The sweet smell of success

How Dr. Fischer – yes, he is a real person – became a household name.

By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN
Dr. Eli Fischer 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Dr. Eli Fischer 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
You would be hard pressed to find a household in Israel without a Dr. Fischer product on a shelf somewhere, be it shampoo, baby wipes or eye drops. Yet the average consumer knows nothing about the man behind the logo, and that is why Dr. Eli Fischer – yes, he is a real human being – wrote an autobiography eight years ago titled L’lo Mekadem Hagana (“Without SPF”), a play on his best-selling sunscreen products.
Recently, as he began entering his branded consumer products into the American market, he decided to write an updated autobiography to help introduce himself to the US buying public. An e-book version will be available this summer on Amazon, and he has done Barnes & Noble book signings in Chicago and New York.
I met Fischer once, and found him to be a likable avuncular type. The book reinforces that first impression. Its homey, unpolished style makes you feel you are reading a fascinating letter from an uncle, or at least someone you would like to be your uncle.
There is much to learn from this uncle. Fischer seemingly personifies the State of Israel. He shared in its precarious beginnings and his business grew up with it, succeeding spectacularly against all odds.
He arrived in Tel Aviv at age three with his parents and older brother in March 1939, leaving behind a privileged life in Carlsbad where his father and grandfather were prominent physicians. They found lodging in two rooms of a three-room walkup near Dizengoff Street.
Fischer’s mother fund-raised for the Jewish National Fund and volunteered with institutionalized children. His father, at first unable to obtain a medical license, bought an ultraviolet lamp to treat children for rickets, and traveled to kibbutzim to teach first aid to female Palmahniks.
Young Eli and his pals explored Tel Aviv barefoot, learning the locations of each secret Hagana storehouse. He cared for animals in a small zoo, caught frogs to sell for pregnancy tests and danced the hora at Mograbi Square upon learning of the United Nations vote to partition Palestine.
When his agriculture teacher was called up for duty, the recent bar mitzva was recruited to teach the younger grades. He witnessed the controversial firing of shells from the beach where the Hilton Hotel now stands, which destroyed the Irgun ship Altalena and led to 35 deaths.
While serving in the Givati Brigade in 1953, an army physical uncovered a vision problem, and Fischer underwent surgery at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. Eye health became an area of interest for life. While studying biochemistry at the Hebrew University, Fischer taught at Jerusalem’s School for the Blind, and in 1959 studied in the Harvard lab of Prof. George Wald, who received a Nobel Prize for discovering the link between vitamin A and night blindness.
While earning his doctorate in pharmacy at the University of California and working for the Barnes- Hind drug company, he helped develop a groundbreaking treatment for glaucoma, and later launched his career with ophthalmologic preparations. To this day, Fischer Pharmaceuticals makes many of the eye drops doctors use and prescribe in Israel and abroad.
Fischer’s reminiscences about building his business are nail-biting.
Though ultimately he acquired 10 smaller companies and entered the market in 30 countries, he fought difficult battles against Israeli bureaucracy, the Arab boycott and corporate giants such as L’Oreal and Body Shop (his son-in-law now oversees the Fischer-owned chain of 45 Body Shop stores in Israel), among others.
“If you are not crazy, stubbornly resourceful and driven, don’t start building an industry,” he advises in a section titled “What I Learned about Management and Leadership in the Last 50 Years.”
“From the day I started my company, I did not sleep a full night without waking up with some worries,” he writes.
Along with his late wife Dvora, Fischer has been a passionate philanthropist.
Dvora’s pet charity was Yeladim – Fair Chance for Children, and in the early 1980s the Fischers hosted two children from a broken family two weekends every month.
After Dvora’s death, Fischer established an art gallery in her name in the ZOA building in Tel Aviv. Proceeds from rotating exhibitions are donated to various social-welfare non-profits.
Fischer has been responsible for such projects as building wheelchair-accessible picnic areas in Israel; supporting employment of people with mental and hearing disabilities; donating products to needy families, soldiers, cancer patients and shelters for battered women; and awarding grants to outstanding research students at Tel Aviv University.
In 1996, the Fischers held an international competition of children’s drawings on the theme of peace and coexistence. Of the 1,500 pictures submitted, 60 were chosen to be exhibited in Tel Aviv, and then were donated to pediatric wards in Israel.
“My philosophy is that our contributions and assistance to a large number of social welfare organizations is certainly for the sake of those in need,” Fischer writes, “but they also serve as a foundation for the company’s outreach efforts to employees and society.
For instance, for each bottle of food supplements we sell we contribute one shekel of our income to the Council for the Child in Placement. So it goes: the more we earn the more we contribute, and the more we contribute the more we earn.”