How WD-40 built its business by doing less

There is a point in most businesses where growth becomes a question of choice rather than constraint. New opportunities appear, often adjacent, often logical, and usually persuasive. The instinct is to expand. To add. To diversify.

Steve Brass has spent much of his career doing the opposite.

“The chances of success in developing your core business are much greater than going into adjacent businesses,” he says. It sounds straightforward. In practice, it is anything but. Because the pressure to do more rarely disappears.

WD-40’s history is built on resisting that pressure. In the late 1960s, the company made a decision that still defines it today. It abandoned a portfolio of products and focused entirely on one. “They abandoned all the other products and focused only on the core product for 35 years,” Brass says.

That decision runs counter to most growth playbooks. It limits optionality. It concentrates risk. But it also creates clarity.

Over time, that clarity compounds. WD-40 has built a market share of 70 to 80 per cent in its category, a level of dominance that is difficult to replicate. The product is widely imitated, but rarely displaced. The company even maintains what Brass describes as a “graveyard of imitators”, a reminder that copying the product is easier than replicating the position.

The distinction is important. The formula matters, but the brand matters more. And brand, in this case, has been built through repetition rather than reinvention.

That does not mean the business has been static. It has experimented, like most organisations do. At times, it moved beyond its core into adjacent categories such as household cleaning products. The logic was familiar. The outcome was not.

“We tried it, it didn’t work,” Brass says. The response was not to persist, but to simplify. To remove complexity and return to what worked. Brass refers to the temptation to expand as “de-worsifying”, a phrase that captures the subtle way growth can dilute rather than strengthen a business.

The challenge, then, is not just identifying the core, but staying with it. Particularly when growth slows or alternatives appear more exciting.

At WD-40, that discipline is reinforced culturally. The business has a long history of promoting from within, with many leaders spending decades in the organisation. That continuity creates alignment, but it also requires conscious effort to avoid stagnation.

“You still need to refresh your knowledge with external best practice,” Brass says. Which is where tension reappears. Stability needs to be balanced with challenge. Experience with new thinking.

The same applies to failure. In some organisations, failure is either avoided or celebrated. WD-40 reframes it more quietly.

“We don’t make mistakes. We have learning moments,” Brass says. It is a small shift in language, but a meaningful one. It makes failure easier to discuss, which in turn makes learning faster. Over time, that creates a more adaptive organisation without requiring constant change in direction.

This becomes particularly relevant in periods of technological change. For WD-40, digital has opened new ways to grow the brand, not by altering the product, but by changing how it is communicated.

“People love to tell stories about our brand,” Brass says. That lends itself to experimentation. Campaigns can be tested, refined and scaled across markets. It is a different form of innovation, one that sits around the core rather than replacing it.

Underpinning all of this is a longer-term view of growth. The business has expanded steadily, typically at six to eight per cent annually. It took decades to reach scale, and the next phase is expected to come in the same way.

Not through a step change, but through continuation. There is a proverb Brass returns to when describing this approach: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

It is an idea that runs against the pace of modern business. But it reflects something more durable. Growth that is sustained, rather than accelerated. Focus that is maintained, rather than tested.

And a business that, over time, becomes defined not by what it adds, but by what it chooses not to.