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The GOJO Pickle Jar - Then & Now

By Marcella Kanfer Rolnick, Vice Chair

We honor the legacy of our founders, Goldie and Jerry Lippman, in many ways. For example, when
we get together in Jerry’s Place, the special employee gathering locations in every GOJO office
around the world, we are reminded of Jerry’s desire to ensure his employees were never hungry and
could “break bread” together. We also honor the special importance our founders placed on lifelong
learning through the Goldie and Jerry Lippman Education Grants. Perhaps the quirkiest way we
remember Goldie and Jerry is our use of the “GOJO Pickle Jar” to facilitate open discussion at large
employee and stakeholder meetings.

WHY A PICKLE JAR?
The story of the GOJO Pickle Jar dates back to the founding of GOJO in 1946. When Goldie and
Jerry began making heavy-duty hand cleaner in the basement of their home in Akron, Ohio, they
needed an inexpensive way to package their product. Products like hand cleaner were typically
packaged in tin cans, but tin can manufacturers were not willing to sell to customers ordering small
quantities. The Lippmans had to be creative to find another way to package their original hand
cleaner.
Prior to founding GOJO, Jerry worked for a local cookie company selling baked goods to area
restaurants. As a gifted salesman and innovator, he had formed connections that proved to be
incredibly valuable as Goldie and he set out to build their own business venture. Driven by their
insatiable entrepreneurial spirit and lack of funds, they made good use of Jerry’s restaurant business
relationships by convincing restaurant owners to give them their used pickle jars. The Lippmans
washed and reused those jars as containers for GOJO hand cleaner.

After Jerry mixed hand cleaner in the washing machine of their basement, Goldie packed it into the
pickle jars and labeled each by hand. Thanks to those pickle jars, Goldie and Jerry were able to sell
their hand cleaner to the local rubber and automotive after-market companies. After just a few years,
GOJO grew substantially enough that Goldie and Jerry were able to place sizeable enough tin can
orders. By the 1970s, most GOJO employees had forgotten – or did not even know about – the role
of pickle jars in the history of GOJO.

THE PICKLE JAR TRADITION LIVES ON
In 1995, when GOJO was going through a system-wide organizational change effort affectionately
known as Transformation, Mark Lerner and Joe Kanfer, the Lippmans’ nephew, along with other
leadership colleagues, began organizing whole systems conferences. They decided to resurrect the
pickle jar for symbolic culture-building purposes. Pickle jars were placed throughout GOJO, and
GOJO employees were encouraged to write down questions (anonymously, if they wanted) and drop
them into the pickle jar. Leaders then randomly picked questions out of the jar to read aloud and
respond to in these large group conferences.
More than 70 years after the founding of GOJO, thanks to our innovations in dispensing and
packaging, we now lead the industry in hygiene solutions. The GOJO Pickle Jar has an honored
place in our lives and is an important part of GOJO culture that celebrates inquiry, learning, sharing
information, and, grounded in our roots, advancing toward the future. The next time you see one, be
sure to drop your questions and suggestions into a GOJO Pickle Jar!

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