From Circus Acts to S&P: The Insane Origin of Cintas

Sometimes I come across a story in my research that is just too crazy NOT to share with you… despite having no actionable takeaway.

The story of Cintas definitely fits that description:

Before it became a $60B corporate giant, Cintas (CTAS) was born out of circus dust and dirty rags.

Literally.

In the 1920s, a man named Richard “Doc” Farmer worked as an animal trainer in a traveling circus. His wife, Amelia, was a trapeze artist.

When the circus folded during the Great Depression, Doc turned to the only thing he could find: collecting and cleaning greasy rags from Cincinnati factories.

He’d wash them by hand in an old public bathhouse, then sell them back to the same factories that threw them away.

That’s how the company started.

But it gets crazier.

In 1937, a massive flood nearly wiped out the business. The Farmer family rebuilt—by hand—and kept going.

Then, decades later, Doc’s grandson Dick came along with a radical idea: Instead of just rags, rent companies their uniforms and clean those too.

It was a gamble. No one was doing it at scale. But it worked.

Fast-forward to today: Cintas serves over one million businesses. They supply uniforms to nearly every industry. They own the niche they invented.

And it all started with a circus act, a sack of rags, and a flood.

There’s something beautiful about that. A reminder that companies with soul—those that start in the dirt and fight their way up—build moats deeper than capital.

They build cultures that last.