Group

Colgate-Palmolive Company

4 brands · founded 1806 · United States

Colgate-Palmolive Company is an American multinational consumer-products group headquartered in New York City. It traces its origins to 1806, when William Colgate started a starch, soap and candle business on Dutch Street in Manhattan [3]. Today the company operates across oral care, personal care, home care, skin health and pet nutrition, and it is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CL [1].

For a beauty encyclopedia, Colgate-Palmolive matters chiefly as the owner of a growing group of personal-care and skin-health brands. Alongside its long-established household names, the company has built a professional and premium skincare portfolio through a series of acquisitions since the mid-2000s.

History & milestones

The business began as a Colgate soap-and-candle venture in early nineteenth-century New York [3]. Its modern corporate shape dates to 1928, when Colgate merged with Palmolive-Peet to form the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company; the group adopted the name Colgate-Palmolive Company in 1953 [3]. Over the following decades it expanded from oral and household products into a broad consumer-goods company with operations in multiple regions. The company's corporate headquarters are located at 300 Park Avenue in New York City [3].

Portfolio & brands

Colgate-Palmolive's portfolio spans several categories. Its two defining names are the Colgate oral-care brand and the Palmolive personal- and home-care brand, the latter part of the group since the 1928 merger.

In personal care and skin health, the company owns Sanex, a European personal-care brand, and the deodorant lines Speed Stick and Lady Speed Stick. It also holds a cluster of skincare brands assembled through acquisition: the French anti-aging brand Filorga, the professional brands PCA Skin and EltaMD, and the natural personal-care brand Tom's of Maine. These brands together form the group's presence in the beauty and skin-health market.

Acquisitions & strategy

Much of Colgate-Palmolive's beauty portfolio has been built through acquisition. In 2006 the company acquired the natural personal-care brand Tom's of Maine for about US$100 million [1]. In 2011 it bought the Sanex personal-care brand in Europe from Unilever for roughly $940 million [1].

The company then moved further into skin health. In 2017 it announced the acquisition of the professional skin-care brands PCA Skin and EltaMD, with the transactions closing in the first quarter of 2018 [4]. In 2019 Colgate-Palmolive acquired the premium anti-aging brand Laboratoires Filorga for around EUR 1.49 billion (about USD 1.69 billion), its largest such purchase in the category [5]. It continued to add to its oral-care holdings in 2020 with the acquisition of Hello Products LLC [3].