Procter & Gamble is a sprawling empire of more than 100 consumers with nothing to tie them together beyond the company’s skill at getting consistent results with chemicals. We heard last year that the company had realized this was too much, and then there were deals to sell off the Duracell battery division and some others. The latest word is that the retreat goes deeper than that, and we can expect it to sell off half of its brands accounting for perhaps one fifth of its revenue within a few months. The result, the company hopes, is a more manageable operation.
P&G will still be a long way from the classic industrial model of one company selling one brand, but in theory, eliminating the brands that are least connected to the company’s sense of purpose should make it more coherent and therefore more manageable. There is reason to doubt that this restructuring is going quite that way, as the company is also trying to keep its big-money consumer brands, but it still must be a step in the right direction.
The story at Cincinatti.com:
