You have to be a little crazy to look at an old pair of pantyhose and ground-up corn cob and think, "That would make my job a lot easier." We were, and we did.
It was 1985. Our founders were working up a late-night sweat cleaning oil and grime from filthy factories. The worst of the nasty jobs was shoveling up the cat litter that got spread around leaky machines. Dusty clay pellets. Everywhere.
But our guys wouldn't take "dirty" for an answer – they cut up pantyhose and stuffed 'em with everything from sawdust to rice hulls. They laid these things in pools of oil to see what would happen. Not much. Fortunately, the word "quit" wasn't in their vocabulary. So they kept at it until they hit on the magic juju – ground corncob worked like a charm.
A PIG by any other name
When that prototype "sock" sat in a pool of oil, it looked like it was wallowing in the slop. Someone called it a "pig," and the name stuck. Some big city advertising people told us not to use it, but what did they know?
When it came time to give our company a name, co-founder Ben Stapelfeld chose "Pig Corporation," but it was already registered to a local farmer. Unlike people in advertising, farmers know a lot. Out of respect to farmers (and lawyers), we added "New" to our name. Voila! "New Pig Corporation" was born.
Coming into our own
For all the smack talk about marketing, we've done an awful good job of it. When we started out, our products weren't the only things breaking new ground. We were also the only folks on the market who found fun in industrial absorbency. We've worn our share of pig hats over the years, and we continue to create extraordinary products with character to match.
