Forbes Magazine 1992 Article Fruit Salad Car Wax By Jerry Flint

Bennett asked around and discovered the carriages were polished with homemade wax. Ingredients: lard, goose fat, chicken fat, beef suet, refined tree sap. "It was going rancid." "The smell was awful", Bennett says.  "But oh what a shine!"

Bennett, took some of the local concoction home to Branford, Conn. and began experimenting with other ingredients. "I had a big problem with animal fats," says Bennett. who is a vegetarian.

Using an electric coffeepot as a test vat, and with the counsel of his wife, an analyst at a pharmaceutical company, he began testing substitutes for the animal fats. He used banana oil, coconut oil, Carnauba (Brazilian Palm Oil) and fatty other plant oils. The vegetable oils produced a great shine, and made the wax smell good, too.

Acquaintances began asking for samples. *I asked members of my BMW club in Connecticut if I should go into business, and they said, Do it, we'll buy it. At first my goal was to make enough money to pay for my car payments."

In 1983 Bennett bought a used Hotpoint kettle from a restaurant supply house and talked his father-in-law (a house painter until he fell off a roof five years earlier) into joining him. Thus was born Zymöl, and at $19.95 per 8-ounce jar—the price has since been upped to $40+ —the most expensive car wax around. The appropriately obscure-sounding name is derived from zymology (the study of enzymic fermentation) and the German word for oil.

But it was still half hobby; Bennett kept his old job as a software specialist while his wife and mother-in-law put in time at Zymöl doing everything from watching the kettles bubble to answering telephone calls.

The first factory was-you guessed it—in the Bennett garage, then moved to the basement, and then into a rented shed. Financing was from the start shoestring. Bennett used $50,000 of his own savings over the first years and traded 20% of his company for services: to the landlord, who held the rent down on his small factory; to the contractor, who converted it; to his lawyer; and to the photographer who prepared the promotion work. And he remembers others who helped: His printer helped design his instruction book; his banker helped write a business plan.

Sales by 1987 were $35,999, $70.000 in 1988, and $350,000 in 1989, when Bennett decided to quit the computer world. Brilliant timing, because that was when the computer industry troubles began.

Bennett, it turned out, was in his clement. Operating with very little capital, he couldn't afford advertising “Advertising is a medium that you rent." he says. "Promotion is a medium that you own. When you are actually showing people something. you own their time.”

So he worked the car shows, demonstrated the shine and convincing car collectors to try it, and selling it through boutique car accessory shops and mail order.

It takes a certain amount of brass to ask $40 for an 8-ounce jar of wax good for 20+ wax jobs.  A 9.5 ounce can of Turtle Wax, by comparison, sells for about S 7.50. Add to Bennet's basic 8-ounce jar some car cleaners and a towel and you've got a Zymöl starter kit. priced at $1O0. At the higher end, there's Zymöl Concours and Zymöl Destiny. Then come custom waxes made for wealthy car collectors. These sell for thousands. The higher the price, the higher the carnauba content.

But Bennet knew his fellow BMW owners. What's a few hundred dollars to a car fanatic? Every kit includes a detailed booklet explaining how and why the product works. And Zymöl has two technicians to answer customers questions.

The big break came at the 1990

Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, the best known of American beauty contests for cars. The best-of-show winner-Ralph Lauren's 1938 Bugatti-and five other winners wore all shined with Zymöl. That year sales pushed to nearly $700,000.

Bennet hasn't gotten rich yet. On last year's sales of $1.5 million (including $300,000 in Japan), Bennett and his father-in-law probably netted $170,000. This year he thinks sales could double again, to $3 million.

Andrew Cohen, owner of Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories, says he was skeptical at first about the product. "All these fruits and vegetables put Zymöl on a car and it smells like a fruit salad,” he says. But using and selling the product changed his mind. Cohen was so impressed he knew he could get more than $40 a jar from his spendthrift entertainment community customers, Cohen asked Zymöl to come up with a special formulation for him, called Platinum, which he sells for $100. He says he sells about 100 jars of Platinum a month, on top of 150 jars of regular $40 Zymöl.