Armour and Company - 1950-2000

1950-2000

During the 1950s Dial became the best-selling deodorant soap in the US. The company adopted the slogan "Aren't you glad you use Dial? Don't you wish everybody did?" in 1953. In the 1960s, Armour expanded the Dial line with deodorants and shaving creams. During this period the young Dale Carnegie became the company's highest-selling salesman in their South Omaha sales region.

Chicago-based bus company Greyhound Corporation acquired Armour and Co. and its Dial brand in 1970. Greyhound kept the company's meatpacking (Armour Foods) and consumer products operations (Armour-Dial) and sold the rest of its assets. In 1971, Greyhound moved Armour-Dial's headquarters from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona, to a newly-built $83 million building.

Greyhound's rapid diversification and frequent unit restructurings led to erratic profitability. In 1981, John Teets was appointed chairman of Greyhound and began selling unprofitable subsidiaries. After meatpackers struck at Armour Food meat-packing plants in the early-1980s, Teets shut 29 plants and sold its meatpacking operation to ConAgra, Inc. (now ConAgra Foods, Inc.), but kept its canned meat business. Greyhound's Armour-Dial unit continued to manufacture the canned meat products while licensing the Armour-Star brand name.

A similar labor feud at Greyhound led to the sale of the bus operations in 1987. Armour-Dial acquired the household products business Purex Corporation in 1985. Two years later it introduced Liquid Dial soap as well as acquiring the Twenty-Mule-Team Borax laundry products business. In 1990, the company acquired the Breck's hair products line.

To reflect its changing focus, the company changed its name to The Dial Corporation in 1991. When it sold Greyhound Line, Inc and then Motor Coach Industries to the public in 1993, it exited the US bus industry altogether. Also that year Dial bought Renuzit air fresheners from S. C. Johnson. The company introduced the Nature's Accents line of skin care products in 1995.

In late 1995, management of parent Dial Corporation announced their intent to split the company and spin off the consumer products segment. In 1996, the remaining company became the Viad Corporation, consisting of financial and leisure products. The consumer business was reborn as a new Dial Corporation, soon relocating its corporate offices to Scottsdale, Arizona, adjacent to its long-time research and development facility. That same year, John Teets and Andrew S Patti were both ousted from their respective roles as CEO and President and replaced by Malcolm Jozoff, a former P&G manager, whose tenure included major layoffs in the fall of 1996 and then a series of financially disastrous acquisitions the following four years. In 2000, Jozoff was fired and replaced by Herbert Baum, with a mandate from the board of directors to find a suitable buyer for the company.