ABSTRACT
in the soap industry the entry of new firms has throughout remained free. Yet one firm, under its dominating founder, Lever, succeeded in expanding until, in 1930, it controlled, with its associated companies, something like three-fifths of British soap sales. The largest part of the expansion came through the acquisition of rival soap firms, mainly between 1906 and 1921. Up to 1906 Lever’s had secured about a sixth of the market and only bought one independent soap firm, and that a small one in this country; by 1921, with their associated firms, they held some 55 per cent of the total; thereafter, until 1930, they secured about a further 5 per cent of the market, mainly through innovations; only one important firm, the British Soap Company, was brought in after 1920, brought in mainly in order to stop its competition. Then, from 1930, Unilever accepted a decline in their share of the home soap market at the hands of new and powerful competitors and strengthened their own position by an eventually drastic rationalization of their home soap factories. Unilever as a whole still expanded rapidly into fields now easier than the home soap market.
