Kimberly-Clark: Cellucotton Bandages, Midwest Express and the Kenvue Deal

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Kimberly-Clark began in Neenah, Wisconsin in 1872, when four men put $42,000 into paper mills. After the Atlas paper mill burned down in 1888, workers rebuilt it with more capacity in five months, and the company became the first firm west of Pennsylvania to adopt the sulfite pulp process for softer paper. In 1914 it developed Cellucotton, a wood-fiber cotton substitute the U.S. Army adopted for surgical dressings in World War I. Army nurses found the pads worked as sanitary napkins, which led to Kotex in 1920, the first disposable feminine hygiene product, and Kleenex in 1924 as a disposable handkerchief. The company went public in 1928 and spread to Mexico, West Germany, the UK and almost 20 foreign locations.

A corporate flight department formed in 1948 and the KC Aviation unit, started in 1969, became Midwest Express Airlines in 1984 after airline deregulation; the aviation arm was sold to Gulfstream Aerospace in 1998 for $250 million. CEO Darwin Smith, who led from 1971 to 1991, moved the company from business paper to consumer brands, and it bought Scott Paper for $9.4 billion in 1995. Pandemic panic buying lifted consumer tissue sales 13 percent in early 2020, followed in April 2021 by an 8 percent organic sales drop, its worst in at least a decade. In May 2025 it moved its listing to the Nasdaq, and in November 2025 agreed to buy Kenvue, maker of Tylenol, Band-Aid, Neutrogena, Listerine, Zyrtec and Benadryl, for $48.7 billion.

• In 1982 Kimberly-Clark and Cadbury pulled advertising from the TV show Lou Grant amid conservative campaigns against star Ed Asner.
• In 2019 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued over Cottonelle flushable wipes; the Federal Court of Australia ruled for Kimberly-Clark, noting toilet paper also contributed to blockages.
• In October 2020 some Cottonelle flushable wipes were recalled over possible contamination with bacteria that could cause infections.
• After buying a majority stake in period underwear brand Thinx in 2022, the company faced a 2023 class action settlement over alleged PFAS and recorded a $658 million impairment charge tied to Thinx and another brand.
• In April 2026 an arson fire destroyed its distribution center in Ontario, California; the person who set it filmed the fire and said the company failed to pay a living wage.