Had he lived, LW no doubt would be at least as successful as BS, imo, wonder if he would have remained on good terms with BS or if they would have become competitive with one another?
Louis Lloyd Winter - Wikipedia
This page was last edited on 16 November 2019
"Louis Winter was the youngest of six children. He attended
Jarvis Collegiate Institute in Toronto where he made the honour roll. He was accepted into the biochemistry program at the
University of Toronto, and graduated with a master's degree in the subject. In 1948 he borrowed $10,000 from his father Abraham, and opened his first venture, Winter Laboratories. The business was based in the family's garage processing blood work and pregnancy tests for local pharmacies, doctors' offices and medical clinics. With just his school mate, Toby Johansen, to handle initial sales, the company quickly outgrew its space and moved into a house near the University of Toronto's main campus. The business continued to expand; Winter Laboratories leased the basement of the Mothercraft Building on
Bloor Street, where
Rochdale College was built in 1968."
"Louis Winter soon had to expand his operations and purchased a larger five-story building from the Reichmann family, the former Planter's Peanut factory at 301 Lansdowne Avenue, just two blocks from Empire's current base on Florence Street, and he added additional production, including a synthesis laboratory on the top floor for the manufacturing of
saccharine, the low-calorie sweetener. Winter also purchased a printing facility which he renamed Professional Printing Services Limited from the Mount family in 1963 that was originally located at 1389 Weston Road, Toronto, and Walter and Peter Mount became Empire employees. Empire Laboratories could then provide all its independent pharmacies from coast to coast with customized prescription delivery bags, point-of-purchase displays, posters, and signage as a loyalty incentive, in an era prior to the dominance of national chain drug stores. Empire also provided medical practitioners with complimentary stationary and prescription pads. To offset these marketing costs, Empire's printing division also retained dedicated print brokers and a couple of sales representatives to ensure that the division did not operate at a loss, and it processed all of the company's product labels and plant packaging.
The Empire pharmaceutical operation became diversified and expanded, and it became one of Canada's largest pharmaceutical companies with over 100 products in its 1964 product catalog. Empire was the first Canadian firm to license and manufacture popular medications like
Valium (
diazepam),
Orinase (
tolbutamide) and
Tetracyn (
tetracycline). The United States market was becoming a greater focus, and the U.S. military became a client, and a special manufacturing facility was being built in Puerto Rico under PRIDCO (
Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company) to ship products tariff free to the US Mainland. Lou Winter also invested in Vanguard Medical Supplies, the first Canadian mail-order based pharmaceutical business with Israel Kerzner and Murray Rubin, to service rural regions via catalog mail order, and Professional Printing Services handled all of the catalog production."