Pritt Stick’s Lipstick Provenance

Did you know that a young woman applying her lipstick was the inspiration behind the invention of the Pritt Stick?

Back in 1967, Dr Wolfgang Dierichs was on a business trip for his employer, the German glue manufacturer Henkel, and was on board an aeroplane.

He looked across the aisle and as he watched a lady applying her make-up with great care, he focused on the twistable tube of lipstick in her hand.

The proverbial light bulb went on in Dierich’s head as he thought how easy it would be to apply glue in the form of a stick – and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Pritt Stick came to market a couple of years later and quickly became a staple office product, thanks to its clean and convenient form.

The mystery woman has never been named, and was probably unaware of how she had inspired a legendary innovation.

But in four decades following the product’s launch, Henkel manufactured 2.5 billion Pritt Sticks in the UK alone – enough to leave a trail of adhesive from the Earth to Mars and back again.

That’s astronomical success!