Eureka (company)
Eureka is a brand of the Chinese company Midea Group that manufactures vacuums for all households. The company offers a full line of vacuum cleaners, including uprights, cordless, canisters, sticks and handhelds. Eureka also manufactures aftermarket vacuum accessories, such as bags, belts and filters.
| Type | Division |
|---|---|
| Genre | Home care |
| Founded | 1909 (as Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company) Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Founder | Fred Wardell |
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Cordless vacuums, upright vacuums, stick vacs |
| Owner | Midea Group |
| Website | www.eureka.com |
History
Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company was founded in 1909 in Detroit, Mich. by Toronto, Canada-born real estate auctioneer Fred Wardell (1866-1952)[1] to sell vacuum cleaners for which he had acquired several patents.[2] At first only selling vacuum cleaners manufactured by others, in 1913 he and four partners purchased their first plant. In 1922 they introduced the Eureka Model 9, which undercut their main competitor Hoover by 50% in price, with the same horsepower motor and a front-mounted bag that customers preferred to Hoover's rear-mounted bag, offered with a 10-day home trial, becoming the Model T of the vacuum cleaner industry, selling 1 million units in three years. By 1927 Eureka sold 2 million units, selling one-third of all vacuums manufactured in the United States and settling into a perennial second place position behind Hoover.
1930 saw expansion into the making of other appliances with the introduction of the Eureka electric range.
Partly due to the costs of a massive door-to-door sales force, along with the Great Depression, in the late 1930s the company went into the red, divesting its door-to-door force in 1940, and still operating in the red until it was saved only by World War II and a wartime production business.
In 1945 looking to get into the booming postwar appliance industry, the company merged with Williams Oil-O-Matic, a Bloomington, Ill., manufacturer (founded 1918) of oil-based heaters and refrigerators for the home, and the name of the company was changed to Eureka-Williams Corporation.[3]
The company went on to expand its horizons, eventually manufacturing such diverse items as heaters, air conditioners, a wooden lung, and school furniture.
In 1953 it was purchased by Henney Motor Company of Freeport, Illinois, and in 1959 it became a division of National Union Electric Corporation, going on to become the first U.S. manufacturer of a purpose-built electric car (1959-1961), the Henney Kilowatt, which flopped commercially.
In 1974 Eureka was purchased by AB Electrolux of Sweden and the name was changed back to the Eureka Company.
In 2004 the use of the Eureka company name was discontinued and replaced with Electrolux Home Products Division.[3] In August 2011 Electrolux Small Appliances North America relocated to Charlotte, N.C., from Bloomington, Ill., uniting the corporate office operations and support functions for all of Electrolux's North American vacuum, small appliance, and major appliance brands under one roof.[4]
In 2016 Eureka was purchased by Midea Group, parent company of Midea America Corp.
Eureka today
Today Eureka vacuum cleaners are manufactured by the parent company, Midea Group.
Eureka manufactures a variety of vacuum types including uprights, cordless and hand and stick vacuums.
Eureka vacuums are sold online and by a variety of national retailers globally.
References
- "Wardell, Fred | Detroit Historical Society". detroithistorical.org.
- "History of The Eureka Company – FundingUniverse". www.fundinguniverse.com.
- "Williams Oil-O-Matic Collection". McLean County Museum of History. Archived from the original on 2009-09-14. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
- "Electrolux completes move from Illinois to NC". Peoria Journal Star. August 4, 2011.