Inside SC Johnson

Starting this morning, we're in good company. That's what we're calling our occasional visits to some business people who make it look easy. With Lee Cowan, we make it a clean start. You might not recognize it as the bottles fly by in the assembly line, but that's Windex, the blue stuff that probably lives under your sink. Same with those swirling cans of Pledge. Maybe you've got a can tossed in with your dust rags along with your Drano, some scrubbing bubbles, and perhaps a bottle of Shout. Remarkably, all these products and shelves full of other brands come from a single Wisconsin company, one with a simple but oddly forgettable name. SC Johnson, a family company. When I told people, I said, 'I'm doing a story on SC Johnson.' They're like, 'Oh, Johnson and Johnson.' I'm like, 'No, no, no. SC Johnson.' Do you get that a lot?

Do you?

The SC in SC Johnson was Fisk's great-great-grandfather, Samuel Curtis. He was a parquet floor salesman in Rine, Wisconsin, when he realized that there were more floors than there were products to keep them clean. He mixed his first batch of Johnson's wax in his bathtub, and the rest is, as they say, history. So he just abandoned the flooring business and started selling wax all over the place. And that was 1886. In all now, five generations of Johnsons have led this now 10 billion dollar a year company, making it one of the oldest family-owned businesses in America. But while their products may be household names, the Johnsons themselves prefer to keep a lower profile. They don't trumpet themselves as a dynasty. They rarely do media interviews and they have never considered allowing the company to be publicly traded. Never.

Its headquarters, however, is hardly a black box. In fact, for a company that likes to keep things private, it makes quite a statement in downtown Rine. There is nothing normal about this building. Fisk's grandfather, HF Johnson Jr., commissioned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design it. The result was remarkable. Dozens of giant golf tealike columns soared two stories into the air. They support the building's only real window, a glass ceiling, which floods the huge open floor plan below with natural light. At one time, over 120 people worked in this room. It makes you feel like you're kind of inside a forest looking up at the canopy. Wright called it his corporate cathedral. He even designed the office furniture, including these three-legged chairs, which were very unstable, and people were falling out of them. Wright later replaced those three-legged versions with four-legged ones that are still in use today, and they're now worth a small fortune.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Next door is the 15-story research tower that Wright also designed. It opened in 1950. Its odd skeleton can best be seen at dusk. It has a central core that's 13 ft in diameter like the trunk of a tree and all of the floors are hung off of that central core like the limbs of a tree. Greg Ander used to work for SC Johnson and he later helped with the tower's restoration. Wright again wanted to allow in natural light, but instead of just plates of glass, he decided to use glass tubes instead. 17 miles of them.

And we hand cleaned every one of them. I might point out that we used Windex to do that.

And they look sparkling and look great. Of course you did. It now looks much as it did when Bob O'Brien worked here. I mean, it was always bright, but you just felt like you're working in a snow globe.

Despite having to wear sunglasses while formulating his products, he loved it.

Formulation is an art. And I would come into work and in these benches in this laboratory, that was our canvas, you know, a canvas that Frank Wright built, right? You come in here and you just couldn't help but feel inspired. There was just energy.

The tower became integral to SC Johnson's success, even part of its ad campaigns. Now from the famous research tower of Johnson's wax comes Glade. The new It was the womb for some of the company's most recognizable brands. You'll be glad you used Glade. From Glade air freshener to a bug's worst nightmare. Oh no, it's Raid. Raid was developed by Sam Johnson, Fisk's father. It killed bugs, but not plants, which at the time was revolutionary. But it was also the first of Sam Johnson's string of products that didn't contain any wax.

Fisk knows his dad's are pretty big shoes to fill. And no matter the Johnson who takes over after him, he says they'll probably feel the same way.

Izzy Johnson is Fisk's niece. She's just 25. She doesn't know if the baton would come her way. And yet, do you feel that sort of generational pull that the company seems to have — in a sense that it's something I want to contribute to?

Because it's something that I'm so proud of and has been so close to me for so long.

The Johnsons proudly wear family on their corporate sleeve and few places is that more evident than at the company's annual holiday party. Merry Christmas. It's a pretty elaborate event. Part family reunion, part giant thank you. This year will mark the 100th year they've been doing this. And as it always has, the party ends. Sarah with bonus checks. It's called profit sharing day. Michelle Johnson.

It's a tradition and a privilege, says Fisk Johnson, that comes specifically from remaining a private family-run company. The official winners here they are.

There are bigger family companies with bigger payrolls, but what SC Johnson has managed to keep alive is a sense of big business with a small feel. It seems progress doesn't always have to mean looking ahead. As you pledge cleans the surface, it's about remembering where it all starts, too. You can use pledge on leather, marble, metal.