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It's the old Moxie Little soft drink company that once outsold Coke but fell into a deep slump is trying to buck a $2-billion market again. It plans to update the bitterish taste of its Nerve Food by Business Week, New York, NY Anyone who plans to dent a $2-billion market with a company whose sales have slumped 90% since 1920 needs plenty of moxie, and James C. Wickersham, 44, has exactly that. Wickersham, who took over last week as chairman and chief executive officer of the ailing and venerable Moxie Co. of Needham, Mass., vows to "make Moxie a leader in the soft drink industry," and looks to 2% of the market as a reasonanble goal. "It's a gamble," says Wickesrsham, "but if we're successful, the payoff will be great." Moxie, a bitterish concoction of gentian-root extract and about 20 other flavorings, has a long and checkered history. First brewed in 1876 and promoted as Moxie Nerve Food, it was once the nation's No. 1 soft drink, outselling Coca-Cola. In its heyday -- roughly between 1900 and 1920 -- Moxie was so popular that its name was woven into the American idiom as a synonym for courage. (For a time, it also meant sex appeal, but that usage is now archaic.) Sales hit $2-million in the peak year of 1920. Cutback. Moxie has been going down the drain since the Depression, when the company cut back and quit advertising. A succession of in-and-out managenments and an abortive move into the potato chip business brought further declines, and Moxie is now more common as a noun than as a drink. Last year, the company sold only about 500,000 cases, mostly in New England, and grossed a mere $200,000. Things started looking up for Moxie, early this year when Connecticut lawyer Macgregor Kilpatrick and two of his partners moved on to the board of directors. No tyro in the business world, Kilpatrick was a former vice-president of Marketing, Inc., where he helped spearhead the introduction of Silly Putty. After disposing of Moxie's losing potato chip operation, Kilpatrick began casting about for someone to put the company back on its feet. Wickersham, a top official at McCann-Erickson, the advertising agency, seemed an ideal choice. His background included a stint as Coca-Cola's account executive and before that, 12 years experience in the plant-feeding, vending, and soft-drink business in Philadelphia. Along with talents in the management and marketing areas, Wickersham is also bringing badly needed cash to Moxie. He has invested $110,000 of his own in the company, and has pulled in another $150,000 from other sources. Wickersham's first move will be to increase Moxie's stable of franchised bottlers beyond the current 37 or so, concentrating in New England. After developing a regional marketing and advertising program, he hopes to start moving out in stages until the whole country is flooded with Moxie. One thing working against Moxie is its taste. To the modern palate, accustomed to sweeter fare, Moxie still tatstes like nerve food. But Wickersham plans to sweeten up the formula. "We want to get rid of that bitter after-taste," he says, " and make Moxie more attractive to a greater number of people. But we still want it to be a distinctive Moxie." Bitter or not, Moxie still has its devotees, most of them in the higher age brackets. Some months ago, when word leaked out that Moxie was gearing for a comeback, the company was deluged with mail from thirsty customers, some from as far away as California. Said one: "If I wasn't so old, I'd jump for joy that Moxie will be with us again." At the start, the new Moxie's ad budget will be minimal. "After all," Wickersham points out, "we don't have to spend millions of dollars launching a name." "We want to make the product contemporary," says Wickersham, "but we don't want to lose our older consumers." One of the most powerful weapons in Moxie's advertising arsenal is likely to be the Moxiemobile, an aluminum horse mounted on an old cadillac touring car. First introduced in the 1920s, the Moxiemobile, its rider decked out in bright hunting togs, may once again be a familiar sight around Boston. Wickersham is tackling the job at Moxie with unbounded enthusiasm. "What appealed to me about Moxie is the name," he says, "and I'm excited by the possibility of rebuilding something that has been so abused over the past 30 years. We have a full skeleton; our job is to put some meat on its bones." What's more, says Wickersham, "there is a lot of humor in the whole situation." Reprint from: Business Week - May 20, 1967 |