Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 12, Number 9, DeMotte, Jasper County, 8 January 1942 — The Checkerboard Trade Mark Had a Very Simple Start [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Checkerboard Trade Mark Had a Very Simple Start

Often we’ve been attracted by that popular Checkerboard trade mark that is a part of the sign identifying one of our local feed stores and on the bags and containers in which its feeds, concentrates and sanitation products are packed. But how did it get started? You’re wrong if you’ve guessed it was so the bags could be used for playing a game of checkers out in the barn on a rainy day. According to William H. Danforth, founder of Purina Mills, their checkerboard trademark had a simple, yet rather amusing, beginning.

It was a boyhood experience that gave Mr. Danforth his checkerboard idea. When a boy he waited on customers in his father's general store in southeastern Missouri. There he learned valuable lessons that were to serve him well in his business career. “But the most important thing I learned behind the counter in that country store where, we sold everything from linen handkerchiefs to horse collars, was this,” Danforth smilingly recalls ,“I learned The importance of ‘dress.’ And I learned that lesson from the mother of a large family in our community.

“Among the many articles we handled in our store was bolt goods.' mostly oldfashioned calicos and sturdy ginghams. Along in the spring of the year business picked up in this line of goods. Customers swarmed into the store to buy dress materials. Usually they purchased enough material to outfit the whole family. From the same bolt would be made shirts for the father and all the boys, and dresses and aprons for all the girls. Most of the women who traded with us chose modest patterns and varied them from year to year. But not Mrs. Brown. Mother of a large brood of tow-headed boys and girls of all ages. Mrs. Brown had one invariable choice in spring material. In all the time she traded with us she didn’t, so long as I remember, swerve from her standard. She always bought a bolt of heavy red-checked gingham. You can imagine the appearance of the Brown family when they came out in their new spring wardrobe ” Danforth recounts. “Mrs. Brown headed the crew bedecked in her red-checked dress. Mr. Brown supported her with a red checkerboard shirt. And through the whole family the design was repeated—redchecked dresses for every girl, redchecked shirts for the boys. "It was a striking appearance. this family made. They were conspicuous from afar. Other mothers might temporarily lose sight of a child or two at an ice cream social or a basketdinner. But not Mrs. Brown. She could spot a Brown offspring in any crowd. And so could everyone else. "Before long the Brown family in that community became indelibly associated with red checkerboard gingham,” Danforth says, “and from that family I learned that to make a thing stand out you have to dress it to fit the part. And I also learned that dressing alike gives a unity and identification lacking in helter-skelter design.” Years later when Danforth, fresh from college campus, decided to enter the feed manufacturing business, he remembered how a Brown was never mistaken for anyone else in the community. So lie decided to dress his products so they would never be confused with those made by others. Thus was born the checkerboard trademark that, through 47 years, has increasingly gained popularity, and is a part of the sign that identifies our local feed store that handles checkerboard feeds, concentrates, and sanitation products.

Wm. H. Danforth, founder of the checkerboard trade mark.