Military Outdoor Clothing Company

One of the grandchildren of the founder, George B. Duke, began negotiating to buy out his relatives in 1998. By 2000 he, along with his mother, Sarah Dorn, had gained control of the company. Feeling that the firm needed to become more marketing oriented, Duke in 2001 replaced Schuler, the CEO, with Greg Booth, who had years of marketing experience with Kendall Motor Oil, Sunoco, Inc., and the Zippo subsidiary W.R. Case Sons. The new owner and new manager soon commissioned studies by two outside consulting firms, both of which reached the same conclusion, that the Zippo brand was extremely strong and that there were tremendous possibilities for creating a broader line of Zippo products through licensing deals. Based on this research, and to counter the antismoking trends that were hurting sales of lighters, Duke and Booth set an ambitious goal of deriving half of the company's revenues from products unrelated to tobacco by 2010. They also aimed to double the company's overall revenues by that same year.