Schwap for Schweppes

In tropical climes, an indispensable rejuvenator to hard-working British colonials is gin & tonic. The tonic has always meant Schweppes, a bitter, effervescent quinine water supposed to ward off malaria & malaise. Last week Schweppes took steps to colonize the U.S. It made a deal with Pepsi-Cola Co. giving Pepsi sole rights to bottle Schweppes in North America, and Schweppes will buy Pepsi's plants in England. Within a few months, Schweppes hopes to ship its concentrate to the U.S., cut its price from 40-c- to about 15-c- for a 10-oz. bottle, and be selling as much quinine water in the U.S. as its entire competition combined (about 1,000,000 cases).

Besides providing needed dollar income for Britain, the deal will help Schweppes' sales at home. Said Managing Director Frederick Collins ("Eric") Hooper last week: "The world's palate is getting sweeter . . . Where in some classes it used to be only beer, and in others spirits, now they are drinking more soft drinks. In some respects I think this is deplorable--but commercially it's wonderful." Schweppes, which does 46% of its business in tonic and the rest in a variety of mixers & soft drinks, thinks Pepsi production will give it a big new product to satisfy Britain's craving for sweeter drinks.

Old Remedy. Swiss-born Jacob Schweppe first began making soda water in his Bristol chemist's shop in 1794. Quinine water, which Schweppes concocted in the 1860s, so appealed to British taste that by 1903 Schweppes had factories all over the empire. World War II cut off sugar supplies and stopped production; when the factories started up again in 1948, sugar rationing kept sales flat.

The man who put the fizz back in is effervescent Eric Hooper, 60. Trained as a botanist, Hooper "wandered about for a time," met Department Store Magnate Frederick James Marquis, now Lord Woolton, and went to work for him without knowing what business Woolton was in. "When I showed up and found it was a shop," says Hooper, "I was absolutely horrified."

The Schweppshire Lad. By 1940 Hooper had succeeded Woolton as managing director of Lewis's, Ltd., Woolton's chain of department stores in northern England. In 1942 Hooper quit. "It was very rejuvenating, I thought, to chuck it all in the bag at 50 and start something new," Hooper explains. The something new was to mix in Tory politics (at which he still worked closely with Woolton). He became public-relations director for the Ministry of Works, and later boss of Britain's veterans' resettlement program. He started his own firm of business consultants and, with Julian Huxley and C.E.M. Joad, was on the panel of BBC's famed Brains Trust program.

When Schweppes asked him to take over, he was "intrigued." The first thing he did was get more sugar by a series of complicated trading transactions, "all legal, of course." Then he began to advertise heavily with Schweppigrams* and hired Stephen (Gamesmanship) Potter to write pun-laden ads about an imaginary locality called Schweppshire, with such landmarks as Schwepsom Downs, Schwepping Forest and Schwepstow Castle (noted because "Queen Elizabeth Schwept here"), and peopled by such notables as the poet Schwinburne and the author of the "Schweppshire Lad." With such high jinks Hooper tripled sales, and profits last year Schwept to a new high of -L-450,000 ($1,350,000).

* Tennis fans, please tell me One thing I want to know If you plant a seeded player Will he grow?

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