A soap opera

In a deliberate effort to antagonise the manufacturer Unilever, Gottlieb Duttweiler sold Lux soap at two-thirds of the usual retail price. Unilever took him to court and prohibited him from selling the soap, but Duttweiler won the sympathy of his customers.

”It is up to us to furnish sufficient proof that the brand articles are expensive due to the advertising, and to prove that the same brands are sold in Switzerland at prices which are around 80% higher than in London and the USA”, explains the Brückenbauer in 1950 to its readers. The corresponding presentation of the evidence in the Migros branches is worthy of being filmed. Migros is able to buy two thousand crates of Lux soap in the USA, with each crate containing 120 soap bars. The ”soap of the film stars” is then sold for 50 centimes per bar.
Normally, the soap, supplied by the Swiss representative of the American Unilever company, Sunlight AG from Olten, is sold for 76 centimes per bar. This company then sued and the court stopped the sale of the soap through an interim injunction. Gottlieb Duttweiler countered this by presenting the rest of the Lux soap in the display window with the notice: “«Sale prohibited due to an application by the oil trusts. Price 50 centimes”. He therefore had the last laugh – and Unilever were the losers. Unilever then quickly agreed to the sale of Lux by Migros, but had the provocative window display prohibited by the courts. The customers are happy: the Lux