Conejo's successful business, the bleach from 1889 that is still in stores

A yellow bottle with a navy blue label. In the centre, you can see the silhouette of a very white rabbit making a great leap. This is one of the most well-known packages that you can find among the cleaning products in Spanish supermarkets. It is Conejo bleach. Today it is sold under the brand name of the German multinational Henkel –which also owns brands such as Dixan, Neutrex, Wipp, Licor del Polo, Mistol or Loctite–, but the master formula was found by a Catalan: Salvador Casamitjana and Mensa. It was in 1889 in Sants. At that time, bleach already existed, but it had not yet burst into Spanish homes. "Modern bleach dates back to 1820, when the French pharmacist Labarraque tried to replace the potassium in potassium hypochlorite bleach with sodium," the company recalls today. "The formula has survived to this day," it insists.

Henkel has known how to squeeze its juice. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, 334 million liters of bleach were sold in Spain. Although the company does not break down its turnover by brand, Conejo is one of the mainstays of its product catalogue, which in 2023 was able to translate into annual sales of 21,514 million euros, on a global scale. "Being part of the portfolio of a multinational like Henkel has helped Conejo to strengthen distribution and investment in innovation," analyses Carolina Luis-Bassa, director of the marketing master's degree at UPF-Barcelona School of Management. But how did it become part of it?

From Sants throughout Spain

In 1889, Salvador Casamitjana founded the Casamitjana Mensa company in Sants. He had heard about the applications that bleach could have and saw enormous potential. He began selling it in bulk, driving carts up and down the country. The low price and the results he achieved when bleaching clothes quickly made it very popular. "When Casamitjana opened the company, no one could have imagined that it would become one of the main bleach companies in the whole country," Henkel admits today. The success led him to open a factory in Montgat and to rethink the distribution model: he opted to bottle it in glass bottles and stamp it with a unique label. He commissioned the design from the Barcelona artist Apel·les Mestres, who drew several rabbits doing the laundry.

In 1910, the fame of Casamitjana's bleach had already spread beyond Catalonia. That year the company opened a branch in Zaragoza, which it completed with one in Bilbao and Gijón ten years later. In 1923 the company passed into the hands of the founder's son, who continued the business until he died without descendants in 1950. Under the direction of other family members, Casamitjana made the leap from returnable glass containers to plastic ones in 1969. Three years later, it made another impact on the disinfection sector: it presented Neutrex, the first bleach specifically for clothing.

The sale of Conejo

In 1977, the Californian company Clorox – then the leader in the bleach sector in the United States – bought Casamitjana Mensa. It was under its supervision that the product landed on television advertising spaces. "It became the first bleach brand to be advertised through this medium," recall historians Montse Armengol and Rosa Serra, together with Raquel Castellà, curator of the Museum of History of Catalonia, in an article in the specialist magazine Axis. "In 1984 they added Estrella bleach and detergent to the catalogue, which was a revolution in the sector," they continue.

In 1985 Clorox and Henkel Ibérica established a collaboration agreement with a 20% exchange of shares between the two groups. The brand passed into the hands of Henkel, which now operates it in Spain. The legendary Conejo factory in Montgat was closed in the early 1990s and production was moved to Montornès del Vallès. "The fact that Conejo has had such a long life is no coincidence: it has been able to combine tradition, innovation and marketing strategies very well to win the trust of consumers," concludes Luis-Bassa.