Brillo is a trade name for a scouring pad, used for cleaning dishes, and made from steel wool filled with soap.
Demand for the steel wool, copper spun and soap with jewellers' rouge increased quickly. The peddler and the jeweller decided to patent the product.
In 2010, Armaly Brands of Walled Lake, Michigan, primarily a manufacturer of sponges, purchased the Brillo business from Church & Dwight. At that time there were about 50 employees, down from a high of about 150 in the 1990s.
Brillo Basics
In December 2019, Innovative Brands, a division of International Wholesale, agreed to a licensing agreement with Armaly Brands to launch Brillo Basics, a line of household cleaning products.
In art
The most famous use of Brillo in Pop Art is Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes, which debuted in 1964 and reproduced the 1960s Brillo logo on sculptural box forms.
In 1970, Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova published a short story about a robot policeman titled "Brillo". The title was a pun by Bova as a robot policeman could be referred to as metal fuzz.
See also
- S.O.S Soap Pad