The Soft Soap Edition

Colin here. I’m a fan of business stories where, by strategy or by luck, someone corners a market. In the case of the trader "Chocfinger," he cornered the cocoa market (like a Bond villain) and spiked the prices, sending entire economies reliant on the commodity into a tailspin. The Guardian explains:

He became well known outside the City three-and-a-half years ago when prices of cocoa—the basic ingredient in chocolate—rose to their highest level in 33 years after his company amassed a large chunk of the world's supply of beans. The episode, following a similar heist in 2002 when he gobbled up 15% of world stocks, cemented his nickname of Chocfinger, as his methods seemed to echo those of Ian Fleming's Auric Goldfinger, who planned to corner the global gold supply.

I recently found another interesting example of market cornering by Robert R. Taylor, an early proprietor of liquid soap. He didn’t invent liquid soap—both the form and the dispenser had been around since the early 1900s—but he figured out how to package a brand, known to us all as Soft Soap, for domestic consumption.

The dramatic reveal, for subscribers…

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