The following is an excerpt from the book Ideas that Became Big Business by Clinton Woods. Published by Founders, Inc. Baltimore, MD, 1959, 414 pages.

Buy this book: Ideas That Became Big Business

The Mars Candy Story

Frank Mars had an idea that was new back in 1920: Find out what the public really wants and do your best to provide it. This ideas was the key that opened the door to growth from a start on a kitchen stove to the largest business of its kind in the world.

"The time: 1920. The place: Minneapolis, Minnesota. The occurrence was the birth of an idea--an idea that was soon to turn into the reality of Mars, Inc., now the world's largest manufacturer of chocolate covered candy bars.

The man with the idea was Frank C. Mars, a 37-year-old native of Newport, Minn., who had been a candy salesman since he was 19. Mars was convinced that he could make candy bars better than any then on the market--and that he could persuade people to buy them.

He had the conviction but not the capital to develop it. So he began making his candy on the kitchen stove of his Minneapolis home. And when Mars finished a batch of his homemade candy bars, his wife, Ethel, went out and sold them.

This humble husband-wife team beginning grew into something so big that even his staunch conviction could not have allowed him to think possible. For example, in 1922 the Minneapolis company--known as the Mar-O-Bar Company then--did a business of less than $100,000. Seven years later, in the economically perilous year of 1929, Mars, Inc. (its name had been changed in 1927) sold more than $20 million worth of five-cent candy bars. While other businesses tumbled during the depression years that followed, Mars' sales kept climbing.

Although the idea and the company were born in 1920, the development of the candy bar that is the foundation of the Mars success story--the Milky Way--did not come until 1923.

In his days in the Minneapolis kitchen, Mars had another idea. There was a place on the market for a different candy bar. A soda fountain item known as the chocolate malted milk shake held great popularity in the nation. "Why not put the flavor in a candy bar?" he reasoned. Eventually he found the right combination of a malted milk center, caramel, and a milk-chocolate coating, but only after pioneering them in a then little known or practiced marketing science-consumer testing.

Candy makers in the early 1920's seldom tested consumer tastes. They put their bars on the market on a hit-or-miss basis. Even the best-selling bars had distribution that was no more than regional in scope. Frank Mars believed that to produce a candy bar that would be a national success, it would have to be one that suited public taste everywhere. It was on one of his consumer testing trips that he discovered the universal popularity of the chocolate malted milk shake.

Back home he began a long series of preliminary tests to reproduce the taste in a candy bar. Several times he thought he had hit the right combination of ingredients, only to discover, through consumer tests that he hadn't quite duplicated it. Only when overwhelming consumer acceptance confirmed his opinion did Mars begin actual production of the Milky Way candy bar.

It didn't take long for it to become a national favorite. Today it is still the company's best seller, although the Mars family of confections has grown to include five other chocolate covered candy bars: Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Forever Yours, Mars Toasted Almond, Mars Coconut and Marsettes, bit-size, cup shaped pieces with variously flavored centers and two types of coating, all of them introduced only after exhaustive research and consumer taste testing.

With Frank Mars' Minneapolis success came new problems, problems he rather looked forward to solving.

Because of the company's sensational growth, the old plant was outgrown. The business needed new facilities, also a new location, Mars felt.

In those days of 1920 Mars had another vision. He wanted to manufacture his candy bars in a factory that was a model of beauty and efficiency. In 1927 he began searching for a place to locate just such a plant. In a residential area on the western edge of Chicago he found it. Because it was a residential neighborhood, some person told Mars it was not an ideal place for a factory. But he reasoned that if living conditions were better than those around the average factory, he'd get a better type of employee. If the employees were better, it would show in the product.

Construction was begun in 1928. It was a bold move. It came at a time when a Department of Commerce report stated that almost 40% of the candy manufacturing plant capacity in the nation was idle, indicating "production facilities in excess of consumer demand." But Frank Mars went ahead with construction and production started in 1929.

Frank Mars got what he wanted: a factory that is a model of beauty and efficiency for the rest of the candy industry. From the outside it resembles a fashionable country club with its high-windowed Spanish style architecture and manicured creeping bent grass lawns.

Since 1929 the plant has been expanded 12 times. But it remains the "showplace of the candy world" both inside and outside. And instead of stifling a residential neighborhood as some big factories do, it spurred home-building in the area until today there isn't a vacant lot within a mile of the plant.

Another revolutionary idea that Mars carried with him from Minneapolis to Chicago was that candy bars, like other products, could be manufactured on an assembly line basis and still be high-quality. So in his Chicago plant he adopted a straight-line system of mass production. Again he was right. And again his business boomed, the high volume production enabling him to keep prices low to distributors.

Frank Mars had some firm convictions about how his products were to be sold. A one-price policy to all distributors, regardless of size. This policy was established when Frank Mars founded the company and is today the cornerstone of Mars relations with the trade. The firm one-price policy did not give Frank Mars an easy road to achievement of a mass market. Some distributors, accustomed to varying price deals and premium arrangements resisted it. But Mars overcame the obstacle with a dramatic, inspired stroke that once again proved his dedication to the principle that price is no substitute for quality.

It happened in 1929, the year he opened his new Chicago plant. The mushrooming Mars company had been highly successful in developing markets in all parts of the United States but New York. There, in that inviting mass market, distributors balked at Mars' one-price policy. So Mars sent a crew of 80 men into New York. They divided the city into territories, then set out to carry their candy directly to the retail stores and avoid the jobbers. In the stores they sold the boxes of candy and at the same time obtained from each dealer the name of his regular jobber. When the retailers paid for the candy they sold, the New York M=manager took a check to each jobber for his share of the profits on the candy he had refused to handle. It took 6 months but as the popularity of Mars products zoomed in New York, Frank Mars convinced the jobbers that his one-price policy was in the best interests of all concerned.

Frank Mars died in 1934 at the age of 51 and at the very pinnacle of his success. His wife, who had shared his ambitions, his visionary ideas and had worked by his side to help him realize them, died in 1945.

There have been many changes in the Mars operations since their passing. But they have all been of the physical variety.

There have been no changes in the high-principled beliefs that concerned Frank Mars over the steaming kettles on his kitchen stove in Minneapolis."

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." - Virginia Woolf

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