Our Founder and the History of Carmex

Alfred Woelbing was a buyer of drugs and toiletries for a Milwaukee department store, when the country was hit by the Depression in the early 1930s. He began producing an earlier lip protection product, Lyptone, in his home after losing his job at the department store. Lyptone sold for 25 cents. In 1935, Alfred sold the name and formula for the product to a New Jersey company for $2,500.

"That was a lot of money in those days," he says.

He replaced the product with a silver polish, Shynebright, which he developed, produced and sold to jewelers, grocers and department stores in Milwaukee and Chicago. Two years later, in 1937, he began working on another lip protection product to cure his own chapped lips and cold sores. The resulting product was Carmex. But it was the silver polish that paid the bills and Carmex took a back seat to it. In fact, during World War II, production of Carmex was limited because one of its principal ingredients, Lanolin, was needed by the military to prevent rust and grease war equipment.

After the war, Alfred and his wife continued production of Carmex from their home, pouring the mixture by hand into its little glass jars, from a 12-quart kettle they kept warm on a hot plate. Alfred sold the product himself from the trunk of his car.

The success of Carmex grew through word of mouth, as the company used no advertising or salesmen other than Alfred.

In 1957, the product had become so successful that production was finally moved out of the Woelbing home to a small rented manufacturing facility in Wauwatosa, a suburb west of Milwaukee.

In 1976, having outgrown the Wauwatosa site, Carma Labs built their current facility in Franklin, Wisconsin.

In 2001, Alfred Woelbing passed away at age 100. The company tradition has been lovingly continued by his son and grandsons since then.