12 Popular Brands You Had No Idea are 100+ Years Old

In business school, they teach young companies to diversify their holdings, and if need be, pivot their product offerings to keep the company alive. Some companies follow the advice to the letter, yet still collapse under their shortcomings. Others ignore it completely yet still find success. Some popular brands, however, are over 100 years old.

Some of these brands, like cymbal maker Zildjian, started making just one product and held firm until it was a widespread success. Others, however, like Colgate, started with a more general vision of the direction it wanted to take before focusing its offerings on single flagship products.

Either way, some companies stand the test of time, enduring luck, misfortune and changing circumstances to grow into powerful, multinational success stories. In this article, we will explore 12 popular brands that are over 100 years old. Some of them may surprise you. (For companies that don't please their customers, discover 25 famous companies that make customers really mad.)

To compile a list of 12 popular brands over 100 years old, 24/7 Tempo consulted a range of investment, historical, and entertainment publications including BusinessNewsDaily, Yahoo! Finance and Truly Belong. Next, we selected companies that had met the criteria and had the most public impact. After that, we confirmed aspects of each company's history using sites like The University of Chicago Library and Britannica.

The first entry on our list of popular brands over 100 years old is the Avedis Zildjian Company, popularly known as Zildjian. Started by Avedis Zildjian in 1623, the company served at the behest of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople. A metalsmith by trade, Zildjian left the Royal Court and ventured out on his own after being granted permission by Sultan Mustafa I.

Originally, Zildjian made cymbals for Ottoman military bands called mehters. From there, he expanded his production to serve Greek and Armenian churches, Sufi dervishes, and belly dancers working in the Ottoman harem. In the mid-19th century, the company staged exhibitions of their cymbals in Europe at places like the Great Exhibition in London. After that, one of Zildjian's descendants emigrated to the United States, where the company manufactured cymbals in Quincy, Massachusetts. Nowadays, having stayed true to their original products, Zildjian creates a range of musical cymbals for all types of music. Due to their unparalleled quality, many of the top musicians and rockstars rely on Zildjian cymbals for their drum sets.

Another one of the popular brands over 100 years old is the Wrigley Company. William Wrigley Jr. founded the company on April Fool's Day, 1891 in Chicago, Illinois. From the get-go, the Wrigley Company produced gum, which they derived from chicle, a natural gum found in various trees native to Central America.

Much like Zildjian, the company passed through various male heirs to William Wrigley Jr. over the past century. While fortunes favored expansion for the company in the early 2000s, including the purchase of the Lifesavers and Altoids brands, it was short-lived. In 2008, Mars, Incorporated purchased the Wrigley Company for approximately $28 billion. Besides their flavorful gums like Juicy Fruit and Doublemint, the Wrigley Company is best known for its original headquarters on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago.

Craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the Nintendo Company in Kyoto in 1889 to manufacture Hanafuda playing cards. While the Name Nintendo is believed to translate as "leave luck to heaven," it can also be translated as the "temple of free Hanafuda." As a playing card game, Hanafuda functions similarly to more Westernized playing cards.

While business was good for decades, Nintendo struggled to expand beyond the niche market of playing cards. After gaining status as a public company in the 1960s, the company produced its first gaming console in 1977 — the Color TV-Game. The release of "Donkey Kong" and the Nintendo Entertainment System in the early 1980s catapulted the company to widespread success. Currently, Nintendo is one of the most valuable companies in the Japanese Market.

These days, Beretta is known as one of the finest rifle and shotgun manufacturers in the world. Perhaps that's unsurprising, as the company has had hundreds of years to perfect its products. Bartolomeo Beretta founded the company in 1526, in Gardone Val Trompia, Italy. Its first rifle product was the Arquebus barrel rifle, one of the earliest mass-produced firearms. While its proper name is Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta, most people know it was Beretta.

Since its inception, Beretta has mass-produced a wide range of firearms. Furthermore, Beretta supplied weapons for almost every major Europen conflict in the past half-millennium, starting with the Venetian Fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The company remains dominant in the personal firearm industry, offering a wide range of guns including shotguns, hunting rifles, submachine guns, revolvers and semi-automatic pistols.

Another one of the popular brands over 100 years old is Kikkoman. Though various Japanese families like the Mogi and Takanashi families employed the soy sauce-making methods used by Kikkoman, the company was officially formed in 1917. That's when eight family-owned food companies merged in Noda, Japan.

Until the mid-20th century, the company was known as the Noda Shoyu Corporation. In 1940, however, the company adopted Kikkoman as its official nationwide label. Reputed for its adherence to traditional methods of making West Japanese-style soy sauce, Kikkoman has flourished in the intervening years. As the most popular soy sauce brand in both Japan and the United States, the company has manufacturing plants all over the world. Their plant in Sappemeer, Holland alone produces 400 million liters of soy sauce per year.

Though the Stella Artois beer widely known today was first produced in 1926, iterations of its brewing company have been around since the middle ages. The Den Hoorn Brewery in Leuven, Belgium created its first iteration of the popular beer under its emblematic hunting horn label in 1366. This makes it the oldest company on this list and one of the oldest companies in the world.

The name Stella Artois comes from one of its successive owners. In 1708, Sébastien Artois became its head brewer. Less than a decade later, however, Artois bought out the Den Hoorn Brewery, renaming it Brouwerij Artois. The word Stella comes from a Christmas beer the brewery released in 1926. Due to its popularity, the beer became available year-round. Throughout the rest of the 20th century, Stella Artois took on different packaging, forms, and even alcohol content. Eventually, the company merged with other breweries and became the Anheuser-Busch InBev Brewery. These days, the conglomerate produces a heck of a lot of Stella beer. In 2006, alone, the company made over one billion litres of Stella Artois.

Another one of the popular brands over 100 years old is the Johnson & Johnson corporation. Brothers Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson founded the company in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1886. With Robert Wood Johnson serving as president, the company originally produced medical supplies like guides, surgical dressings and other household products.

After that, the company began producing well-known items like baby powder and contributed to various American war efforts. By World War II, the company had gone public on the New York Stock Exchange. From there, it began producing prescription drugs including Ortho-Novum, one of the first synthetic hormone contraceptive pills. After years of widespread expansion and mergers, the Johnson & Johnson Corporation is ranked number 40 on the Fortune 500 List. It is also one of the world's most valuable companies and one of two American companies with an AAA prime credit rating. (For medical information of the controversial variety, discover the worst medical scandals in history.)

Though the company currently operates under the name HarperColilns Publishers LLC., it went through many iterations over its history. Originally, brothers James and John Harper started the publishing firm J & J Harper in 1817. From there, another pair of brothers, John Wesley and Fletcher Harper joined the ranks and the company became Harper & Brothers in 1833. Later the company became Harper & Row.

It took until 1990 for the company to use the name HarperCollins after it bought out the Scotland-based religious publisher William Collins, Sons. Besides originating classic magazines like Harper's Weekly and Harper's Bazaar, the company is considered one of the "Big-Five" English language publishers. Currently, the company is based in New York City and brought in a revenue of $1.985 billion in 2021.

Another one of the popular brands over 100 years old, and one of the oldest brands in the United States, is Jim Beam. The company originated with the Böhm family — German immigrants to Kentucky. The grandfather Johannes "Jacob" Beam first began producing bourbon-style whiskey in 1795. Next, his son David Beam took control of the company and expanded its operations during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Since its inception, seven generations of the Böhm family have been involved in creating Jim Beam (they later anglicized their name to Beam.) It should be noted, however, that the Jim Beam name that adorns its bourbon bottles was adopted in honor of James B. Beam, who rebuilt the company after prohibition ended. Eventually, however, Jim Beam was purchased by the Japanese multinational brewing company Suntory Holdings in 2014. Even under the new conglomerate name of Beam Suntory, Jim Beam remains one of the best-selling bourbons in the world.

Though Colgate is known these days as a producer of toothpaste, it wasn't always that way. William Colgate founded the company in 1806 in New York City. Thanks to his years as a soap-making apprentice, Colgate's company originally produced starch, soap and candles. After William Colgate died, his son Samuel Colgate took over, renaming it Colgate & Company and introducing its first toothpaste product.

Though originally sold in aromatic jars, the company began selling its widely-known tube toothpaste in 1896 as Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream. Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, the B. J. Johnson Company found success selling palm and olive oil-based soaps. So much success, however, that it bought out the Colgate company in the summer of 1928. Thus, the Colgate-Palmolive Company was born. Nowadays, the Colgate-Palmolive Company brings in around $19 billion in revenue per year.

Another one of the popular brands over 100 years old is Dixon Ticonderoga, best known for its graphite pencils. Originally, Joseph Dixon and his son founded the organization the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company in 1795 in New Jersey. Since its inception, the company made various stationery products.

Its well-known Number 02 pencil, however, was introduced after graphite ore was discovered in Lead Hill, New York. Since it was processed in Ticonderoga, New York, the pencil earned its classic name, Dixon Ticonderoga. Though the Dixon Ticonderoga company ceased US production of the Number 02 pencil in 1999, it continues to produce the product in other countries like Italy, France and various countries in Latin America. Currently, the company is headquartered in Lake Mary, Florida.

A final popular brand over 100 years old, and undoubtedly one of the most powerful, is JPMorgan Chase. Technically, the company can trace its origins to the Chase Manhattan Company which began in 1799. The company took on its current name, however, after banker and businessman John Pierpont Morgan founded J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1871 as a purveyor of investment, commercial and private banking services.

It took until the year 2000 for the company to earn its current name after Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan merged to create a holding company. Always known for its power, JPMorgan Chase is currently the fifth-largest bank in the world in terms of assets. Even before that, however, John Pierpont Morgan was once so wealthy that, during the Panic of 1907, he organized a team of financiers that saved the United States from monetary collapse. (For brands that respect their customer's hard-earned dollars, discover the 25 most fairly priced brands in the US.)