HISTORY - THE TRANSFORMING YEARS: 1950-1980

From its founding in 1876 through the 1940's, Bradford
was a manufacturer of industrial grade soap for the
textile and paper-making industries. Things changed in
the 1950's as we expanded our product line to include
value-added finishing products for sale to the same
customers who bought our soap. For example: flame
retardant treatments for textiles and polyethylene
emulsions that provide a glossy finish for paper stock. 

Things changed again in the 1960's. With the textile
industry moving  south - and eventually offshore,
and with the paper-making industry moving to the
Pacific northwest, Bradford's customer base was
slowly but surely leaving New England. A five-story
granite mill building can't be moved... so a new business
model needed to be developed. Bradford upgraded its soap making operation to
produce fine quality toilet soap base and added a down-stream bar soap processing capability.

During the 1970's, Bradford greatly diversified its bar soap customer base. No longer just a cleansing product, bar soap had become a treatment and aromatherapy product as well as a gift and home decorating product. Whereas bar soap was once purchased exclusively at grocery and drug stores, now it was sold in a wide variety of retail settings.

Bradford's ownership and leadership also changed. Allen Howland joined the company in 1946; he was the first member of the Howland family to work at Bradford. The then-owner and CEO of Bradford, Daniel McIver, had both a personal and a business relationship with Allen's father. By the mid-1950's Allen became Bradford's COO and by the late 1960's he acquired a majority of the company's stock.

In 1978, Bradford's current CEO and majority stockholder, John Howland, joined the company. After serving in Vietnam in the late 1960's and then receiving his MBA from Columbia University, John was an Institutional Investor  top rated analyst on Wall Street.