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PROFILE: Edwin E. Perkins

Edwin E. Perkins: Inventor and Entrepreneur-Kool-Aid King

Copyright © 2008 Jean Sanders

    Do you believe a $0.05 packet of flavored powder could become the basis of a multi-million dollar industry? Do you believe that a young boy could develop his business acumen while growing up in a tiny south central Nebraska town? Do you believe this same inventive entrepreneur could mastermind and market many useful and unique products? Well, it's all true! Fascinating trivia games can be derived from the facts surrounding Edwin Perkins and his most famous idea-Kool-Aid.

    Edwin Elijah Perkins, the oldest son of David and Kizandra (Kizzie) Haymaker Perkins, was born in Lewis, Iowa on January 8, 1889. Lewis, a small town farming community about fifty miles east of Omaha, Nebraska, was the original county seat of Cass County, Iowa.

    When Edwin was four, the family moved to a farm about ten miles from Beaver City, Furnas County, in south central Nebraska. Their home was a three-room sod house, upscale for the times due to its hardwood floors and calcimined walls coated with a combination of glue, whiting and water. The family did, however, have to travel a mile for well water, and the children walked three miles to attend a one-room schoolhouse.

    The weather those days was harsh. Summers brought drought and grasshoppers that decimated farms. Yet the Perkins family persevered and prevailed. David planted and harvested the crops, raised dairy cows and bred pedigreed Poland China hogs. Kizzie made weekly trips into nearby Beaver City to sell butter, cheese, eggs, and other produce.

    This lifestyle continued until 1900 when David purchased a general merchandise store in the small town of Hendley, also in Furnas County, a community that in 1910 had a population of 238. For the family, this made school more accessible. David and Kizzie eventually had ten children but two died while still infants. The family living quarters were in the back of the store, a practical arrangement because this was truly a family business wherein each member shared responsibility for its success.

    Eleven-year-old Edwin clerked in the store after school. He bought a junior chemistry set through mail order and, in the family kitchen, experimented with potions and lotions, making flavoring extracts, healing ointments and perfumes.

    As he grew, so did his ambition and eagerness to learn. He ordered a pamphlet entitled "How to Become a Manufacturer" and put its principles into practice. Then this burgeoning young businessman ordered labels that proclaimed "Manufactured by Perkins Products Co."

    When he read an ad suggesting one could earn money using a home print shop, the ever enterprising Edwin purchased a small hand press, made his own labels, and hired out his printing services to others-all while still a teenager.

    Edwin was impressed when a young friend, Kitty Shoemaker, showed him Jell-O, a packaged food powder product she discovered while traveling with her father. When one added water to Jell-O and let it set, it reconstituted into what was then considered to be a dessert. Jell-O came in "six delicious flavors" and Edwin convinced his father to sell it in the store.

    Edwin graduated from Hendley High School in 1905 at age 16. From that time onward, he was an entrepreneur in earnest, involving other family members in his multiple enterprises.

    When he was barely twenty, Edwin began publishing a weekly newspaper, the Hendley Delphic. The first issue appeared February 12, 1909 and publication continued for four years.

    Edwin, a prodigious multitasker, served as the town postmaster from August 10, 1914 to 1918 and he also opened the Hendley Telephone Exchange. Meanwhile, by age 25, he had set up his printing equipment in the back of the post office and started a mail order business for his Perkins Products Company. Business thrived.

    On September 30, 1918, Edwin married his schooldays sweetheart, Kathryn (Kitty) M. Shoemaker, in Pocatello, Idaho. The daughter of Dr. George and Mary Johnson Shoemaker, Kitty was born at nearby Wilsonville in 1891. When she was two years old, her family relocated to Hendley, where she graduated from high school in 1908. Kitty had moved to Arco, Idaho in 1917 to teach school, but Edwin's persuasive and persistent letters convinced her to marry him, return to Nebraska and become part of the family business.

    As a businessman, Edwin was mostly self-taught. He never attended college or formal business school, but he read and researched continually and was always willing to try new ideas. He printed catalogs that he sent out to potential customers across the nation. His penchant for hyphenated product names was represented by Motor-Vigor, Glos-Comb and Jel-Aid. One of his most successful products was Nix-O-Tine, a concoction formulated to help people stop smoking. This cure was composed of herbs, chemicals, mouthwash with silver nitrate, and a laxative. Surprisingly, it remained a best seller for many years.

    Business was booming, necessitating a better location for distribution. Moving to southern California seemed like a good idea until Edwin had a bout with bleeding ulcers. Wanting to remain closer to his extended family, on February 14, 1920, Edwin and Kitty, his parents and several siblings moved to Hastings in Adams County, a central Nebraska city with a population of 11,647 at the time.

     In the summer of 1921, Edwin worked for a month in a small St. Louis, Missouri company to learn more about business practices similar to his. Upon returning home, Edwin started a product line called "Onor-Maid" (pronounced "honor"). Eventually there were over a hundred creams, lotions, ointments, household cleansers, perfumes and food items.

    Mail order was a major part of the business, but this was also a time when door-to-door sales were common. Salespeople were usually welcomed into homes to demonstrate their wares. Edwin instituted a sales method he had read about known as a "trust scheme" whereby he entrusted salespeople with merchandise and paid them their share when they sent in the money from sales.

    In April 1922, the company moved to larger quarters in Hastings, and Edwin hired his first chemist Orval Adcock. Although Adcock's formal schooling had ended after the seventh grade, he, like Edwin, was a naturally curious self-taught inventor.

    In May 1922, Edwin started an in-house publication titled The Onor-Maid Herald.

    The first Onor-Maid order was received in September 1922. The most popular product was Fruit-Smack, a bottled drink concentrate. However, the glass bottles were fragile, heavy, often leaked and were expensive to ship. Edwin needed a practical solution. His continuing fascination with the Jell-O concept of using a powder that could be reconstituted resulted in his decision to develop a powdered drink mix. This required time and money. He had time but needed money.

    Bankers were reluctant to finance his experimentation, so in 1923, Edwin's parents mortgaged their home by obtaining a loan from Hastings College, while Edwin found private funding and mortgaged his first factory building.

    In 1927, Edwin was finally able to dehydrate Fruit Smack. He packaged the powder into envelopes and named it Kool-Ade, later renamed Kool-Aid. In June 1928, like Jell-O, it was sold in "six delicious flavors." By the next year, Kool-Aid appeared on grocery shelves nationwide, selling for $0.10 a packet.

    Edwin's marketing tactics were often innovative. For instance, envelopes were printed in both English and Spanish anticipating international sales in Latin America. Today, Kool-Aid is sold worldwide with packets printed in many languages, including Russian, Chinese and Japanese.

    Another new marketing idea was the "Cash Bonus Plan." In April 1929, Edwin provided food wholesalers a sample package of Kool-Aid along with literature explaining that they could earn five percent for distribution to grocers and other food vendors. He also used a "self-selling silent salesman," a countertop display box holding forty envelopes of assorted Kool-Aid flavors.

    The growing Perkins Products Company again needed more space and a better location for national and international distribution. Edwin formed a partnership with his Milwaukee sales manager Fred Schmitt, and on New Year's Day of 1931, they moved most of the business to Chicago, where Kool-Aid became the prime product.

    Meanwhile, some family members-brothers, sisters, and parents-remained in Hastings, where production of Nix-O-Tine, Motor-Vigor and other products continued.

    The move to Chicago was good but the timing could have been better. During most of the 1930s, the country was experiencing a major economic depression, so Edwin cut the price of Kool-Aid from $0.10 to $0.05 a packet. The price ploy worked. Kool-Aid sold so well that Edwin quit manufacturing all Perkins Products except food items.

    Again, Edwin's marketing skills triumphed. In 1931, he began advertising Kool-Aid on a network radio show. During the decade he also used celebrity spokespersons, started children's "Aviator Clubs" with Trans World Airlines, used comic strip characters named Nancy and Don for his adopted daughter and a nephew, and invented a "Kool-Aid Kid."

    In 1934, Edwin developed four dehydrated powdered pie fillings. Lemon-flavored Lemix in a four-ounce package was his best seller. Another product was a 5¢ one-ounce packet of ice cream powder to which one added enough milk to make a quart of ice cream.

    Edwin also sold Korlix pudding mix, Kool-Aid bubble gum, and Kool-Aid soda pop, but they were eventually discontinued to concentrate on Kool-Aid. By doing so, Perkins Products prospered. Within the next few years, Edwin bought out his partner Schmitt and paid off the mortgages in Hastings.

    As additional space was needed for the ever-growing business, the physical plant was expanded from 13,000 to 66,000 square feet. In 1937, Edwin opened a subsidiary, the Packit Envelope and Bag Company, that produced all the packaging materials needed for Kool-Aid.

    During and post-World War II, many food ingredients were rationed or in short supply, so growth during most of the 1940s was limited. However, in June 1949, a move to larger quarters was possible, and by 1950, production of Kool-Aid was expanding rapidly. That year, over 300 employees produced 323 million packets of Kool-Aid, which resulted in over $10 million in net sales, according to a company report.

    On February 16, 1953, Edwin announced that he had sold Perkins Products to General Foods, which also owned Jell-O, and on May 15th he would retire. (General Foods merged with Kraft Foods in 1989.)

    At age 64, he had spent more than fifty years inventing and manufacturing. Then Edwin and Kitty often traveled between homes they owned in the Chicago suburb of River Forest, and Miami Beach, Florida, where their daughter Nancy O'Neil lived, though she eventually relocated to California. They also visited family and friends in Hastings frequently.

    After retirement from business, Edwin and Kitty established a philanthropic foundation, the Kitty M. Perkins Foundation, which is of particular interest to Nebraskans because, as stated on the Foundation Web site, "The Kitty M. Perkins Foundation . . . will attempt to satisfy needs and requests as possible which are received from within the State of Nebraska, particularly the Southwestern portion of that State from which the benefactor came. Consideration will also be given to worthy charities in the area of Chicago, Illinois. Applications for medical and educational purposes will receive priority."

    Following these guidelines, the Foundation, based in the Furnas County town of Cambridge, has provided major funding to Hastings College, including Perkins Recital Hall named for Edwin's parents, David and Kizandra Perkins; the Perkins Library; Perkins Hall in the Fuhr Fine Arts building and numerous scholarships.

    Other Nebraska recipients of the Foundation's funds include the Perkins Library and Rall Art Gallery at Doane College in Crete; Memorial Hospital in Cambridge; Mary Lanning Memorial Hospital in Hastings; a doctors' clinic in Beaver City; Perkins Pavilion at Good Samaritan Village in Hastings; and Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln.

    Of special note are the Foundation's contributions to the Hastings Museum and its Imax Theater. Both Hastings College and the Hastings Museum house memorabilia and displays of Perkins Products and Kool-Aid.

    Daughter Nancy's move to California possibly explains why a second philanthropic Perkins foundation, the Edwin E. Perkins Foundation, although administered by a Chicago bank, specializes in "Giving for animal welfare, human services, and the economically disadvantaged; primarily on the West Coast," according to the National Recreation and Park Association - Grants for Programs for Children and Youth Web site.

    Edwin died of cancer at the age of 72 on July 3, 1961 in Rochester, Minnesota. Kitty continued with the philanthropic work. She received an honorary doctorate from Hastings College in 1961, and served on the college board of trustees from 1966 until her death on March 27, 1977 in Chicago. Both she and Edwin were buried in Parkview Cemetery at Hastings.

    An annual Kool-Aid Days celebration in the month of August held in Hastings was made an officially recognized State of Nebraska event in 1998 by then-Governor Ben Nelson, and Kool-Aid was proclaimed Nebraska's official soft drink. Four Kraft Foods representatives attended the inaugural celebration. On October 19, 2006, Kool-Aid Days won a Nebraska Department of Economic Development tourism award.

    In February 2002, Edwin E. Perkins was inducted into the Nebraska Business Hall of Fame. His life and work were summarized perfectly by Hayes M. Fuhr, Director of Music at Hastings College, in his obituary and tribute when he wrote, "... the very name, Edwin, connotes eminence, distinction, power and romance; but more intimately, the name mirrors the soul, solace and solicitude of a patriarch. His was the type of service and generosity that gives for the joy of giving and for which there can be no adequate return."

    Useful readings about Edwin Perkins include Paige Noel Richardson, Edwin E. Perkins 1889-1961, a 35-page manuscript housed at the Nebraska State Historical Society Index # 1990.388L and  "Edwin Perkins and the Kool-Aid Story," Historical News, Vol 31, No 4 (Adams County Historical Society, 1998) 1-15 and "E.E. Perkins Family," History of Furnas County, Nebraska, Vol 1 (1987) 436 and obituary in Hastings Daily Tribune, July 3, 1961, p. 9 and an article in Chicago Daily News, November 25, 1961 that mentions the size of his estate.

    For more information, consult "900 Famous Nebraskans" on the Internet at WWW.NSEA.ORG or  WWW.GAGECOUNTYMUSEUM.ORG or WWW.NEBPRESS.COM.