I've undertaken a fair bit of research on the Canadian pharmacy industry, including the glasshouses who supplied it. I'm familiar with this advert, as it's from a Canadian pharmacy industry periodical. James P. Richards was a travelling salesman for Toronto's Beaver Flint Glass Co., a jobber of drugstore bottles made by other glass outfits. Richards, with majority shareholding by a newly formed Dominion Glass Co., incorporated the Richards Glass Co., Ltd. in 1912 at Toronto (two current companies are descendants of this company). Like Beaver Flint, Richards was a jobber of bottles it did not make. Richards' bottles were made by Dominion Glass (note the diamond worked into the Richards' basal mark), and the RIGO (RIchards Glass CO.) line included all sorts of drugstore glassware, with bottles being the most prominent product. Bottles styles were named in patriotic fashion for the time: the King Oval (the biggest selling style and which is advertised above), Queen Oval, Princess Oval for the English royal family, the head of which sat and (unfortunately) still sits as Canada's official head of state, the Imperial Oval for the British Empire, of which Canada was a part (so were a certain 13 Colonies at one time!), and the Victory Oval, after Canada's part in helping to win World War One. I collect Canadian drugstore bottles. Of the 600 I have, around a fifth are King Ovals, speaking to the prominence of this branded style in the Canadian marketplace. I also have Queen, Princess, Imperial and Victory Ovals, as well as poison and baby feeder bottles marked RIGO. I also own another treasure, James P. Richards' personal copy of his company's catalogue, complete with his annotations, etc. and bound in a special leather cover, gold embossed with his name. Back to the advert in the OP. Richards Glass came onto the pharmacy scene with a big marketing splash which included cleverly illustrated adverts like the one above. As a former road salesman, Richards was in tune with druggists' concerns about bottle shipping reliability, since breaking in transit was all too common.
Thanks Glen. I see see on their homepage that they called themselves manufactures though. Maybe they stretched the truth because of his interests in Dominion? IDK
The company was formed in 1912 as Richards Glass Co. Ltd., a manufacturer and distributor of glass containers for the retail drug trade and pharmaceutical industries. At a time when virtually every medicine bottle was made of glass, the company prospered and expanded rapidly throughout central Canada.
During those early days, Richards Glass was known not just for the quantities its factories could produce, but for the quality and selection of its goods and services. These elements were crucial when it came time to innovate and lead the way in the packaging industry.""http://www.richardspackaging.com/about-richards/corporate-information.html
The glassware actually made by RIGO was tubeware through flameworking raw tube stock. According to fire insurance plans, the company did not have the requisite glass tanks, annealing ovens, etc. to make bottles from its 1912 start right through to the 1970s. Even today, much of its production is contracted out (Nike shoes has a similar model and merely pretends to have developed it -- it's a business model that goes back to medieval times with the "putting out" practice which is more genteelly known as "cottage industry"). Of course, RIGO employed advertising strategies to position itself in the eye of its customers as a manufacturer of everything. This was just good business practice, since James P. Richards clearly did not want his customer base to consider any other source for bottles, most especially Dominion Glass Co., the outfit actually making RIGO bottles. As to the geographic reach of RIGO, one must first understand the Canada of the early 1900s. The Maritimes were booming with wealth derived from fishing, coal mining, forestry and iron founding/ship building. British Columbia was booming for much the same reasons. Meanwhile, Central Canada was also booming as its agricultural sector was maturing from its origins in wheat production into other food lines and as its factory production soared. Industrial growth stimulated rapid urbanization, most especially in Montreal and Toronto. While out on the Prairies, over a million settlers were pouring in to establish new farms and work them as business enterprises. James P. Richards exploited all of this and structured his marketing and sales strategies accordingly. RIGO was to be national in scope and the firm ensured this outcome with a national sales force directly answerable to the boss, a travelling salesman himself who knew the ropes. As Canada's population and economy grew, so did RIGO's fortunes. James P. Richards also understood the dynamics of the market place and worked them to his advantage. For instance, just as provincial pharmaceutical regulators invoked poison bottle requirements, RIGO was on the spot with its poison bottles, which we call "Canadian Coffins" (a type of irregular hexagon). The upshot of all this is that there are RIGO drugstore bottles from all Canadians provinces which were part of Confederation in the handmade era (so all but Newfoundland). And, yes Andy, even from the Owl Drug Companies of Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto (but not San Francisco -- inside joke)!