Daniel Frank Gerber – Short Biography
When Daniel Gerber created Gerber Products, he became a business leader in the baby care industry with food and other health products.”
The world’s largest supplier of baby food products comes with the name GERBER.
Daniel Gerber saw the need for baby food in the market and went right in that direction establishing the Gerber Products Company.
By 1978, the Gerber Products Company became the market’s leading provider of baby food products, registering $278 billion in earnings.
Although the birth of the Gerber Products Company came about in 1928, its origin dates back to the summer of 1927 in Gerber’s very own kitchen.
The story began through a pediatrician’s suggestion. Gerber’s wife, Dorothy Gerber, started making homemade strained baby food out of fruits and vegetables to feed their seven-month-old daughter, Sally. Dorothy suggested using ordinary peas in strained baby food and having it canned for production.
Gerber bought the idea since baby food at that time was relatively expensive and his father’s company, Freemont Canning Company, had the resources to produce it.
In 1931, Gerber launched its Gerber Baby campaign, the baby picture in the bottles we see today. Gerber Products generated a variety of strained fruit and vegetable baby food along with its other baby care line products and juices in 1960. It was in the same year when Gerber Products introduced glass bottles as its baby food container.
Like any other company, Gerber has its share of ups and downs in the business. It had extreme debt in 1985. These, however, did not stop Gerber and his partners and instead took them as challenges. While competitors were trying to ‘keep up’ by improving their line of baby food products, Gerber started to diversify into other products.
In 1999, Gerber Skincare and Healthcare products were introduced offering a line of shampoo, lotion, ointment, drops, and vitamins for babies.
The Daniel Gerber Quick Bio
Full Name: Â Daniel Frank Gerber
Birthdate: Â 1873
Birthplace: Â Michigan
Company: Â Gerber Products Company
Industry: Â Food
Key Success Traits: Â always open to new ideas, embraces challenges, innovative
Additional:
Gerber’s idea of the ‘Gerber Baby’ symbol became much-talked-about anonymity. People have mistaken it and associated it with Elizabeth Taylor’s or Bob Dole’s baby picture. The truth? The smiling baby picture is that of Ann Turner Crook, a charcoal sketch created by Dorothy Hope Smith.
For whatever it’s worth, Gerber’s idea of a Gerber baby symbol signified Gerber Products Company’s promise of a healthy, happy baby.