Lunsford Richardson II was born a son of privilege in Johnson County, North Carolina, in 1854. He grew up on the family plantation, Parker Heights, and came of age in the aftermath of the Civil War.
After graduating with honors from Davidson College, he married and settled down as a school principal.
But Lunsford Richardson had a driving entrepreneurial spirit that academia could not satisfy. Eventually, he formed a company that is still hugely successful today. And — oh, yes — along the way, he invented junk mail.
Therein lies a tale…
In 1880, while visiting his sister in the Johnson County town of Selma, Richardson impulsively said goodbye to academia and used his savings to purchase a small drugstore.
Like most pharmacists of the time, he was called upon to create medicines to treat the minor ailments of the local folk. He already knew a bit of chemistry from college, and he worked hard to expand that knowledge. Soon, he was concocting the headache powders, liver pills, and liniments his customers demanded.
Ultimately, it was Richardson’s children who prompted him to create his most successful remedy, a legendary medicine that propelled him to fame and fortune.
It happened after all three Richardson children caught colds at the same time. They were treated in the accepted manner: a poultice of warm medication was placed on the chest, and heat was used to release and circulate the fumes conveniently close to the nose, thus helping to clear up congestion.
Richardson believed he could do better. He created a salve that combined menthol, camphor, and oil of eucalyptus in a petroleum base. When the salve was rubbed on the chest, the patient’s body heat released a strong mentholated vapor that gave the sensation of breathing easier.
To be precise, Richardson’s salve did nothing to relieve nasal congestion. The strong menthol odor simply tricked the brain, making the patients feel as if their nasal passages had opened up.
And really, if the stuff can trick your brain, you have to say it works.
Word spread, and more customers tried the new remedy. Demand was high for “Richardson’s Croup and Pneumonia Cure Salve.”
Richardson had a good thing going, and he knew it. Soon, other concoctions followed, and the Lunsford Richardson Wholesale Drug Company was formed.
After moving his business to Greensboro in order to expand, Richardson decided that for marketing purposes, his own name was just too ordinary — and too long to fit on a tiny jar. He renamed the company for his brother-in-law, Dr. Joshua Vick, and changed the name of his popular salve to “Vick’s Croup and Pneumonia Salve.”
In 1907, Richardson’s oldest son, Smith Richardson, came home to Greensboro to become sales manager of his father’s growing company. Under Smith’s guidance, the name of the salve became “Vicks VapoRub.” In 1911, the company dropped all other products in order to concentrate on marketing the salve.
Vicks VapoRub quickly became one of the most popular medications in the country. And nothing sparked sales more than the deadly Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
Even though VapoRub offers zero protection against influenza, the public took no chances and stocked up on the familiar salve. Sales in one year skyrocketed from $900,000 to $2.9 million.
To keep up with demand, the Vicks plant in Greensboro operated around the clock. Salesmen were called back to the factory from around the country to help with manufacturing.
Sadly, in the midst of the flu outbreak, Lunsford Richardson contracted pneumonia, and after a brief illness, died. His son took over as president.
Over the following decades, Smith expanded the company worldwide and added new cold remedies and products to its arsenal — Dayquil, Nyquil, Sinex, Formula 44, vaporizers, humidifiers, thermometers, and more.
Smith Richardson died in 1972. Although Proctor & Gamble bought the company in 1980, a Richardson is still at the helm of the Vicks division.
So, what’s the story about Lunsford Richardson and junk mail?
In 1905, Richardson’s cold remedy was popular with the local residents, but Richardson struggled with how to promote it on a wider scale and expand sales.
From experience, he knew that the salve was usually successful when people tried it. The solution, he decided, was to distribute free samples.
Clearly, sending samples through the mail would be cheaper than having sales reps hand-deliver them. But postal regulations at the time required that all mail bear the name of the recipient.
That was a problem. Collecting the names of residents from phone directories and other sources would be a prohibitive investment of time and manpower.
So Richardson convinced the Postal Service to allow him to send out VapoRub samples addressed simply to “Box Holder.”
The project was a major success. Sales of Vicks VapoRub shot up dramatically. Other companies quickly began using the mail to send samples, coupons, flyers, and ads to “Resident” or “Occupant.”
Thus, the junk mail industry was born, thanks to Lunsford Richardson.
Being known as the Father of Junk Mail might not rank up there with being the Father of, say, Nuclear Physics, or Existentialism, or Our Country, but it’s still pretty cool.
Lunsford Richardson, entrepreneur extraordinaire.
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