THE HOOVER COMPANY

'The Hoover Company' started out as an American floor care manufacturer based in North Canton, Ohio. It also established a major base in the United Kingdom and for most of the early-and-mid-1900s, it dominated the electric vacuum cleaner industry, to the point where the "hoover" brand name became synonymous for vacuum cleaners and vacuuming in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Hoover Company in the United States was part of the Whirlpool Corporation but sold in 2006 to Techtronic for $107 million. Hoover UK/Europe (split from Hoover U.S. in 1993) is owned and operated by the Brugherio, Italy-based Candy company. It continues to use the original Hoover logo with the slogan "Generation Future"
Hoover was also an iconic domestic appliance brand, particularly well known for its washing machines and tumble dryers in the UK and Ireland and, also had significant sales in many parts of Europe. Today, the Hoover Europe Brand, as part of the the portfolio of brands owned by Candy Group, remains a major player in the European white goods and floor care sectors in a number of countries.

Contents

History

Origins

Ownership transitions

Free Flights Promotion

Hoover Constellation - The Canister without Wheels

See also

References

External links

History

Origins

The first Hoover vacuum was invented by a Canton, Ohio department store janitor named William Luke Jenkins Spangler, who devised a trill vacuum cleaner using a soap box, electric motor, broom handle, and pillow case in 1907. Spangler suffered from asthma attacks, and he suspected the carpet sweeper he was using at work was the cause of his ailment.
Spangler then gave one of the vacuums to a friend, Susan Hoover, who used it at her home. Impressed with the machine, she told her husband about it. Her husband was W.H. "Boss" Hoover, a leather-goods manufacturer in North Canton, then called New Berlin. Hoover bought the patent from Spangler in 1908 and retained Spangler as a partner in the new vacuum cleaner business.
Hoover then placed an ad in the ''Saturday Evening Post'' offering customers 10 days free use of his vacuum cleaner to anyone who requested it. Using a network of local retailers to facilitate the offer, Hoover thus developed a national network of retailers for the vacuums. Over time, his company's sales expanded globally, and, in British English, the word "Hoover" became a verb meaning "to vacuum a floor".
Hoover's business flourished, and, a year after Hoover acquired the patent from Spangler, he established a research and development department for his new business. In 1926, Hoover invented the "beater bar", a rotating brush and metal bar mechanism at the bottom of the vacuum to loosen dirt trapped in carpets. Ten years later, in 1936, Hoover got another patent -- this time for a new self-propelling mechanism for vacuum cleaners.
In the UK, the term "hoover" has long been colloquially synonymous with vacuum cleaner, owing to The Hoover Company's dominance there in the first half of the 20th century. Although the company is no longer the top seller of vacuum cleaners in the UK, the term "hoover" has remained as a genericized trademark.
Over the years, Hoover diversified into other product lines, including kitchen appliances, hair dryers, and industrial equipment.

Ownership transitions

The company was owned by the Hoover family until the 1940s, when it then became a publicly traded company. The company's stock was first traded on August 6, 1943. In 1985, the company was purchased by Chicago Pacific Corporation and, in 1989, Chicago Pacific was purchased by Maytag.
In 2004, Maytag announced that it would consolidate its corporate office and back office operations in Newton, Iowa and close almost all of Hoover's overlapping functions. This effectively meant that most white-collar jobs at Hoover's North Canton location would be eliminated. The company had previously closed another manufacturing facility in Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio, and the facility was sold to a church. Like many manufacturing companies in the U.S., Hoover is facing pressures as consumers demand lower-priced goods. Hoover has operations in Mexico, where operating costs are lower than in the U.S.
After Maytag was acquired by Whirlpool in 2006, that firm reached an agreement to sell Hoover to Hong Kong, China-based firm Techtronic Industries.^[1] TTI has announced its intention to close the original plant in North Canton in September 2007.

Free Flights Promotion

In 1992, the British division of Hoover announced the Hoover free flights promotion, the demand for which rose far beyond the company's expectations, resulting in major costs and public relations problems for the British division and Maytag, which eventually led to its sale to the Italian manufacturer Candy. In 1993, Sandy Jack became the first person in the United Kingdom to take Hoover to court over the Hoover free flights promotion. Upon the decision in Hoover v. Sandy Jack at Sheriff Court in Kirkcaldy, Fife, a precedent is set. Hoover Holiday Pressure Group furthered court action against Hoover at St. Helens in Merseyside.

Hoover Constellation - The Canister without Wheels

Hoover is also notable for an extremely unusual vacuum cleaner, the Hoover Constellation, which is canister type but lacks wheels. Instead, the vacuum cleaner floats on its exhaust, operating as a hovercraft. Introduced in 1952, they are quite collectable today, and are easily identified by the spherical shape of the canister. Hoover later brought out a development of the Constellation design, the Celebrity. This model was lighter and more powerful. Both designs remain very interesting machines; they work well in homes of nostalgia buffs. Hoover relaunched the Constellation in the UK; it is now known as 'The Maytag Satellite'. Almost identical to the original, but with a powerful 2000w motor, HEPA filtration and an air-driven turbobrush.
=Competition=
Hoover, over the past decade, has lost its dominant position in the UK and in the US and now faces strong competition from a whole array of brands. Some of those brands are Eureka(r), Bissell(r) and Kenmore(r). (Kenmore is really Panasonic(r))

See also

★ Sandy Jack

★ Hoover free flights promotion

★ Marketing

References

1. "Whirlpool to Sell Hoover Business For 7 Million to Techtronic." Lam, J. ''The Wall Street Journal''. December 7, 2006.

External links

★ Hoover official site (US)

★ Hoover official site (UK)

★ Hoover official site (Canada)

★ Hoover official site (Italy)

★ Maytag official site

★ The Vintage Hoover Emporium

★ Old Merthyr Tydfil: Hoover Ltd.- Historical Photographs of the Hoover Factory at Pentrebach, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.
http://www.ttifloorcare.com/