HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN
Back in the 1950s and 60s, the Rohm & Haas Company had so much of the U.S. market that they felt they could not take on any new distributors for fear of anti-trust action by the U.S. government. Plexiglas® was the name commercial and industrial customers associated with acrylic sheet. No matter what acrylic sheet you handled, when the customer asked for Plexiglas® non-R & H distributors had to explain that their sheet was acrylic, just like Plexiglas®. Now after six decades and a name change, Rohm & Haas is leaving this sheet business and selling their share of the joint venture to the French company, Elf Atochem S.A. As everyone knows, the sheet business has changed radically in past years, especially with the introduction of quality extruded sheet which put cellcast material at a competitive disadvantage. Interestingly enough, the individual consumer, when shopping for acrylic, referred to the material as Lucite® as opposed to Plexiglas® which was the byword of the industrial customer. Both names now will no longer be associated with their original manufacturers.