(FORTUNE Magazine) – Why won't Bill Wrigley Jr. talk to FORTUNE?

Maybe the 39-year-old CEO of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. rejects interview requests because, as his public relations rep insists, he's too busy tending his three young children and running the chewing-gum enterprise his great-grandfather founded. Maybe he won't talk because he doesn't want competitors to know the details of his ambitious growth plans. Or perhaps Bill Jr. (as we'll call him), whose $3 billion or so net worth makes him one of the world's richest men, doesn't want to discuss his complicated family life. After all, his aunt's former husband, William Hagenah Jr., sued in 2001 to challenge Bill Jr.'s right to vote 7.2 million shares of Wrigley Co. stock held in family trusts. And he is finalizing a divorce with wife Kandis, who has testified that he spent $30 million since their separation in July 2000 on such things as a new polo field and lavish gifts for a Wrigley employee he was dating.

But one thing is clear: Bill Jr. isn't dodging the press because he's floundering in his job. Far from it. In March 1999, when the boyish CEO took the reins of the world's leading gum maker--which is publicly traded but family controlled--it hadn't had a single unprofitable quarter or missed dividend since 1923. But a growth company it was not. Bill Jr. has been turbocharging it, launching a raft of new products and shaking up some old ones even as he eyes major acquisitions.

Since Bill Jr.'s ascent, the stock has risen 18% in a period when the S&P sank 37%. Annual revenues have increased more than a third, to an estimated $2.7 billion in 2002. Though Bill Jr. tried and failed to buy chocolate maker Hershey last September, the CEO still aspires, as he told shareholders in the March 2002 annual meeting, "to double the size of the company over a number of years."

The annual meetings, by the way, are virtually the only time Bill Jr. takes questions. What about Wall Street? Long before it was in vogue for companies like Coca-Cola and Gillette to shun analysts, Wrigley Co. refused to provide earnings guidance. The silence rankles some, who accuse Bill Jr. of acting as if his public corporation were private. "As the company makes big changes, they need to explain those changes to the investment community," says Eric Katzman, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. But the reality is that as long as he continues to perform, Bill Jr. can continue to duck questioners.

Tight lips run in the family. Bill Jr.'s great-grandfather, who confusingly enough was also named William Wrigley Jr., founded the company in Chicago in 1891 as a soap and baking-powder concern that gave away chewing gum as a promotion. Two years later the company introduced two brands that it called Wrigley's Spearmint and Juicy Fruit. In 1919 the company went public, though the family kept most of the voting shares. William Jr.'s son Philip Wrigley took over the company in 1925; Philip's son, named William Wrigley (what else?), did so in 1961. Through the years Wrigley Co. built an international gum empire with conservative practices that became known as the Wrigley Way. It focused on its product. It shunned debt. It avoided the press. It resisted talking to Wall Street. It worked.

By century's end the only thing the company seemed short of was innovation. When Bill Jr. succeeded William Sr. as CEO in 1999--ten days after his father's sudden death from pneumonia at age 66--the packaging of key brands Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, and Wrigley's Spearmint had barely changed since the 1940s. The company had introduced only four new brands in the U.S. in the previous 40 years. Though Americans were increasingly eschewing sugar-laden gum, Wrigley had only one sugar-free offering domestically, Extra. Meanwhile the rising popularity of high-intensity mints like Altoids had driven gum sales down about 30% among teenagers, Wrigley's main customers.

It proved a perfect time for Bill Jr., who had worked for the company since 1985, to take over. "The father [William Sr.] was a Depression-era baby, risk-averse and reluctant to delegate," says Deutsche Bank's Katzman. "The son is the opposite." Bill Jr. quickly replaced several key executives with outsiders, began working much more closely with big retailers, and radically revamped the core brands. He reintroduced Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, Doublemint, and Winter Fresh with edgier ad campaigns, hipper labels--Juicy Fruit's screams, "Gotta have sweet!"--and new flavor formulations that the company claims last longer. (Wrigley insists that the gums retain their classic flavors, though some lifelong chewers complain they don't taste quite the same.) Bill Jr. also brought out a slew of new sugar-free brands in the U.S.--including Eclipse and Orbit--to compete with threats like Dentyne Ice, from No. 2 gum maker Adams. As a result, Wrigley's share of the sugar-free gum market has increased from the 30% range in the 1990s to 51% today.

The company is also devoting considerable resources to so-called functional gums, which deliver specific benefits such as whitening teeth (Orbit White, which launched in the U.S. last year), soothing sore throats (Alpine, which debuted in Canada in 1999), and unstuffing nasal passages (Airwaves, which hit Europe in 1998). These gums, in pellet form, retail for about $1 a 12-pack, twice as much as traditional stick gums. "How many other consumer products are doubling their price per unit and expanding their gross margins?" asks Katzman. "It's very impressive."

But Bill Jr.'s most significant move has been to diversify the company's products beyond gum for the first time. In June 2001 he bought the Velamints breath-mint brand from German company Ragold for an undisclosed price. (Analysts speculate that he may also have his eye on $423 million Tootsie Roll or certain Mars Candy assets, though they're not currently for sale.) In 2002 in Europe he introduced X-Cite, a hard candy with gum inside. Perhaps his biggest success has been Eclipse Flash Strips, tiny paper-like sheets that disappear on the tongue with an intense, breath-freshening jolt.

That's not to say Bill Jr. hasn't engineered any duds. In 2000 he created a health-care division to develop medication-delivering gums. In April 2001 the division introduced its first product, antacid gum Surpass. It flopped. "Having chewing gum perceived as a serious solution to a serious problem is much tougher than we had ever anticipated," admits Wrigley spokesman Chris Perille.

Though many institutional investors applaud Bill Jr., some wonder if he is biting off more than he can chew. These product introductions have been so rapid, say some analysts, that the pace can't be sustained. And Wrigley is facing a new threat. Last December, Cadbury Schweppes agreed to buy Pfizer's Adams unit--maker of Trident and Dentyne gum and Hall's Cough Drops--for $4.2 billion. That gives Cadbury about a third of the crucial U.S. sugarless-gum market and a quarter of the world gum market, including a dominant position in Latin America, Wrigley's weakest spot.

But Bill Jr., who owns 30% of Wrigley Co.'s shares outright, won't talk about his competitive fears. Or his divorce. Or that awkward family lawsuit we mentioned at the outset. (Hagenah, ex-husband of Bill Jr.'s aunt Ada, filed a lawsuit challenging Bill Jr.'s right to vote Wrigley shares in various family trusts for which Hagenah was trustee; the suit was settled for an undisclosed sum.) "More than anything," says a candy-store manager in tony Lake Forest, Ill., who sees the close-mouthed CEO and his kids often, "he's just shy."

Well, maybe so. But if Bill Jr. doesn't keep Wrigley's numbers up, investors may insist that he start flapping his gums a little.