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Thursday, December 31, 2009

Hoover

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-20th century, 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 Industries for $107 million. Hoover UK/Europe split from Hoover U.S. in 1993 and was acquired by Candy, a company based in Brugherio Italy. It currently uses the original Hoover logo with the slogan "Generation Future".
In addition to floorcare products Hoover is also an iconic domestic appliance brand in Europe 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 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.

The first upright vacuum was invented in 1908 by a Canton, Ohio department store janitor and occasional inventor named James Murray Spangler. Spangler suffered from asthma attacks, and he suspected the carpet sweeper he was using at work was the cause of his ailment. He created a basic suction-sweeper, first by adapting his existing carpet-sweeper with an electric fan motor, then creating his own prototype from a soap box, electric motor, broom handle, and pillow case. After refining the design and being granted a patent, he set about producing the 'Electric Suction Sweeper' himself.

The products sold under the Hoover brand vary greatly from one market to the next. For example in the United States the Hoover brand is used exclusively to sell floorcare products produced by TTI. Meanwhile in the UK and much of Europe Hoover branding appears on Candy Group products including white goods such as washing machines, dishwashers and refrigerators as well as floorcare products. Current details of the product range available to consumers can be found by visiting the Hoover website for the market of interest
Click here for some Hoover products.


Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Hamilton Beach

The Hamilton Beach Company, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, is a manufacturer of home appliances, air purifiers and commercial restaurant equipments marketed primarily in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Until sometime in the 1980s the company's products were marketed under the brand name "Hamilton Beach Scovill", reflecting a merger that occurred in the 1940s. In 1990, the company merged with Proctor Silex, another household appliance manufacturer. Key market competitors
include Cuisinart, Black & Decker, Salton and Sunbeam.

Founded in 1910, the Hamilton Beach Manufacturing Company resulted from the partnership of Chester Beach, a mechanical inventor, and L. H. Hamilton, a business man in Racine, Wisconsine in the early part of the 20th century. Their noted product, the Hamilton Beach drink mixer, was used to produce milk shakes with malt powder from the neighboring Horlick Malted Milk Company. The Hamilton Beach drink mixer, with its characteristic spindle and metal container, was found at soda fountains of drug stores throughout North America. Other products included stand mixers (for making batter), fans, and hair dryers. The spindle drink mixer was expanded in the 1930s to enable multiple milk shakes to be processed at once.
The original company continues as the Hamilton Beach side of Hamilton Beach/Proctor Silex, Inc.Click here for some Hamilton Beach product.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Haier

Haier is primarily a producer of household appliances, including air conditioners, wasing machines, and
refrigerators. Its headquarters are in Qingdao, Shandong, People's Republic of China. As of 2008, Haier is the fourth-largest white goods manufacturer in the world. Haier Group reported sales of over $17.8 billion across all divisions in 2008.

Haier's history begins long before the actual founding of the company.
In the 1920's, a refrigerator factory was built in Qingdao to supply the Chinese market.
After the 1949 establishment of the People's Republic of China, Haier was then taken over and turned into a state-owned enterprise.
Haier had been founded as Qingdao Refrigerator Co. in 1984. With China opening up to world markets, foreign corporations began searching for partnerships in China. One of these, Germany's Liebherr Group, the worldwide leader in premium refrigeration, entered into an joint-venture contract with Qingdao Refrigerator Co., offering technology and equipment to its Chinese counterpart. Refrigerators were to be manufactured under the name of Qingdao-Liebherr ( Qingdao-Libohaier).

The installation of Liebherr's equipment and technology was accompanied by a new and rigorous commitment to quality. Combined with Zhang's disciplined management techniques, which broke from the tradition of the iron rice bowl in Chinese state-owned enterprises, the company began to turn around. By 1986, Qingdao Refrigerator had returned to profitability and sales growth averaged 83 percent per year.
With the success of Qingdao's refrigerator company, the municipal government asked it to take over some of the city's other ailing appliance makers. In 1988, the company assumed control of Qingdao Electroplating Company (making microwaves) and in 1991 took over Qingdao Air Conditioner Plant and Qingdao Freezer

Having diversified its product line beyond refrigerators, the company adopted a new name in 1991. Borrowing from the German name of its partner, "Haier" came from the last two syllables of the Chinese transliteration of Liebherr (pronounced "Li-bo-hai-er"). Qingdao Haier Group was further simplified in 1992 to Haier Group, the company's current name.

The company set out to establish itself as the country's leading brand, focusing upon reliability and product quality. Diversification would also allow Haier to spread out its risk among various product lines. In 1995 Haier bought out its chief rival in Qingdao, Red Star Electric Appliance Factory. In 1997, the company moved into television manufacturing with the acquisition of Huangshan Electronics Group. By the end of the 1990s, Haier was the most recognized brand in the country with products ranging from mobile phones to computers; it had also captured a dominant market share in its core white goods division.
Click here for some Haier products.


Thursday, December 24, 2009

Gibson




Gibson was founded by Joshua Hall in Beldin, Michigan, in 1877 as the Belding-Hall Company selling cabinets that housed blocks of ice (ice-boxes). The area around Belding, Michigan, had a skilled workforce of Danish craftsman and a good supply of hardwoods including ash. The company was purchased by Frank Gibson, a competing manufacturer of "ice refrigerators" in the early 1900s. It was the largest in its industry at the time. In 1932, the company began making electric refrigerators.
The company claims to have innovated the refrigerator light, the upright freezer, and the "Air Sweep" mechanism for distributing conditioned air.
In 1956, Hupp Corporation acquired Gibson. In 1967 Hupp merged with White Consolidated Industries. Click here for some Gibson appliances.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Cuisinart

Cuisinart is a brand of small kitchen appliances, especially the food processor of the same name, one of the first to become popular in the United States. It was founded by Carl Sontheimer in 1971, and became a leading brand in the United States.

It was endorsed early on by Julia Child and James Beard, ostensibly as a means of quickly preparing healthy food. It now sells products in the UK but only through specialist kitchen retailers there.
The trademark is owned by Conair Corporation who acquired Cuisinart after filing for bankruptcy in 1989.
The word "cuisinart" is also sometimes used as a genericized trademark for any food processor in the US.

Click here for some Cuisinart products.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Bunn

Bunn-O-Matic Corporation is a manufacturer of coffee
and tea-making equipment headquartered in Springfield, Illinois. It has a worldwide market presence, with its customers being primarily institutional foodservice providers. It also offers a product line for home use and introduced the first commercial quality drip brewer for home in 1972. Its products are sold under the Bunn and Bunn-o-Matic brands. The company introduced the world's first automatic drip-brew coffee maker in 1963.
BUNN is the US distributor of the Tiger super automatic espresso machine made by Thermoplan AG, the company famous for making the Starbucks Mastrena.
Click here for some Bunn products.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Breville

Breville is a maker of small kitchen appliances, founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1932. They created the original sandwich toaster, a small household appliance that makes toasted sandwiches. The name is often synonymous with such devices

In 1932, Bill O'Brien and Harry Norville mixed their last names together and the Breville brand was created. They started off making radios, then mine detectors for the war. After World War II and the arrival of the television, they turned their attentions to small appliances and sold the radio business. After Bill O'Brien had set up the Breville Research and Development centre in the 1960s the ideas just kept coming. In 1974, they invented the toastie maker. In 1977, they invented Australia's first food processor, the Breville Kitchen Wizz. Breville's Centre of Design Excellence is in Botany in Sydney.

Ownership of the brand is now split. In Europe, it is owned by Pulse Home Products. Outside of Europe, the Breville brand is now a division of the Australian ASX listed Breville Group, which also has bases in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand. The company makes contact grills, kettles, toaters, irons, microwave ovens, pressure cookers, coffeemakers, breadmakers, juicers, deep fryers, blenders, Keurig single serve coffeemakers, and food processors. The UK company has collaborated with Anthony Worrall Thompson.

Click here for some of Breville products.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Brita

Brita is a German company that specializes in water filtration products. The company is the world's market leader in portable household water filtration. Brita products include water jugs, kettles and tap attachments, all of which use silver-impregnated activated carbon and ion-exchange resin disposable filters, as their primary filtering mechanism. The activated carbon used in Brita filters is produced from coconut shells. The company manufactures its pitchers from styrene methyl metacrylate copolymer.

Brita filters have a double action:

1.The activated carbon filter eliminates bad odor, and the taste of halogen compounds that chlorine makes when present in tap water.
2.The exchange ion resin lowers the concentration of calcium carbonates, accordingly softening tap water.

Brita started in 1966 when Heinz Hankammer had the idea of optimizing normal tap water. He named the company after his daughter Brita. Its headquarters are in Taunusstein near Wiesbaden in Germany. In 1988. The Clorox Company, based in Oakland, California, acquired rights to the brand from the German company for North and South America.
Click here for some Brita products.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Rival Company-Bionaire


The Rival Company was an American manufacturer of small appliances that produced products under the Bionaire, Crock-Pot, Fasco, Patton, Pollenex, Rival, Simer, and White Mountain brands. They became a wholly owned subsidiary of Holmes Products Corp., in 1999, and are now a brand of Sunbeam Products, a subsidiary of Jarden Corporation, which purchased Holmes in 2005

Rival was founded in 1932 by Henry J. Talge as the Rival Manufacturing Co., which specialized in die casting. They soon began producing food preparation products under the "O-Mat" line, such as the Juice-O-Mat juicer, Can-O-Mat can opener, and Broil-O-Mat broiler. After shutting down to produce ammunition during World War II, Rival expanded their product lines in the post-war era. They acquired Waverly Products, Inc., expanding their products in to the home appliances market with Waverly's popular Steam-O-Mat iron

In 1963, the company was sold to Stern Brother Investment Bank, and went public in 1964. Soon after, they acquired the Titan Manufacturing Company and their line of portable electric heaters. In 1970, they acquired Naxon Utilities Corp., makers of a little known product called the "Bean Pot" slow cooker. Rival re-introduced the Bean Pot as the Crock-Pot in 1971, and it quickly became one of their top products.

Rival went private again in 1986, but became a publicly traded company again in 1992. After going public again, they acquired the Simer Pump Company, Pollenex Corp., White Mountain Freezers, Patton Electric Company, Inc., Fasco Consumer Products, and Bionaire Inc., during the 1990s. However, in February 1999, Rival was acquired by Holmes Products Corp, a manufacturer of air handling products such as fans, heaters, humidifiers, and filters (markets in which Rival was also a major player)

Holmes continued marketing Rival's products under the "Rival Products" brand name until they were acquired by Jarden Corporation in 2005. Jarden's Sunbeam Products Inc. subsidiary continues to manufacture products under the Rival and Holmes brands, although Crock-Pot was spun off as its own brand and its slow cookers no longer features the Rival logo, and Bionaire and Patton have become Jarden subsidiaries. The "Rival" brand name and logo are also licensed by Wal-Mart for some of their store brand small appliances.
Check here for some products with "Rival Products" brand name.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

GE


The General Electric Company, or GE is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate incorporated in the State of New York. In 2009, Forbes ranked GE as the world's largest company. The company has 323,000 employees around the world.

By 1890, Thomas Edison had brought together several of his business interests under one corporation to form Edison General Electric. At about the same time, Thomson-Houston Company, under the leadership of Charles A. Coffin, gained access to a number of key patents through the acquisition of a number of competitors. Subsequently, General Electric was formed by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Company

In 1896, General Electric was one of the original companies listed on the newly-formed Dow Jones Industrial Average and still remains after 113 years, the only one remaining on the Dow (though it has not continuously been in the DOW index).

The Radio Corporation of America was founded by GE in 1919 to further international radio. RCA would quickly grow into an industrial giant of its own.

In May 2008, GE announced it was exploring options for divesting the bulk of its Consumer and Industrial business.

On December 3, 2009, it was announced that NBC Universal will become a joint venture between GE and cable TV operator Comcast. The cable giant will hold a controlling interest in the company, while GE retains a 49% stake and will buy out shares currently owned by Vivendi.

Since over half of GE's revenue is derived from financial services, it is arguably a financial company with a manufacturing arm. It is also one of the largest lenders in countries other than the United States, such as Japan.

GE is foreknown in the manufacture of some major household products such as Electronics, Computer, and Electrical appliances some of which are listed here.

Black and Decker


Black & Decker Corporation is a corporation based in Towson, Maryland, United States, that designs and imports power tools and accessories, hardware and home improvement products, and technology based fastening systems.

It was founded in 1910 by S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker as a small machine shop in Maryland. In 1917, Black & Decker invented the familiar portable electric drill, obtaining a patent for a hand-held drill combining a pistol grip and trigger switch.

Black & Decker branded household products are marketed in the Americas (but outside of Brazil) by a division of Applica, a Florida-based corporation much smaller than Black & Decker Corporation.

Some of the major household products manufactured under the brand name include electrical appliances (electric iron) and toaster ovens.

Click here for some Black and Decker products.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Dirt Devil

Dirt Devil is a brand name of household vacuum cleaners and floor care.
There are two main units: Power for large houses, and RV unit for smaller houses or apartments, as well as a number of other floor care products including hand-held vacuum cleaners and carpet shampooing machines.

The company, which was founded in 1905 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, built the first household vacuum with a patented Cyclone system in 1955. Since then over 25 million have been sold. Originally the company made vacuum cleaners with metal cases, but in the 1980s they began selling the mass-market "Dirt Devil" line with plastic cases with the packaging brand name "Dirt Devil".

The slogans associated with the product were: "Nothing escapes the power of a Dirt Devil" and "Fight Dirty"

There have been different types of the Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners with exceptional performance over the years. They include:
The Dirt Devil Hand Vac which was introduced in 1984. It has a rotating brush for cleanup on stairs and furniture, plus a hose for hard to reach spots. The hand vac became the largest selling handheld vacuum in the United States selling more than 25 million which made Dirt Devil open its door to newer product innovations.The Ultra Hand Vac was introduced with more suction and built-in stretch hose. The Ultra Hand Vac is still available at some retailers and department stores.
In 2005, Dirt Devil gave the hand vac a makeover calling it the Dirt Devil Classic Hand Vac. The Classic has twice the power of the classic red hand vac with a HEPA Filter and a bagless dirt cup. The Classic is available at various retailers.

In 1996, the Broom Vac debuted and became the most selling stick vacuum in the United States. The Broom Vac is a rechargeable stick vacuum used for mostly bare floors; the user sweeps with it and vacuums the pile, it does not require bags.The Dirt Devil came out with a completely different Broom Vac, with 9 color options, longer battery life, and more suction. They are available at various retailers and department stores.

In June, 2008, Dirt Devil introduced a line of cordless handheld vacuums with AccuCharge Technology. AccuCharge is the first cordless vacuum line that is Energy Star approved and reduces 70% in energy consumption compared to most cordless vacuums. The cordless hand vac & stick vac are the first in the AccuCharge lineup.

For money saving and high efficiency of performance, the Dirt Devil is highly recommended.

Click here to purchase your Dirt Devil today!