Since its beginning in Atlanta, Georgia in 1937, Zep Inc.’s focus has been to offer customers the widest selection of top-quality industrial cleaning products with superior personal service and professional technical support.

Launched by Mandle Zaban, his brother Sam, and colleagues William Eplan and Sam Powell, the original Zep Manufacturing Co. was funded with a $6,000 loan from Mandle Zaban’s life insurance policy. By the end of that first year in the decade after the Great Depression, the janitorial supplies company’s sales totaled just under $100,000.

Zaban’s son Erwin, who worked at the company since dropping out of high school at age 15, later took over the business, which merged with National Linen Service in 1962 to become National Service Industries Inc. (NSI). By that time, Zep Manufacturing Co.’s business had expanded into a full line of cleaning and sanitation products.

One sales representative, Harry Maziar, became so successful with the Zep product line he was named the company’s first director of sales. He was then appointed president of Zep Manufacturing Co. in March 1971, just three years after the purchase of Selig Industries, a move that helped to expand the company’s chemicals division. Founded in 1896, Selig had built its reputation as the “Solutions People,” providing tailored cleaning products and programs to the industrial and institutional markets. Today, the Selig products are available to the consumer market at select retailers.

Rapid growth marked Mazier’s tenure at Zep during the 1970s and 1980s. Meanwhile, the parent company was creating more successful sister companies under the NSI umbrella, including that of National Chemical. By the early 1990s, NSI’s strategic business acquisitions and dispositions had left it with five other key divisions beyond chemicals: lighting (the precursor division to Acuity Brands Lighting, Inc.), linen supplies, insulation, envelopes, and marketing services.

The mix changed again by the late 1990s as more dispositions and acquisitions were made, including the purchase in 1997 of Enforcer Products, Inc., a maker of home and garden products such as insecticides and herbicides, and plumbing and cleaning solutions.

Together, the Zep®, Selig™, Enforcer® and National Chemical® brands were maintained under NSI Chemicals Group until it became Acuity Specialty Products, Inc., a business segment of Acuity Brands, Inc., in 2001 during the latter’s spin off from National Services Industries, Inc.

This year, Acuity Brands, Inc., announced plans to separate Acuity Specialty Products, Inc., from its sister company, Acuity Brands Lighting, Inc., and to rename the new independent, public company Zep Inc.