The world's largest chewing gum company originally started by selling soap and baking powder.

In the spring of 1891, 29-year-old William Wrigley Jr. arrived in Chicago with just 32 dollars and a dream to sell Wrigley’s Scouring Soap. To entice merchants to carry his product, he offered premiums such as baking powder. He quickly realized that the baking powder was a bigger draw than the soap itself, so he pivoted his business model to focus on the powder.By 1892, Wrigley began offering two packages of chewing gum with every can of baking powder. At the time, gum was a relatively new product made from chicle, a latex sap from sapodilla trees. History repeated itself when the gum premiums proved more popular than the baking powder, prompting another massive shift in his business strategy.Wrigley launched his first two iconic brands, Juicy Fruit and Wrigley's Spearmint, in 1893. He was a pioneer in modern advertising, spending unprecedented amounts on marketing to ensure his products were household names. During the Great Depression, he famously spent 1.9 million dollars on advertising to maintain consumer loyalty while other companies were cutting costs.Today, the Mars-owned Wrigley company is the largest manufacturer and marketer of chewing gum in the world. What began as a small soap operation now distributes products to over 180 countries. This series of pivots remains one of the most famous examples of 'listening to the market' in business history.