As consumers in 2010, we often expect products to be accompanied by glitzy social media campaigns or fancy packaging. So when we read about Bag Balm — which shuns modern conveniences like accepting orders via credit card and uses old-fashioned index cards to file customer information — it’s almost amazing that they survive and thrive in today’s marketplace.
But then it dawned on us: Bag Balm has been a sought-after moisturizing ointment for more than 100 years not because of cool advertising, but because it really works.
This week, the Associated Press published a profile of the product — and the company behind it — to proved that quality often trumps all.
Although the product is sold all over the world, the AP explains its operations consist of a one-room “plant” operated by the family owned Dairy Association Co., Inc. There are a mere six employees, two officers and no sales force and they operate in a cluster of converted railroad buildings in Lyndonville, a small northern Vermont town.
The product debuted 1899 not as a balm for us humans, but for cows, and was intended to soothe irritated udders after milking. But farmers and their wives soon learned the ointment could make their own hands silky smooth too, and over the years people have found myriad uses for the balm, which they often like to share with the company’s employees.
“I’ve been here 14 years,” accounts-receivable clerk Shawna Wilkerson told the AP. “The oddest one I’ve heard was somebody who reloads his ammunition. He puts Bag Balm on the bullet casing and it makes it easier to reload ‘em.”
The product has been used by North Pole explorers, on the paws of cadaver-sniffing dogs at Ground Zero, and troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And now, as temperatures dip in the midst of winter, Bag Balm is as popular as ever, as people look for relief for their dry, cracked hands.
So, Bag Balm might not be the most cutting-edge offering on the market, but the bottom line is it’s a product that does its job.
Photo courtesy of denovich via Flickr
