As a child, Zippo inventor George G. Blaisdell was fond of productmobiles like the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile and Life Savers Pep-O-Mint car. Blaisdell founded the Zippo Manufacturing Company in the town of Bradford, Pennsylvania in 1932, naming the company “Zippo” as a more modern sounding alternative to the word zipper. During WWII the U.S. Government commissioned Zippo’s entire production to be distributed to GIs, which had the benefit of introducing the company and its windproof lighters to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Americans, thereby making Zippo a household name. It was this new found popularity that propelled Blaisdell in 1947 to convert a Chrysler Saratoga into the Zippomobile.

After its introduction in the late 1940s, the Zippo Car went far and wide on a promotional tour visiting every state in the Union. Eventually business at Zippo was so good — and management so preoccupied — that the Zippo Car fell out of favor, was abandoned and subsequently lost. In 1982 the company launched a search to find the car for the company’s 50th anniversary. Zippo even went so far as running advertisements in Pittsburgh (its last known location) to try to track down the lost Zippomobile. But the search was all for naught. While the original car could not be found and restored, in 1998 Zippo did reproduce the 1947 Zippo Car which can still be found at events today. You can read the full history of the 1947 Zippo Car here.

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Ignite your phone with the official Virtual Zippo Lighter!

The Virtual Zippo Lighter opens with a flick of your wrist and lights with a turn of your thumb. The windproof flame sways as you move your Android device and reacts when you try to blow it out. Choose from a variety of Zippo Lighter images and customize a handful of selected lighters as well.

Start with 28 FREE designs browse hundreds more including iconic images from Harley-Davidson, Bob Marley classic bands like Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne.

We have many exciting updates in store for the catalog so be sure to check back often.

*Optimized for the Droid, EVO 4G, HTC G2*

The Zippo app for the iPhone has received over 14 million downloads since its 2008 debut and today it goes live for Android phones.

Apr 13 2011, 2:24pm CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Zippo launched today the free Virtual Zippo Lighter App on the Android market. Now Android users can also rock out at a concert and whip out their virtual Zippos rather than the real deal. I still prefer the real deal though.

The Virtual Zippo Lighter opens with a flick of your wrist and lights with a turn of your thumb. The windproof flame sways as you move your Android device and reacts when you try to blow it out. Choose from a variety of Zippo Lighter images and customize a handful of selected lighters as well.

You get 28 FREE designs and can browse hundreds more including iconic images from Harley-Davidson, Bob Marley and classic bands like Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne.

The Zippo Android App is optimized for Droid, EVO 4G and HTC G2. Not sure what this means for other Android phones. I guess that what the Android fragmentation means at the end for Android phone users. Some apps will just not work as great on your Android phone.

You can download the virtual Zippo app for Android now on the Android market here.

More like this:
Seven Coolest Android Smartphones

• More Android Stories
• I4U News Homepage

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BRADFORD, Pa. – Zippo lighters have retained their retro cool even as the tiny northwestern
Pennsylvania company that makes them gets ready to celebrate its 80th anniversary and 500millionth
lighter next year.

But with pressure increasing on folks not to smoke, Zippo Manufacturing Co. is hoping to
capitalize on its brand by offering a wider variety of products, such as watches, leisure clothing
and cologne. These would be sold through kiosks and Zippo-

brand specialty stores designed to showcase the durable image reinforced by each distinctive lid
“click” of its brass-encased, lifetime-guaranteed lighters.

Realizing that producing 18million lighters a year in the mid-1990s was probably the company’s
high-water mark – Zippo’s 550 employees will produce about 12million lighters this year – the
company started marketing research before President and CEO Gregory Booth was hired 10years
ago.

The surveys asked consumers the question that Booth must answer today: “What kind of products
could we sell other than cigarette lighters that people would accept as Zippo products?”

The research shows the company could sell other products – if they fit Zippo’s image, which
Booth describes as “rugged, durable, made in America, iconic.”

“It has to be something that feels like Zippo,” Booth said of the travel bags, backpacks,
watches, sunglasses, jeans and leisure shirts, wallets, pens, liquor flasks, outdoor hand warmers,
playing cards and even a fragrance. Manufactured by Italian perfumer Mavive, it comes in a
lighter-shaped canister (and, yes, a lid that clicks).

Marketing experts said all that makes sense, provided that Zippo’s new products stay true to the
brand – and that the company learns quickly that selling jeans, or any other product, comes with a
menu of business complexities.

“A brand is just a story attached to a product. Like any narrative, it carries sensation.
Zippo’s story is ‘manly independence,'” said James Twitchell, a marketing expert whose book
Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism argues that Americans have
increasingly turned to brand names instead of religion for their identity.

“As long as this narrative is in place, it can be attached to any other product as long as the
product doesn’t contradict the story line,” Twitchell said, noting that Eddie Bauer-branded SUVs
stay true to the sportswear company’s image of “wanderlust.”

Another branding consultant who founded the self-named PaulJLucas.com in Washington, D.C., said
Zippo’s plans remind him of the success that Victorinox Swiss Army Brands Inc. has had selling
watches, luggage, clothing and fragrances.

“It’s all high-quality, and they did it right, and I buy their stuff,” said Lucas, noting that
Swiss Army luggage is as rugged as its trademarked multipurpose knives.

But not any brand – even American icons – can be used to sell just anything.

“Harley-Davidson once, believe it or not, tried to sell bottled water, and it just tanked,”
Lucas said.

His advice is to stick to products closer to a brand’s core. That’s why he likes Zippo’s
still-on-the-drawing board plans for patio gas grills but isn’t so crazy about the idea of Zippo
cologne, noting that lighter fluid is the only other liquid odor associated with Zippo.

Booth insists that Zippo’s plans are built on solid market research and, perhaps as important,
fueled by necessity.

“We recognize there’s a lot of pressure on smoking, and it’s only gotten worse in the last 10
years,” Booth said.

Zippo aggressively markets its lighters to collectors, aficionados and even nonsmokers, offering
more than a dozen models in hundreds of colors and unusual designs. Although the lighters are
generally plated with nickel chrome, some are covered with gold or platinum.

Booth thinks that those varieties can take the company only so far.

“We knew we were invested in an industry that was under pressure, and knew we could go the way
of the Hula Hoop and not do anything about it,” Booth said.

Instead, Zippo hired David Warfel as its director of global marketing three years ago, to
capitalize on his branding experience with Xerox, Kodak and Ray-Ban.

Zippo already sells its lighters in more than 160 countries – but it does so through wholesalers
and other distributors.

Warfel was hired to take control of the Zippo “brand” and expand it, at first abroad and then
gradually in the United States.

The newest wing of the company’s headquarters 130miles northeast of Pittsburgh is a showcase for
Zippo’s plans. It features a Zippo kiosk and what’s known as a “shop-in-shop” – a tiny Zippo store
meant to take up residence in a larger department store – and a prototype Zippo specialty store,
which the company plans to put in shopping districts abroad.

All three retail spaces feature custom-designed black-framed glass showcases that “fit together
like Legos” so retailers can create their own “Zippo area” in just about any size space, Warfel
said.

Zippo will push its expanded product line abroad, at first, because foreign consumers are
familiar with the brand’s durable image without it being “almost umbilically tied to cigarette
lighters,” Booth said.

U.S. consumers “are so tied to Zippo lighters that it’s tough for the customer to make the jump
to these other products,” he said.

Although Zippo plans to open a kiosk at Kennedy International Airport in New York City this
month, most Zippo outlets will arrive first in China, other parts of Asia or western Europe. It
doesn’t hurt that Asia remains a key smoking market, with China consuming one-third of the world’s
smoking tobacco, something that Booth calls a “monstrous opportunity” for Zippo to grow.

In 18 months or so, Zippo hopes to open more stateside retail outlets, in places such as Las
Vegas and Niagara Falls, N.Y., Warfel said.

The Big Top opened yesterday at Hills Meadow in George Street, Caversham, as part of Zippo’s all-human Phoenix tour

Zippo’s Circus comes to Reading

By

Laura McCardle

April 08, 2011

Clowns, acrobats and jugglers have tumbled into Reading as Zippo’s Circus has come to town.

The Big Top opened yesterday at Hills Meadow in George Street, Caversham, as part of Zippo’s all-human Phoenix tour which runs until Tuesday.

The show offers a mix of colour, fun and fantasy and will take spectators on a round-the-world journey with world-class circus performers.

It includes the awe-inspiring acrobatics of the Zulu Warriors, who will have spectators dancing in their seats with their non-stop limbo and hoop-diving spectacle.

A stop in France sees the juggling skills of award-winning duo Antoine and Deborah Micheletty, before Mongolia calls and Zula makes his breathtaking ascent to the roof of the Big Top on balancing chairs.

The show moves to Russia for the elegant and daring trapeze performance of Veronika Bugrova.

The Ulaan Sisters of Mongolia will quite literally bend over backwards to make sure spectators enjoy their astounding contortionist routine before the show comes back to England for a routine from Britain’s Got Talent star unicyclist Joe Hatton.

Ji-Qui Fang of China will have spectators on the edge of their seats as he throws a huge earthenware jar into the air and balances it on his head; while his partner Wu Xi-Hua will climb effortlessly up a fixed mast, leaping to a parallel mast before fearlessly sliding down as if glued by one foot to the steelwork high above the circus ring.

Front-row spectators are warned to watch out as the show comes back to the UK for its final slapstick performance of Beau and Fips’ Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook.

All of this can be seen from the comfortable seating of the heated Big Top tent.

Show times are at 5pm and 7.30pm today, 3pm and 6pm tomorrow, 11am, 3pm and 6pm on Sunday, 3pm and 6pm on Monday and 3pm and 6pm on Tuesday.

Ticket prices vary from £6 to £16 for children and £8 to £22 for adults.

Unreserved seats are usually available on the day from the onsite ticket office – but to avoid missing out call 0871 210 2100 or go to www.zippos.co.uk to book tickets.

Gregory Booth, the CEO of Zippo, which makes perhaps the world’s most iconic cigarette lighters, stopped by the Forbes studio recently to talk about how to sell a commodity product – at decidedly non-commodity prices.

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Only so far

“We recognize there’s a lot of pressure on smoking, and it’s only gotten worse in the last 10 years,” Booth said, even though Zippo markets its lighters to collectors, aficionados and even non-smokers, with more than a dozen models in hundreds of colors and designs. Although the lighters are generally plated with nickel chrome, some lighters are even covered with gold or platinum.

But Booth believes those varieties can only take the company so far.

“We knew we were invested in an industry that was under pressure and knew we could go the way of the Hula Hoop and not do anything about it,” Booth said.

Instead, Zippo hired David Warfel as its director of global marketing three years ago, to capitalize on his branding experience with Xerox, Kodak and Ray-Ban.

Zippo already sells its lighters in more than 160 countries. Warfel was hired to take control of the Zippo “brand” and expand it, at first overseas and then gradually in the United States.

Zippo will push its expanded product line overseas, at first, because foreign consumers are familiar with the brand’s durable image without it being “almost umbilically tied to cigarette lighters,” Booth said. U.S. consumers “are so tied to Zippo lighters that it’s tough for the customer to make the jump to these other products.”

Although there are plans for a Zippo kiosk at Kennedy International Airport in New York City by the end of April, most Zippo outlets will first arrive in China, other parts of Asia, or western Europe. It doesn’t hurt that Asia remains a key smoking market, with China consuming one-third of the world’s smoking tobacco, something Booth calls a “monstrous opportunity” to grow Zippo.

In 18 months or so, Zippo hopes to open more stateside retail outlets, in places like Las Vegas and Niagara Falls, Warfel said.

Another marketing expert agreed Zippo is smart to expand its brand – but warned that selling other products, especially those vastly different from lighters, is harder than it looks.

Bolivar Bueno, the founder of Cult Branding Co. near Orlando, Fla., has developed strategies for clients as diverse as Kohl’s department stores and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Bueno said Zippo will be competing to sell clothes alongside companies that have done nothing but that for decades.

He also warns that Zippo must be careful about who makes its products – saying it could hurt the brand if it turns out its rugged, durable and “American” products are made in Third World sweatshops.

Booth said that Zippo’s new products, though made elsewhere, are manufactured to Zippo-worthy specifications and that some components – like watch cases – may eventually be manufactured in-house.

Bueno said Zippo is smart to target foreign consumers first, because surveys show they tend to have a higher level of trust in companies. “Seventy-one percent of consumers in India believe that companies want the best for them. In America and the U.K. there are only 42 percent that trust companies,” Bueno said.

Our success comes from your success

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…

Even in this time of reduced budgets and cost-cutting measures, there is one principle Zippo refuses to compromise. Your success is our success . . . and we remain committed to doing everything we can to help your Zippo business meet or exceed your best expectations.

ZippoRetailer.com is an online resource created for our Zippo retailers, with news and information aimed to increase your Zippo sales and profits.

Register now and come back often to learn about the latest new products, marketing initiatives, retail tips, resources, and important issues affecting your business today.

There are some concessions we’re just not willing to make, so let’s work together to achieve more. Thank you for your Zippo business.

Sincerely,

Gregory W. Booth
President and CEO
Zippo Manufacturing Company