Allergan, Inc.

Allergan, Inc. is a global provider of eye care and specialty pharmaceutical products. In addition to its wide-ranging line of contact lens care products, Allergan also develops and markets products used in the treatment of glaucoma, cataracts, dry eye, psoriasis, acne, and various cancers. A full ten percent of revenues is generated by Botox, a pharmaceutical version of the toxic botulinum bacteria. Botox is used in Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment of crossed eyes and uncontrolled blinking, as well as in various unapproved ways, including the temporary erasure of facial wrinkles. Allergan markets its products in more than 100 countries around the world, with burgeoning sales in Japan as well as in such emerging markets as Brazil, India, and China. In 1948 Gavin S. Herbert, Sr., started a small ophthalmic business in a laboratory above one of his Los Angeles drugstores. Stanley Bly, who had only a bachelor's degree in chemistry, created the business's first product, an antihistamine eye drop named Allergan. Under the company name Allergan, Bly developed additional products, including a cortisone eye drop, Cortefrin. The small business was assisted by the salesmanship of Herbert's son, Gavin Herbert Jr., a 19-year-old student at the University of Southern California. In the late 1950s Allergan moved out of the upstairs laboratory into a 6,000-square-foot space in a converted Los Angeles theater. With the assistance of Jack Browning, an ad agency executive and former employee of SmithKline, Allergan also launched its first marketing plan. A key element of that plan was the advent of Allergan's first national product, Prednefrin, a corticosteroid. By 1960 Allergan was a million-dollar company and the company moved its operations to a 30,000-square-foot plant in Santa Ana, California. Allergan continued to grow in the 1960s, with an increased focus on in-licensing products such as Herplex. Herplex, introduced by Allergan in 1965, was the first antiviral approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the United States and the second drug of any type to be approved after the emergence of new FDA rules requiring that manufacturers prove the efficacy of all new drugs. The new FDA rules provided Allergan with a competitive advantage over larger companies, who were less adaptable. Dean McCann, who later became the company's senior vice-president of legal affairs, began advising Allergan in compliance with the FDA rules as early as 1957. In 1960 hard contact lenses first became available. Allergan demonstrated its propensity to take advantage of new technology when it entered the contact lens market that year. Liquifilm, a wetting solution for hard contact lenses, became an important vehicle for Allergan's ophthalmic products. Allergan began to develop a global outlook in 1964, when it created its first foreign distributorships in Puerto Rico and Iraq. In 1965 Allergan established its first foreign subsidiary in Canada. The company's only competition abroad was Alcon, and Allergan's growth in the international market and the success of its hard contact lens care products combined to bring sales growth of 20 to 25 percent during the 1960s. Allergan had achieved $10 million in sales by 1970 and was preparing to become a public company. To take the company public, a long-term plan for managing growth was developed. Toward the realization of that plan, Allergan purchased 24 acres from the Irvine Ranch Company and, in 1968, built its Von Karman production facility on that site. In 1971 Allergan went public, erecting its first office building in Irvine, California. By the mid-1970s, the company had become a major ophthalmic producer, meeting a growing demand for soft contact lens products. Soft contact lenses had become available in 1970, and Allergan became a contractual supplier of soft contact lens solutions to industry giant Bausch & Lomb. Allergan's two lens products were Hydrocare (introduced in 1974)