The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Osher: Offered $10M to buy back Spinbrush; P&G leveraged for $75M
“I said, I would, but I'm not willing to pay much money. I'll give you ten million dollars for the whole thing, but I'll close next week. You know, everything else was, they were always waiting six months, you know, and then there would be due diligence. I said…”
Osher: Church & Dwight did a 'terrible job' managing Spinbrush
“But Church and Dwight did a, has done, and did, and has still done a terrible job. They didn't really do anything with it, and everyone else is in it, so when you go to the store, there's 15 different variations of spin brush on the shelves now.”
Osher: Spinbrush was the highest-testing consumer product in P&G history
“And it turned out, and we didn't know this till later, that it was the highest testing product they ever did in the history of Procter & Gamble with consumers.”
Osher: Spinbrush sold seven units per store daily during Meijer pilot
“We'd put them out, and we were selling seven a day per store, which was just in a different realm of any other toothbrush in the world.”
Osher: Spinbrush drove $21M profit on $44M revenue in first 8 months
“And in the first year, we did forty four million with a twenty one million dollar profit. ... It wasn't even a full year. It was probably closer to eight months. And as I said, we made a twenty one million dollar profit.”
Osher: P&G forecasted $120M in Spinbrush sales but cleared $300M
“So they had told their board that they thought they could do as much as a 110 or a hundred twenty million dollars with this product. And I think after a year, they were doing over 300. A million with the product”
Osher: Spinbrush bought 1M batteries daily, trailing only Walmart
“We were buying close to a million batteries from EverReady. A day. We were second only to Walmart and battery purchases at the time.”
Osher: Spinbrush scrapped 400K defective units and raised $500K for redesign
“And we had 400,000 of them in our warehouse, and I had to make a decision. This is a consumable product, and this is potentially so big, and if I continue to sell this, it will die. And I went back to my partners in it, my investors, and I said, I'm gonna scra…”
Osher: P&G divested Spinbrush to clear Gillette antitrust hurdles
“Well, what happened is they, three years into it, they were trying to buy Gillette, and Gillette owned Oral-B and Braun. And the deal was being held up because the tooth, the oral B and the spin brush were a monopoly. It was well over 50% of all the toothbrush…”