![]() | |
Product type | Scouring pad |
---|---|
Owner | Armaly Brands |
Country | U.S. |
Introduced | 1913 |
Previous owners | Brillo Manufacturing Company (1913-1962), Purex Industries, Inc. (1962-1985), The Dial Corporation (1985-1997), Church & Dwight (1997-2010) |
Tagline | Now that's brilliant! |
Website | www.brillo.com |
Brillo is a trade name for a scouring pad, used for cleaning dishes, and made from steel wool filled with soap. [1] The concept was patented in 1913, at a time when aluminium pots and pans were replacing cast iron in the kitchen; the new cookware blackened easily. The company's website states the name Brillo is from the Latin word for "bright", [1] although no such word exists in Latin. In Spanish the word brillo means the noun "shine"; however, German, Italian, French, and English do have words for "shine" or "bright" beginning with brill- deriving from Latin words for beryl.
In the early 1900s, in New York, an unnamed cookware peddler and his brother-in-law, an unnamed jeweller, were working on a solution to clean blackened cookware. [1] Using jewellers' rouge, with soap and fine steel wool from Germany, they developed a method to scour the backsides of cooking utensils when they began to blacken. The method worked and the peddler added this new product, soap with steel wool, into his line of goods for sale. [1]
Demand for the steel wool, copper spun and soap with jewellers' rouge increased quickly. The peddler and the jeweller decided to patent the product. [1] Because they lacked the money to pay for legal services, they offered New York attorney Milton Loeb an interest in their business. Loeb accepted and in 1913, he secured a patent for the product under the name Brillo. The partnership formed between the peddler, the jeweller and the attorney became known as the Brillo Manufacturing Company, with headquarters and production operations in New York City. [2] [1]
By 1917, the company was selling packaged boxes of six pads, with a cake of soap included. During World War I, it helped with needed efforts of field operations. [1] In 1921, the company moved its production facility to London, Ohio. It was only in the 1930s that soap was contained within the pad.
The company merged with Purex Industries in 1962. The Dial Corporation acquired Purex Industries in 1985. Church and Dwight acquired the Brillo business from Dial in 1997. [3]
In 2010, Armaly Brands of Walled Lake, Michigan, primarily a manufacturer of sponges, purchased the Brillo business from Church & Dwight. At that time there were about 50 employees, down from a high of about 150 in the 1990s. [4] [5]
Brillo is manufactured in London, Ohio. [1] [5]
In December 2019, Innovative Brands, a division of International Wholesale, agreed to a licensing agreement with Armaly Brands to launch Brillo Basics, a line of household cleaning products. [6]
The most famous example of Brillo in pop art is works by Andy Warhol in 1964. Warhol did artwork on boxes with the 1960s Brillo logo.
In 1970 Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova published a short story about a robot policeman titled "Brillo". [7] The title was a pun by Bova as a robot policeman could be referred to as metal fuzz. [8]
Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are used as thickeners, components of some lubricants, emulsifiers, and catalysts.
A dishwasher is a machine that is used to clean dishware, cookware, and cutlery automatically. Unlike manual dishwashing, which relies on physical scrubbing to remove soiling, the mechanical dishwasher cleans by spraying hot water, typically between 45 and 75 °C, at the dishes, with lower temperatures of water used for delicate items.
Kleenex is a brand name primarily known for their line of facial tissues. Often used informally as a genericized trademark for facial tissue, Kleenex is a registered trademark of Kimberly-Clark applied to products made in 78 countries. The brand has other paper products like napkins and toilet roll.
Chore Boy is a brand name of cleaning product, which includes copper and stainless steel scouring pads, and abrasive impregnated scouring cloths.
Armour & Company was an American company and was one of the five leading firms in the meat packing industry. It was founded in Chicago, in 1863, by the Armour brothers led by Philip Danforth Armour. By 1880, the company had become Chicago's most important business and had helped make Chicago and its Union Stock Yards the center of America's meatpacking industry. During the same period, its facility in Omaha, Nebraska, boomed, making the city's meatpacking industry the largest in the nation by 1959. In connection with its meatpacking operations, the company also ventured into pharmaceuticals and soap manufacturing, introducing Dial soap in 1948.
Steel wool, also known as iron wool, wire wool, or wire sponge, is a bundle of very fine and flexible sharp-edged steel filaments. It was described as a new product in 1896. It is used as an abrasive in finishing and repair work for polishing wood or metal objects, cleaning household cookware, cleaning windows, and sanding surfaces.
Fels-Naptha is an American brand of laundry soap manufactured by Summit Brands. The soap was invented in 1893 by Fels and Company.
Henkel Corporation, doing business as Henkel North American Consumer Goods and formerly The Dial Corporation, is an American company based in Stamford, Connecticut. It is a manufacturer of personal care and household cleaning products and is a subsidiary of multinational company Henkel AG & Co. KGaA.
Heavy-duty cookware made of cast iron is valued for its heat retention, durability, ability to maintain high temperatures for longer time duration, and non-stick cooking when properly seasoned. Seasoning is also used to protect bare cast iron from rust. Types of cast-iron cookware include frying pans, dutch ovens, griddles, waffle irons, flattop grills, panini presses, crepe makers, deep fryers, tetsubin, woks, potjies, and karahi.
Lilleborg AS is a major hygiene and cleaning article company in Norway, owned by Solenis, and formerly owned by the Orkla Group. It was established in 1833, and was one of the first companies in Norway to start manufacturing brand name products. It currently operates three factories in Norway, and employs a total working staff of 595.
The Drackett Company was a leading company in the specialty chemicals business during the 20th century, responsible for such products as Windex glass cleaner, Vanish toilet bowl cleaner, Drāno drain opener, Behold furniture polish, Endust dusting aid, Renuzit air freshener, Mr. Muscle oven cleaner, and Miracle White laundry products. They also produced the O-Cedar line of brooms, mops, sponges and scrubbers.
S.O.S Soap Pad is a trade name for an abrasive cleaning pad, used for household cleaning, and made from steel wool saturated with soap.
Purex is a brand of laundry detergent and laundry-related products manufactured by Henkel North American Consumer Goods and marketed in the United States and Canada. Purex is one of the most widely used laundry detergents in North America. Its original product, Purex Bleach, was a major competitor to Clorox bleach. The brand name is also used for a line of in-wash "fragrance booster" products called Purex Crystals. The Purex Crystals brand was originally launched as an in-wash fabric softener product.
Bar Keepers Friend is an American brand of mass-produced cleaning agents. The original canned scouring powder product has been manufactured and sold since 1882. It was invented by a chemist in Indianapolis, Indiana, where it continues to be manufactured by SerVaas Laboratories. The canned product's primary active ingredient is oxalic acid. Bar Keepers Friend has various cleaning uses.
A scouring pad or scourer is a small pad of metal or plastic mesh used for scouring a surface. Some scouring pads have one side made of a soft sponge-like material and the other is the aforementioned mesh.
Scrub Daddy Inc. is a cleaning product company best known for eponymous sponges it manufactures in the shape of a smiley face. Most products are made of a polymer which changes texture – firm in cold water and soft in warm water. As of 2024, Scrub Daddy had the third highest revenue of any product successfully pitched on the ABC reality show Shark Tank.
Scouring powder is a household cleaning product consisting of an abrasive powder mixed with a dry soap or detergent, soda, and possibly dry bleach.