turnover of our products… Then, if the proposition left even a small profit for us, I knew it was sound.
William Wrigley Jr
Every human being is a sample: the only one of his kind. Anybody who starts to sell with any notion is due to have his eyes opened or lose his pants. No patent plan will sell everybody. One of the biggest things you’ve got to learn is: Don’t treat them all alike.
William Wrigley Jr
Many a man became my good friend and a customer simply because I would not take offense. There was a wild Irishman, I remember, whose main joy in life, it seemed, was to scare salesmen half to death; and he insulted those he couldn’t scare. ‘You young whippersnapper’, he snarled at me, ‘don’t you know there’s a danged sight more outside your head than there is in it?’ He said it with the intention of starting a row. I only grinned. ‘I never thought of it just that way before,’ I said, ‘But I’m darned if I don’t believe you’re right!’ It stopped him. He was as vain as Mamma’s only boy. I petted him, asked him to give me advice. And if he is in business today, he probably still has some of the soap I sold him that first trip!
William Wrigley Jr
There was a lesson I learned… from Caleb Thornton. Caleb was a Quaker. It was a rainy day when I first called at Caleb’s store, and he had a clerk busy carrying fifty-pound sacks of flour from the back part of the store to the front, arranging them in a neat pile. ‘All done!’ the man said presently. ‘Very well,’ replied Caleb; now thee may carry them all back and pile them where thee found them.’ The man immediately got red around the collar. He wanted to know what was the sense of doing that. It’s a rainy day,’ said Caleb, ‘and there are no customers. I am keeping thee busy. Whether there is any sense in it or not, I pay thee thy wages, and can tell thee to do what I please.’
William Wrigley Jr
In 1902 I decided to storm New York with publicity. I spent $100,000 and hardly made a ripple. It was money dropped into a hole, so far as anyone could see. I waited until I had another $100,000 and tried it again with the same result. [He then backed away from New York, to see where the problem was with the advertising] We saved up another $100,000 and went to a smaller community, or rather three communities – Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester – all of which together were much smaller than New York City. There we did exactly what we had done in New York – blew our money as hard as we knew how, and much as on the second occasion in New York. And it made a ten-strike. The three cities were set talking about our products, our sales jumped up, and the campaign quickly paid for itself. What was the difference? Simply that in the last instance there was less competition for our prospects’ attention. [On returning the advertise in New York City] I tried a third time, after recuperating, and this time with a quarter of a million. I wanted to get the dropped $200,000 back. I did – plus.
William Wrigley Jr
We have spent more than $20,000,000 to tell the world about our product. I believe in advertising all the time. There is no such thing as getting a business so established that it does not need to advertise. Babies who never heard about you are being born every day, and people who once knew you forget you if you don’t keep them reminded constantly. Dull times are the very times when you need advertising most.
William Wrigley Jr
[On building a landmark office building in Chicago in the early 1920s when he was the world’s leading advertiser] Did you find my name anywhere on this building? Did you find any mention of Spearmint in its outside walls? People thought when I began to put this up that I would plaster my name all over it in letters big enough to be seen miles away. If you look when you go out you will find it in small letters over the front door – but you may have to look twice. As a matter of fact it was better advertising not to plaster my name on the building. People talk more about it. It is the unusual thing – the thing they didn’t expect me to do.
William Wrigley Jr
Office employees are salesmen, in one sense. They have to sell their services to the boss – or find a pink slip in the pay envelope!
William Wrigley Jr
The first man I hired when I started selling chewing gum was paid seven dollars and a half a week and pushed a wheelbarrow around town. He never objected to working till any and all hours, if we had to finish up. He has a snug job at the factory now, is foreman of a department, and draws fives times the wages you would expect him to receive…
William Wrigley Jr
[On an employee that he pays five times more than you would expect] Henry could not sell five-dollar gold pieces for seventy-five cents. He just has not got the knack, and would not learn if he lived to be a hundred. But he knew how to be loyal. He knew how to do his job and give the best he had. He sold himself to me all right.
William Wrigley Jr
I managed to control my temper, but I never allowed any man to use me as a common doormat – not for long. People do not buy much from a man who fails to command their respect.
William Wrigley Jr
[On meetings with an overseas sales representative complaining that they were always being interrupted by employees] We had had plenty of talks. Just such talks as I have with anybody who has business in my office. Both doors wide open all the time. Anybody else who has some business item he must see me about at once is free to come and go, no matter who my caller is. No delay. Walk in, get it done, get out. No important transactions held up for the awful ceremony of seeing the boss – when the boss isn’t seeable! I explained this to Hartley. ‘When these people come in here,’ I said, ‘they aren’t doing it to interrupt you. They’re carrying on this business. If they hear a word or two of our conversation, that’s all right. I have no secrets. We’re all here to make this business go, and for no other reason. Every time a man walks in or out, I’ve made some more money.
William Wrigley Jr
One of the biggest pests in business is the carbon copy – the fellow who always says: ‘Yes, Mr Wrigley, you’re absolutely right.’ Perhaps meaning: ‘Have it our own way, you old buzzard, what do I care?’ Business is built by men who care – care enough to disagree, fight it out to a finish, get the facts. When two men always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
William Wrigley Jr
[On his personalized periodic letters] I am sending you in a tube my picture, done in the latest style and signed by myself. Had to sit up a good many nights to do the signing, but I wanted to make it sort of personal. P.S. – Busted my hand signing the 12,000 photographs so had to sign this letter with a rubber stamp.
William Wrigley Jr
Tell them quick and tell them often.
William Wrigley Jr
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