IRVINGTON, N.Y. — Consumer products giant Procter & Gamble Co. once spent $20 million a year to advertise Spic and Span. But since at least 1998, it didn't spend one ad dollar on the brand. Spic and Span appeared to be on a path to oblivion until a private equity company, vowing to revive fading household products, bought it in January.

        San Francisco-based The Shansby Group made Spic and Span the anchor of a new consumer-products company, The Spic and Span Co., based in Irvington. The mission of the tiny business — it has just 12 employees — is to “make classic brands sparkle like new.”

        The Spic and Span Co. plans to capitalize on Spic and Span's strong brand recognition in order to increase sales. Spic and Span has been in U.S. pantries since the 1930s.

        “It's the brand your mother used when you were a kid,” said Charles M. Schrank, The Spic and Span Co.'s senior vice president of marketing. “This is a wonderful opportunity to take an extremely well known brand and give it a little tender loving care.”

        It also might prove to be a very lucrative opportunity for both The Shansby Group, which has a majority stake in the company, and The Spic and Span Co. executives, who hold a minority stake in the business. The Shansby Group specializes in buying well-known premium consumer products, building them up and selling them for a profit after several years.

        A payoff, of course, is not guaranteed. The Spic and Span Co. will need to be attractive enough so that another company would want to buy it for much more than The Shansby Group paid for it.

        “It's going to be a very challenging proposition for the company in several respects,” said Burt Flickinger, who worked for Procter & Gamble from 1978 to 1990. He was responsible for Spic and Span and a number of household-cleaning products as the company's eastern sales manager.

        Mr. Flickinger, who is now managing director of Reach Marketing in Westport, Conn., said The Spic and Span Co. is at a disadvantage without the sales force and distribution system of P&G, a company with about 110,000 employees and $39 billion in sales last year.

        Mr. Flickinger also said the brand is in a declining market. He said consumers in 2001 use hard-surface cleaners such as Spic and Span about half as often as their parents and about a quarter as often as their grandparents. New homes, he said, tend to include surfaces such as wood floors that are not cleaned with Spic and Span.

        When The Shansby Group bought Spic and Span and the smaller glass and surface cleaner Cinch from P&G, it received their sales history. P&G, which bought Spic and Span in 1945 and introduced Cinch in 1991, stopped supporting the brands with advertising or marketing money after 1997, said James O'Hara, The Shansby Group's managing member.

        “Procter & Gamble had made the decision basically to not spend any marketing dollars against the brand and basically to let it slowly decline,” Mr. O'Hara said.

        For the 52 weeks ending July 15, Spic and Span had sales of $20.1 million, or 5.6 percent of the $359.59 million U.S. market for non-diluted all-purpose cleaners, according to Information Resources Inc., a Chicago research company. Spic and Span's dollar sales were down 12.1 percent from the previous year, according to IRI.

        However, for the 12 weeks ending July 15, when the brand was under new ownership, Spic and Span's dollar sales were up 13.4 percent. The overall category grew just 6.1 percent during that time.

        Mr. Flickinger said it will take a hefty amount of advertising and marketing money to revive the brand.

        “Spic and Span has higher name recognition than Vice President Dick Cheney, but name recognition and goodwill do not immediately translate into ongoing sales and share growth,” Mr. Flickinger said.

        Peter Mann, president of The Spic and Span Co., said the company is intentionally keeping lean. It plans to contract out most of its business functions, including manufacturing and research and development, and it has hired a national sales company that will assist its two salespeople.

        “There are strong opportunities and great examples in our portfolio where a nimble, quick, creative management team focusing on a business with a brand equity like Spic and Span has created substantial growth in revenues and wealth for all shareholders,” O'Hara said.

        The Shansby Group bought Famous Amos Cookies in 1998, when the cookie company had $6 million in annual revenue. When it sold the company four years later, it had more than $75 million in revenue. The Shansby Group made more than 15 times its investment, Mr. O'Hara said.

        “It was a very similar business in the sense that once we had outsourced all the manufacturing of the cookies ... that was a $75 million business run by less than 15 people,” Mr. O'Hara said.

        He said by the time P&G sold Cinch and Spic and Span, the consumer products giant had no one working on developing the brands.

        Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Monica Collins said P&G's sales of the brands were part of a company plan to shift focus. “Although the Spic and Span and Cinch brands were profitable in the United States, we have more promising strategic opportunities in our fabric and home-care business where we want to focus on major brands with the potential for global growth,” Ms. Collins said.

        The Spic and Span Co. plans not only to increase sales of Spic and Span and Cinch but also increase product offerings. It plans to begin introducing Spic and Span brand extensions, such as a Spic and Span spray cleaner or toilet-bowl cleaner, starting in 2002. The company also plans to start selling the brand overseas.

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