Eleusis used to be a small fisherman's village in 1860. The first industry founded in 1875 was the soap industry of the Charilaou brothers, from Galatsi of Romania. After almost 20 years, one of the two brothers, who had studied chemistry in France and in Germany, consorted with Nicholas Kanellopoulos, also a chemist, and their soap production reached 600.000 tones. It was then when the well-known "Eleusis Soap" was introduced to the market and competed with the French soaps on even terms.