7 Timeless Principles We Can Learn from WD-40
It’s said that 8 in 10 homes in America have a can of WD-40 [1, 2]. Those cans are sold in 173 countries [1] (there are only about 200 countries in the world). The WD-40 Company’s market capitalization is 4.2 billion USD, which is about the same value as Wendy’s, Mazda, Macy’s, or Tripadvisor [3]. Few products have had universal long-lasting brand recognition the way WD-40 has for the last 65 years. Almost all of us can imagine the can now, or easily pick it out of a line up.
In this article I look at WD-40 as a model of innovation. Why? Its popularity has stood the test of time, and its story is simple enough for us to extract out what WD-40 did right during its long history. Of course every product is different, but the principles observed from WD-40 are at least worth considering in any innovation setting.
WD-40’s History
Founded in 1953 and originally named the Rocket Chemical Company, the company focused on protecting the outer skin of missiles from rust and corrosion. In its early years, the Rocket Chemical Company had only 3 employees, whose efforts were based on the simple principle that water causes rust and that water can be displaced (moved) by chemicals. If the right chemical formulation could be discovered, it could be applied to wet or dry surfaces to remove water or prevent contact between metal and water, thus protecting from rust. The WD-40 name means Water Displacement, 40th Formula. According to the WD-40 company this is “the name straight out of the lab book used by the chemist who developed the product back in 1953.” [1]
The company’s first customer was its San Diego neighbor, Convair Aerospace, who used WD-40 to protect the Atlas Missile. Within the company’s first 5 years, founder Norm Larsen and his two colleagues discovered various uses for the product at home, such as waterproofing boots, preventing wooden garden tool handles from splintering, silencing squeaky hinges, and deterring wasps from building nests [4]. By 1958, Larsen had successfully experimented with packaging WD-40 in an aerosol can, for home use. By 1960, the company was selling 45 cases a day to hardware stores and sporting goods stores, from the trunks of their cars. The company’s breakout moment came in 1961, when a truckload of WD-40 was shipped to “recondition flood-damaged property and vehicles” from Hurricane Carla in the Gulf Coast [1]. WD-40 became a household name in 1962 when NASA used WD-40 to coat John Glenn’s Friendship VII earth orbiter, to reduce reentry friction [5].
In 1970 the Rocket Chemical Company changed its name to the WD-40 Company. In 1973, the WD-40 company went public with just one product.
7 Timeless Principles We Can Learn from WD-40
1. Industries Often Cluster Geographically
It’s no accident that Rocket Chemical Company set up shop in the shadows of Convair Aerospace. They had every intent to solve a specific problem Convair was facing. The geographic grouping of closely related companies is often referred to as the industrial commons [6]. Such physical proximity facilitates relationship building, collaborative problem solving, and opportunity development.
2. Science Minimizes Risk
The pain WD-40 solves, and the way it solves it is based solidly in science. There is no doubt that WD-40 (or a product like it) is needed. Its need is centered on tribology, which is the study of interacting surfaces in relative motion, i.e., the study of friction, wear, and lubrication [7]. Such surfaces appear in nearly every industry.
There is also no mystery about why WD-40 works. Its primary functionality is because the chemical formulation alters surface tension, thus displacing water and reducing rust and part seize-up. An additional benefit of reducing surface tension is that the capillary effect is greater thus allowing WD-40 to move against gravity into small openings.
Having both the pain and the solution founded in science, the WD-40 company reduced technical risk, and market risk, which allows the company to move forward with greater confidence [8].
3. Iteration is Essential to Innovation
Water Displacement, 40th Formula: Its very name carries innovation’s mantra for success -- iteration [9]. No idea comes out right the first time. Good products emerge from thoughtful repeated cycles of ideation and evaluation.
4. Intellectual Property Needs to be Protected
WD-40 is not patented. It is protected by trade secrets. In fact, the original WD-40 formula is stored in a bank vault in California. It has been taken out only once for the company’s 50th Anniversary celebration in 2003. In retrospect, this was a wise choice for the company, as a patent would have required the company to disclose its formula, offering manufacturing and sales protection only in the United States for 20 Years.
5. Innovators are Resourceful
It may have been easy for Larsen and his colleague to believe that selling out of the trunks of their car was beneath them, having already been in business for 5 years and selling to a major aerospace company. They did what they needed to with minimal resources to get the product on to the consumer market. Notice that they sold to both hardware stores and sporting goods stores indicating that they at least thought more broadly than a single outlet.
6. Marketing Matters
WD-40 CEO (1969-1990) John Barry said WD-40 is “a marketing company” [10]. With only one unchanging product from 1953 to 1995, the WD-40 company put nearly all of its efforts into marketing. Not long after WD-40 was sent to the victims of Hurricane Carla in 1961, a sort-of cult following began around the “semi-miracle aerosol can with a funny name” [11]. This following was only heightened when WD-40 became part of John Glenn’s first earth orbit. WD-40 played into this following, as it provided significant advertising at virtually no cost. The following is alive and strong today, with fans posting thousands of WD-40 uses.
7. Innovation Is People-Focused
Although the formula has remained unchanged and locked away in a bank, the company has continually innovated on how that product is packaged. As it expanded beyond Convair, Larsen worked to get the formula in an aerosol can to make its usability one that would make it ubiquitous. In the last few decades, as many companies have become more user-focused, WD-40 responded to the number one customer complaint (losing the red straw) with an integrated foldaway straw, the wide spray nozzle, and the EZ reach flexible nozzle.
One of WD-40’s greatest accomplishments is that it has been a consistent household name for decades. No doubt the consistency of its appeal is enforced by the fact that the chemical formula has not changed, the product packaging is recognizable and consistent, and in its first 50 years, WD-40 pricing was relatively constant, experiencing only 9 price increases [12].
Closing Thoughts
It’s difficult and perhaps impossible to say which of the 7 principles extracted from the WD-40 story are more or less important to consider. I’ve had experiences with all of them -- mostly in the context of interdisciplinary teams. The beauty of such teams is that not every person has to be an expert at all of these things for a team to be successful. Everyone should, however, develop a healthy appreciation for the principles that lie outside their expertise, even to the point of finding it difficult or impossible to say which principles are more or less important [13].
References
[1] WD40 Company website, https://www.wd40.com/history/. Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[2] D. Martin, “John S. Barry, Main Force Behind WD-40, Dies at 84,” New York Times, 22 July 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/business/22barry1.html#:~:text=The%20company%20says%20surveys%20show,most%20discovered%20by%20users%20themselves. Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[3] Largest Companies by Market Cap, Website, https://companiesmarketcap.com/. Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[4] R. Brougham, “34 Brilliant Ways to Use WD40,” Handyman Magazine, September 2020, https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/20-brilliant-ways-to-use-wd-40/. Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[5] San Diego Air and Space Museum, “WD-40,” https://sandiegoairandspace.org/hall-of-fame/honoree/wd-40. Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[6] G. Pisano, and W. Shih, “Restoring American Competitiveness”, Harvard Business Review, July/August 2009, https://hbr.org/2009/07/restoring-american-competitiveness. Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[7] WD-40 Lab Tests, January 2019, https://wd40.co.uk/tips-and-tricks/wd-40-lab-tests/. Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[8] C. Mattson, “Seeds of failure,” BYU Design Review, December 2019, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/seeds-of-failure, Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[9] C. Mattson, “Iteration, the Most Important Concept in Design,” BYU Design Review, July 2020, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/iteration-the-most-important-concept-in-design, Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[10] John Barry, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barry_(WD-40)
[11] Birth of an Icon: The Story of WD-40, https://todaysmachiningworld.com/magazine/birth-of-an-icon-the-story-of-wd-40/, Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[12] WD-40, 2003 Annual Report (50th Anniversary), https://s21.q4cdn.com/612895086/files/doc_financials/annual_report/2003-Annual-Report.pdf, Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
[13] C. Mattson, “Interdisciplinary Teams,” BYU Design Review, February 2020, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/interdisciplinary-teams, Accessed 08 Feb 2021.
