ITAC developed a multi-level initiative to provide coaching and advisory facilitation; a family governance program; and leadership development. An analysis of the organization including roles and responsibilities as well as organizational communication flow preceded the initiative. ITAC then developed a well-articulated step-by-step process to strengthen the organization, ensuring that it is well positioned for growth, stability and sustainability.
Anticipating resistance to restructuring, ITAC held multiple group and individual meetings with the full support and cooperation of ownership.
This approach also included elements of family governance and the integration of the strategic plan with family legacy initiatives. Their son, fresh from a chemical engineering degree at the University of Vermont and a stint in the Army, joined the company in In no time, the Eisenstadts were not only packing sugar in little pouches, but soy sauce and ketchup.
But it was only when they came up with a product of their own that things took off. The Eisenstadts, father and son, came up with the concept of a powdered sugar substitute in The father picked the name from a Tennyson poem.
There is an awful lot of good luck in the history of Sweet 'n Low. Sales statistics bear out the company's success. Over 30 million people use Sweet 'n Low every day. According to Information Resources Inc. Equal uses Aspartame as a sweetener. Because Equal outsells Sweet 'n Low in drugstores and other places, it has maintained an approximately 50 percent share of the total artificial sweetener market, about twice Cumberland's.
But there have been problems. A persistent one had been a federally mandated warning label saying saccharine causes cancer in animals. Congress has never passed an outright ban because there is serious scientific doubt about how dangerous the substance is to humans.
Two years ago, Cumberland suffered its most stinging setback when a Federal investigation led to one of its top executives, Joseph Asaro, being convicted of tax evasion in a complex scheme to funnel money to politicians illegally.
Eisenstadt will only say he trusted Mr. Asaro, and did not know what he was doing. Browse in-depth profiles on 12 million influential people and organizations. Find RelSci relationships, employment history, board memberships, donations, awards, and more. Explore notable alumni from top universities and organizations.
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In The News. However, the chemicals in Sweet 'n Low had not been thoroughly studied. Some testing had indicated that cyclamates might cause cancer or birth defects in chickens and rats, and in the Food and Drug Administration decided to run some more definitive tests on the chemical. After just three weeks of testing, the Health, Education and Welfare Secretary abruptly declared a ban on cyclamate sweeteners.
Preliminary results had shown the growth of cancerous tumors in rats, and consequently, cyclamates were deemed unsafe for humans. The ban was announced in late October, and all cyclamates were to be off the shelf by February 1. This might well have been the end of Cumberland Packing and Sweet 'n Low.
But Marvin Eisenstadt was able to use his chemical expertise and devise a new formula for Sweet 'n Low, made with saccharin but without the addition of cyclamates. The company took all its old stock off shelves across the country and buried it in landfills. Then Cumberland supplied its distributors with its reformulated product. This quick action saved the company, and sales soon took off. High sugar prices in led to a sudden increase in sales that year.
History almost repeated itself in , when a study preliminarily linked saccharin with cancer in laboratory rats. The Food and Drug Administration acted quickly, and in March announced a ban on saccharin, due to take effect in three months. Faced with this new disaster, Marvin Eisenstadt figured the company would sell out its remaining stock and close.
With a three-month supply on hand, the company should have lasted up until the ban kicked in. But consumers were apparently outraged at the coming loss of their diet product, and began hoarding Sweet 'n Low. Cumberland's three-month inventory sold out in just two days. The run on Sweet 'n Low was indicative of public sentiment, and Eisenstadt encouraged the public's outrage by taking to television commercials to inveigh against the FDA's tests.
Eisenstadt used the airwaves to complain that researchers had fed laboratory rats the equivalent of 1, cans of soda a day. In an interview in Forbes in July he complained "Those rats weren't fed saccharin; they were embryos in their mother's wombs, so they were literally bathed in it. Congress was apparently impressed by the level of public support for saccharin, and it moved to block the FDA's ban from taking effect. The compromise solution was to require packagers to print a warning label on products containing saccharin, which advised that saccharin had caused cancer in animals and may cause cancer in humans.
Eisenstadt continued to lobby against the saccharin warning, but Sweet 'n Low sold well even with the somber reminder printed on it. The warning label did not slow Sweet 'n Low's sales, and by the pink packets had an estimated 80 percent share of the nation's artificial sweetener market.
As insurance, Cumberland diversified into other products around this time, introducing a salt substitute called Nu Salt, and Butter Buds, a powdered butter and margarine substitute made of corn syrup and restructured butterfat.
But Sweet 'n Low's market share began to fall in , even as sales volume continued to rise by about five percent annually. The reason was the introduction of a formidable competitor, NutraSweet.
NutraSweet was made from a different chemical, aspartame, and it was manufactured under patent by the G. Searle Company. Searle had actually approached Cumberland in with an offer to buy out the business.
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