New York City is home to many notable companies, ranging from entertainment, retail business, fashion, beauty to healthcare. Pfizer is one of those companies, and its presence in the iconic city gives Big Pharma a fair representation in the northeastern parts of the United States. The spotlight is on Pfizer today. While a lot of people may not be familiar with its specific history, products like Viagra, Advil, Xanax, and Zoloft are not alien to many people globally.
Pfizer was established in the 19th century in Brooklyn, New York, by two German-American cousins, Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart. The company was established to become a fine chemicals business under the name Charles Pfizer & Company. Charles Pfizer took a $2,500 loan from his father to open the business in Williamsburg, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The red brick building served as the company’s office, laboratory, factory, and warehouse. About two centuries later, Pfizer still has its headquarters in New York City.
Pfizer has more than 300 different drugs in distribution in the United States, with its first drug being an antiparasitic drug that was first formulated in 1849. The drug was used to treat intestinal worms in the 1800s, and it was formulated using naturally blended santonin with flavoring and then shaped into a candy cone. It was the company’s first successful product, and it laid the foundation for hundreds of many other revolutionary medications. Today, Pfizer is the second-largest pharmaceutical company by revenue. Its iconic status never wavered, especially with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granting an emergency use authorization to the company for the COVID-19 vaccine it developed.
Growing from a one-stop shop into a multinational corporation is one of the biggest evolutions a company has experienced in the world. The company first discovered citric acid, the organic acid in Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Pfizer is also a mass producer of vitamin C and penicillin worldwide. Amid all triumphs, Pfizer has had its fair share of lawsuits and legal battles where consumers claimed the company sold defective drugs. Despite all that, the company’s successes cannot be undermined. It is a publicly traded company, and according to Forbes, it is the 49th largest public company in the world. Its revenue reached $51.8 billion in 2019, and by February 4, 2021, Pfizer had a market capitalization of $194 billion. Over the years, Pfizer has been heavily involved in vaccines and treatment drugs for diabetes, cancer and heart treatments.
Pfizer operates in 180 countries, with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, and employing more than 96,000 people worldwide. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued raging for months, Pfizer entered a partnership with BioNTech in April to start developing a vaccine for the virus. In November 2020, the company announced that Phase 3 of clinical trials indicated that the virus had a 95 percent efficacy and was declared safe to use. Since then, the vaccine has been shipped all over the world and has placed Pfizer on the right side of history.
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