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Founded by Charles B. Clark, Havilah Babcock and John A. Kimberly in 1872, in Wisconsin.1
Kimberly, Clark and Co. was founded in 1872 by John A. Kimberly, Havilah Babcock, Charles B. Clark and Franklyn C. Shattuck in Neenah, Wisconsin, with $42,000 (equivalent to US$1,128,750 in 2025) of capital. The group's first business was operating paper mills, which the collective expanded throughout the following decades. In 1888, the fledgling company faced a significant setback when its groundwood "Atlas" paper mill burned. Through an extensive effort by labor and management, within five months the mill was rebuilt and in production at a greater capacity. In that same year the company began rapid expansion, purchasing land in a town then known as The Cedars for a new groundwood pulp plant designed by prominent paper mill architects D. H. & A. B. Tower. In 1889, the town was renamed Kimberly after John A. Kimberly. The company would also contract the firm to expand its vast sulphite pulp complex in Appleton, Wisconsin, which allowed it to become the first firm west of Pennsylvania to adopt this improved manufacturing process. The company developed cellu-cotton in 1914, a cotton substitute used by the U.S. Army as surgical cotton during World War I. Army nurses used cellu-cotton pads as disposable sanitary napkins, and six years later the company introduced Kotex, the first disposable feminine hygiene product. Kleenex, a disposable handkerchief, followed in 1924. Kimberly & Clark joined with The New York Times Company in 1926 to build a newsprint mill in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. Two years later, the company went public as Kimberly-Clark.
The firm expanded internationally during the 1950s, opening plants in Mexico, West Germany and the United Kingdom. It began operations in 17 more foreign locations in the 1960s. The company formed Midwest Express Airlines from its corporate flight department in 1984. Kimberly-Clark's headquarters moved from Neenah, Wisconsin to Irving, Texas the following year, although its products are still produced in Neenah. Alongside Cadbury, Kimberly-Clark withdrew advertising support for Lou Grant in 1982, due to pressure from various conservative caucuses campaigning against star Ed Asner. Under the leadership of Darwin Smith as CEO from 1971 to 1991, the company was transformed from a business paper company to a consumer paper products company.
In 1991, Kimberly-Clark and The New York Times Company sold their jointly owned paper mill in Kapuskasing, Ontario. Kimberly-Clark entered a joint venture with Buenos Aires-based Descartables Argentinos S.A. to produce personal care products in Argentina in 1994 and also bought the feminine hygiene unit of VP-Schickedanz (Germany) for $123 million and a 90% stake in Handan Comfort and Beauty Group (China).
Kimberly-Clark merged with Scott Paper in 1995 for $9.4 billion. In 1997, Kimberly-Clark sold its 50% stake in Canada's Scott Paper to forest products company Kruger Inc. and bought diaper operations in Spain and Portugal and disposable surgical masks maker Tecnol Medical Products. Augmenting its presence in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, in 1999 the company paid $365 million for the tissue business of Swiss-based Attisholz Holding. Expanding its offerings of medical products, the company bought Ballard Medical Products in 1999 for $774 million and examination-glove maker Safeskin in 2000 for about $800 million.
Also in 2000, the company bought virtually all of Taiwan's S-K Corporation; the move made Kimberly-Clark one of the largest manufacturers of packaged goods in Taiwan. The company later purchased Taiwan Scott Paper Corporation for about $40 million and merged the two companies, forming Kimberly-Clark Taiwan. In 2001, Kimberly-Clark bought Italian diaper maker Linostar and announced it was closing four Latin American manufacturing plants.
In 2002, Kimberly-Clark purchased paper-packaging rival Amcor's stake in an Australian joint venture. In 2003, Kimberly-Clark added to its global consumer tissue business by acquiring the Polish tissue maker Klucze.
In early 2004, chairman and chief executive officer Thomas Falk began implementation of a global business plan that the company has detailed in July 2003. The firm combined its North American and European groups for personal care and consumer tissue under North Atlantic groups. In 2019, CEO Thomas Falk resigned his position but continued on as the company's chairman of the board. COO Michael D. Hsu became CEO following Falk's retirement.
As of March 2020, the company had approximately 40,000 employees. In April 2020, the Financial Times reported that panic-buying during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a 13 percent increase in sales of Kimberly-Clark's consumer tissues in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the previous year. In April 2020, Kimberly Clark reported an eight percent decline in organic sales, its worst sales performance in at least a decade, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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In 2022, Kimberly-Clark acquired majority stake in Thinx, a period underwear brand. Sales declined significantly by 2022 as customers lost the brand's trust regarding the controversy behind the use of PFAS in its products, ending in a class action settlement in 2023. The company eventually recorded an asset impairment for Thinx and Softex Indonesia of $658 million in 2023.
On May 19, 2025, Kimberly-Clark announced that after 41 years, it would transfer its stock from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq Global Select Market with the changes taking place on May 30 of that year.
In November 2025, Kimberly-Clark announced it would buy Tylenol producer Kenvue for $48.7 billion. The deal would add the Aveeno, Band-Aid, Benadryl, Benylin, Calpol, Carefree, Clean & Clear, Combantrin, Imodium, Listerine, Motrin, Mylanta, Neutrogena, Nicorette, Johnson's Baby, Sudafed, Visine, and Zyrtec brands to the company's portfolio.
On April 7, 2026, the Kimberly-Clark Distribution Center in Ontario, California was set on fire and destroyed. This was filmed by the arsonist, who stated in the video, "all you had to do was pay us enough to live," and "there goes your inventory."
From Wikipedia’s article on Kimberly-Clark, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8