Re: Horace Hagedorn obituary

**"Peter Loewer" t*@earthlink.net**

The amazing thing is I actually did a poster for H. H. and journeyed out to
Long Island to meet him and upon reflection realized he was a true hustler
and should be made into a hero for Capitalism! Wish I had kept the poster.
Peter
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry Maxcy" <larrymaxcy@earthlink.net>
To: <gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 4:08 PM
Subject: [GWL] Horace Hagedorn obituary


> From Friday's Los Angeles Times.
>
> Larry Maxcy
>
> H. Hagedorn, 89; He Grew Rich on Miracle-Gro
> By Myrna Oliver
> Times Staff Writer
>
> February 4, 2005
>
> Horace Hagedorn, the canny entrepreneur who developed a blue-green
> fertilizer he dubbed Miracle-Gro and marketed it to gardeners around the
> world, has died. He was 89.
>
> Hagedorn, who also became a major philanthropist, died Monday at his
> home in Sands Point on New York's Long Island of undisclosed causes.
>
> In 1995, Hagedorn merged his Miracle-Gro company with the
> six-times-larger Scotts Co. — a major lawn and garden product
> manufacturer based in Marysville, Ohio — gaining three board seats and
> 42% of company stock. He became a vice president of Scotts' board of
> directors and by 2001 had installed his son, James, as chief executive.
>
> "Horace was a creative genius, and the success of this business, as well
> as the lawn and garden industry, is due to his energy, drive and
> insight," James Hagedorn said after his father's death.
>
> With company management assured, the elder Hagedorn turned his attention
> to philanthropy. At the time of the merger, he and his wife Amy donated
> $45 million to the Long Island Community Foundation, which aids families
> and children's programs.
>
> The Hagedorn philanthropy has included medical research and treatment,
> libraries, scholarships, arts programs and social services. In 2002,
> Hagedorn guided Scotts to contribute $1 million for a new National
> Garden on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C.
>
> Neither a gardener nor a chemist, Hagedorn seemed an unlikely godfather
> to Miracle-Gro. A native New Yorker, he began his career in radio
> advertising during the Depression.
>
> Hagedorn happened into his true calling in 1950 when an upstate New York
> gardener named Otto Stern asked him to design a newspaper advertisement
> for his mail-order plant business. Stern also sold a fertilizer to
> revive plants depleted by long shipping times.
>
> Well aware that suburban gardens were a newfound postwar hobby, Hagedorn
> suggested that the two men develop their own fertilizer.
>
> Stern and Hagedorn each invested $2,000 and asked a Rutgers University
> orchid expert to devise a soluble fertilizer for general garden use.
> Hagedorn said the natural moniker for the result- ing
> nitrogen-phosphorus-phosphate crystals should be Miracle-Gro.
>
> Hagedorn daringly spent half of the start-up money — $2,000 — for a
> full-page ad in the now-defunct New York Herald-Tribune. The ad
> generated $22,000 in sales in three days, and Hagedorn realized his
> two-pronged formula for building the company, which has never shown an
> annual loss: outsource and advertise.
>
> Outsourcing provided a lean, mean profit-making machine, and advertising
> helped expand sales beyond New York state across the country, to the
> United Kingdom and beyond.
>
> When Miracle-Gro joined Scotts in 1995, James Hagedorn told Forbes
> magazine in 1998, Miracle-Gro "consisted of 30 people in a $120-million
> business making $35 million a year and pretty much hiring everything out
> except the advertising and counting the money."
>
> Hagedorn left his own ad agency in 1965 to devote himself full time to
> the fertilizer company. Gradually, he bought out Stern and handed stock
> to the six children he had with his first wife, who died in 1984: James,
> Katherine, Paul, Robert, Susan and Peter.
>
> With his marketing flair, Hagedorn wrote most of the advertising copy
> until his death and prided himself on the wording printed on the
> increasingly familiar yellow and green box: "All-Purpose Liquid
> Fertilizer for 'Miracle Garden' Results. All Flowers, All Vegetables,
> Roses, Tomatoes, Trees, Fruits, Shrubs, Lawns, Evergreens, House Plants."
>
> By the 1970s, Hagedorn was using television to establish Miracle-Gro as
> a nationally known brand. He put on a toupee and personally pitched the
> product from Death Valley, persuading viewers that if you could grow a
> garden there you could grow one anywhere, simply by applying Miracle-Gro.
>
> When the ad failed — sales actually dropped where the ad was broadcast —
> he decided to simplify television spots and hire a professional
> pitchman. For many years, the spokesman was former television newsman
> John Cameron Swayze, and after 1985, actor James Whitmore.
>
> Innately astute about making money — as he later proved to be in giving
> it away — Hagedorn in 2002 told the Washington Post about an early bit
> of advice he had received from Marvin Small, the Madison Avenue genius
> credited with inventing roll-on deodorant. Small said he could tell
> Hagedorn how to make a million dollars in five words: "Find a need, and
> fill it."
>
> "I said, 'Marvin,' " Hagedorn recalled, " 'that's six words,' and he
> said, 'So I lie a little.' "
>
> Hagedorn is survived by his wife of 20 years, Amy; six children; four
> stepchildren; 22 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
>
> _______________________________________________
> gardenwriters mailing list
> gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters
>
> GWL has searchable archives at:
> http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters
>
> Send photos for GWL to gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
> at: http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos
>
> Post gardening questions/threads to
> &quot;Gardenwriters on Gardening&quot; &lt;gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org&gt;
>
> For GWL website and Wiki, go to
> http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters

_______________________________________________
gardenwriters mailing list
gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters

GWL has searchable archives at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters

Send photos for GWL to gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
at: http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos

Post gardening questions/threads to
&quot;Gardenwriters on Gardening&quot; &lt;gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org&gt;

For GWL website and Wiki, go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters