Herbert Henry Dow
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Herbert Henry Dow (1866 – 1930) was a U.S. (Canadian-born) chemical industrialist. He attended the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio, where he became a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. His most significant achievement was as founder and eponym of Dow Chemical Company in 1897 with the assistance of Charles Nold. Two years later, he also started the Dow Gardens in Midland, Michigan as a personal hobby.
According to company publicity, Dow also invented the egg incubator.
Personal life
Dow married Grace A. Dow, and they both had a son, Alden B. Dow, who became a famous architect.
The Monopoly Breaker
Dow was not only a very able chemist, but was also a sharp businessmen. In a famous example, Dow found a cheaper way to produce bromine from his plant in Michigan, which he sold in the U.S. for 36 cents per pound. At the time, the government-supported German bromine cartel, Bromkonvention, had a near-monopoly on the supply of bromine, which they sold for 49 cents per pound. The Germans had made it clear that they would flood the American market with cheap bromine if Dow attempted to sell the element abroad. Dow did precisely that in 1904 by exporting to England. A few months later, a Bromkonvention representative showed up in his office and attempted to bully Dow into ceasing exports.
Unafraid, Dow continued exporting to England and Japan. The German cartel retaliated by flooding the US market with bromine at a mere 15 cents a pound in an attempt to put him out of business. Dow, unable to compete with the attempt at predatory pricing in the U.S., instructed his agents to quietly buy up hundreds of thousands of pounds of the German bromine locally at the low price. The Dow company then turned the tables on the cartel by repackaging the bromine and exporting it to Germany at a tremendous profit. The cartel, expecting Dow to go out of business, was unable to comprehend what was driving the enormous demand for bromine in the U.S., and where all the cheap imported bromine flooding their market was coming from. They even suspected their own members of violating their price-fixing agreement and selling in Germany below the cartel's fixed cost. The befuddled cartel continued to slash prices on their bromine in the U.S., first to 12 cents a pound, and then to 10.5 cents per pound. Dow continued selling the dumped bromine in Germany at 27 cents per pound. When the cartel finally caught on to Dow's tactic, they realized they could not keep selling below cost, and were forced to reduce their prices worldwide. Dow's triumph has been used as an argument that predatory pricing is an irrational practice that would never work in the real world.