Kimberly-Clark Depended On CEO Darwin Smith
Pundits predicted disaster. But by the time Smith retired in 1992, diapers accounted for a quarter of his company's $6.8 billion in revenue, Huggies was the No. 1 brand in the country, and Kimberly-Clark had transformed itself into the world's leading consumer paper-product company.
"Wall Street said, 'You're writing Kimberly-Clark's obituary. You can't compete with Procter & Gamble. They're too big and powerful,'" Harry Spiegelberg, a former K-C vice president, told IBD.
"But he had a level of intelligence and the gut instinct to look way ahead and see that the traditional paper industry was changing. No one else recognized that.''
After growing up in the Indiana town of Garrett, where his father was a railroad engineer, Smith attended the University of Indiana and Harvard Law School.
He graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1955, joined a Chicago firm, then shifted to Kimberly-Clark as a lawyer in 1958.
He was promoted to general attorney a year later, rose through the ranks and was elected president in 1970 and chief executive in 1971.
The success of this innovative work on trust and culture has been such that it is now being adopted by other parts of the General Mills global business, which has brands in more than 100 countries. Swanborough has also become a prominent ambassador for
