5, 7, 501 - A brand new number !!!

Channel No.5 - the biggest selling and most well known perfume brand ever. No.5 dates back to 1920 when "Coco" Channel was tasked with selecting a new fragrance. She had a major affinity with the number 5 and when presented with a selection of 10 glass vials, each with a different fragrance, she choose vial 5 simply because it was her favourite number. She had a habit of presenting her new fashion collections on the 5th day of May (the 5th month) and in keeping with that proposed the the new pefume be also named No. 5. There is a bottle of Channel No.5 sold every 30 seconds.

7 UP . The name of the 'inventor' of 7Up doesn't roll off the tongue easily - Charles Leiper Grigg. Back in the 1920's, this American, worked on developing  soft drinks and flavours for a number of different companies. He developed a drink called 'Howdy' and setup his own company and continued to try and test with a lot of focus on 'lemon and lime flavours'. He eventually came up with "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas" in 1929. But that name didn't have a very good sales ring to it an the story goes that the 7 UP name was selected after having had 6 unsuccesful suggestions and he just settled on the next one up - 7. Another suggestion is that the bottle was 7oz in size and the bubbles went up. Or that it has 7 flavours (their slogan from 2008). It's all a bit of legend really as the real origin of the name is not really known.
The 7Up company was sold in 1978 to Philip Morris, merged with Dr. Pepper in 1988 and then bought over by Cadbury Schweppes in 1995

Levi 501's - We have all had a pair at some stage of the most famous jeans in the world. The brand started way back around 1873 and interestingly were 'invented' not by the man in the brand, Levi Strauss, but by a customer of his  Jacob Davis. Jacob came up with the idea of putting rivets in working trousers to prevent easy ripping. He didn't have the money to pay the patent but Levi Strauss did. They became partners but somehow the Levi name dominated.
Where did the 501 come from? Well, it was nothing more than a lot number allocated to consignments - not a clever branding idea or any clever reference to the jeans themsleves. Somehow it stuck !