Clorox Company and Hidden Valley Ranch

Though The Clorox Company is most widely known for household bleach products, the company is now a diversified manufacturer of a variety of household consumer products including insecticides, cat litter, kitchen cleaners and food products. The Clorox Company markets to over 70 countries in addition to the United States, and approximately 16 % of the company’s sales revenue is achieved via internationally based marketing. Though continuing to maintain market share in the household cleaning products arena, the company also maximizes market channels to the specialized industrial, professional and food service industries. German-based Henkel KGaA currently owns about 28 % of the The Clorox Company.

In the early 1970s, The Clorox Company first entered the grocery products industry with its initial acquisition of McFadden Industries, the company that makes the Litter Green brand of cat litter. The same year, The Clorox Company acquired Grocery Store Products Company, a company that manufactured specialty foods like Cream of Rice cereal, B&B mushrooms, and Kitchen Bouquet. In 1972, The Clorox Company added the popular line of Hidden Valley Ranch to this operation by buying Hidden Valley Ranch Food Products. The Hidden Valley Ranch company produced popular party dips and salad dressings.

Hidden Valley Ranch Original Salad Dressing, a best-selling supermarket brand salad dressing, was first created as a take-home gift for visitors to the Hidden Valley Ranch - a dude ranch in Santa Barbara, California. The salad dressing made of mayonnaise, buttermilk and an assortment of dry herbs, quickly became so popular by word of mouth, that the creators of the recipe decided to market and sell the product in the mid 1960s. In 1972, the creators of the original Hidden Valley Ranch dressing recipe, Steve and Gayle Henson, sold the brand to The Clorox Company. Since the 1972 purchase, The Clorox Company has grown the brand into a hugely successful and internationally recognized entity.