Type Private Products personal care products Website www.vijon.com Founder John B. Brunner | Industry Consumer goods Brands Germ-X Founded 1908 Parent organization VJCS Holdings, Inc. | |
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Key people Gerald G. Bowe, CEO; Randy Veal, CFO; Tim Williams, COO Headquarters St. Louis, Missouri, United States | ||
Vi-Jon Laboratories is a health and beauty care company that produces both Private Label and brand name products. Headquartered in St. Louis they operate five manufacturing and distribution centers in Missouri and Tennessee. The company's products are supplied nationwide to retailers, such as Kroger, Target, and Walgreens. Vi-Jon was founded as Peroxide Specialty Company in 1908 by John B. Brunner. Vi-Jon has been owned by investment firm Berkshire Partners since 2006. The company markets a line of hand sanitizers in the United States under the brand Germ-X.
In 2006 Procter & Gamble filed a lawsuit against Vi-Jon alleging that Vi-Jon copied the look of Crest Pro-Health mouth wash; the parties settled a few months later, with Vi-Jon agreeing to withdraw its product from the market, to not use bottle designs that are confusingly similar to those of P&G, to not make "compare to Crest Pro-Health" or gingivitis efficacy claims without specific testing to support these claims, and to pay P&G.
In August 2014 Berkshire announced its intention to sell Vi-Jon; as of March 2016 the company had not been sold.