When three brothers founded Johnson & Johnson in 1886, they wanted to offer a very specific product - sterile surgical bandages. A good 150 years later, the globally operating company's product range includes not only medical products but also pharmaceuticals and various consumer goods.

The Johnson brothers - three people, three talents, one goal

In the middle of the 19th century, the USA was still a largely rural country. The future founders of Johnson & Johnson were born in Pennsylvania into a large family with a total of 11 siblings. Robert Wood Johnson (born 1845) trained at the Wood & Tittamer pharmacy in Poughkeepsie, New York. There he learned how to make plasters that delivered the medicine they contained through the skin. At the age of 19, he moved to New York City, where he worked in pharmaceutical wholesale and showed great interest in medical innovations. In 1874, he founded his first company with George J. Seabury, which produced plasters and other health products. During a visit to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the first world's fair in the USA, he attended a lecture by the English physician Sir Joseph Lister, who is regarded as the inventor of antiseptic surgery. The concept of antiseptics, now an integral part of all GMP standards, fascinated him - and would later become the starting point for the success of Johnson & Johnson.

Edward Mead Johnson (born 1852) first worked as a village schoolteacher, then studied law at the University of Michigan and worked as a lawyer for two years after graduating. In 1878, he joined his brother's company - first as a travelling salesman and then as an employee in the advertising department. The three brothers came together for the first time at Seabury & Johnson, where James Wood Johnson (born 1856) was also working for the company at the time. He had trained as a surveyor with the Pennsylvania Coal Company and was regarded as a talented engineer. Initially also active in sales, he quickly switched to production, developed systems for large-scale production and eventually became production manager.

When disagreements arose between Robert Wood Johnson and George J. Seabury regarding the distribution of company profits, they parted ways. Edward Mead and James Wood had already founded their own company - Johnson & Johnson. But business was slow: Although the company was based just two blocks from Wall Street, it was barely making a profit and had no money for investments. This problem was overcome, however, when Robert Wood joined the company, bringing with him capital and commercial experience. In autumn 1886, the three brothers were united under the roof of their own company. And they also had a special product to offer: Sterile surgical bandages.

Johnson & Johnson – defying all the world's crises

This idea had been on Robert Wood Johnson's mind since his visit to the 1876 World's Fair. This very product laid the foundation for the company's success – alongside the industrial sterilisation process developed in 1889 by pharmacist Fred Kilmer for Johnson & Johnson. In 1894, the company employed 400 people and owned a total of 14 buildings. Whether first aid kits, sanitary towels, baby powder or hypodermic syringes - the range of products on offer has been constantly expanded. Three events finally established Johnson & Johnson on the US market. During the Spanish-American War (1898), the American army became a major customer of the company. In 1906, Johnson & Johnson provided medical products and hospitals following the San Francisco earthquake. And when the Spanish flu swept across the globe in 1918, the company developed and distributed face masks. By the time the Great Depression hit in 1930, Johnson & Johnson was already so well known and established that it even entered new markets in the middle of the Great Depression, expanding into Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa by 1937. As a result, it became a customer for specialised translators and pharmaceutical interpreters earlier than other manufacturers. At that time, the company was still a family business - it only became a public limited company in 1944.

The rise of Johnson & Johnson to a global corporation

After the Second World War, the internationalisation of the company continued. In 1947, a manufacturer of surgical sutures in Great Britain was acquired, which, as a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, established branches in the Philippines and India in the mid-1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, numerous further acquisitions were made both inside and outside the USA. However, the company also repeatedly launched its own developments on the market, such as an anaemia test in 1969 and a rapid hepatitis B test for blood donors in 1971. Following its tradition as a pioneer in the development of new markets, the Group recognised the signs of the times early on in the 1980s. By 1991, the company had expanded eastwards and established itself in China and Russia. Since then, Johnson & Johnson products have not only been subject to controls by the American FDA and the European EMA, but also by the Chinese NMPA and the Russian authority SID&GP. The latest product from Johnson & Johnson to become known worldwide is the Janssen vaccine against COVID-19.

GMP-inspection.com from Nuremberg is a translation agency specialising in pharmaceutical translations and interpreting services for GMP inspections and audits. If your pharmaceutical company is also facing a GMP inspection, our GMP translators and interpreters are ready to provide you with professional support in English, Russian and German anywhere in Europe.

Picture: Johnson & Johnson, https://www.jnj.com/our-company