Electrolux AB history, profile and history video
Electrolux AB manufactures in the appliance sector, which focuses on innovations that are designed and based on extensive consumer insight to meet the real needs of consumers and professionals. It operates through tow segments: Consumer Durables and Professional Products. The Consumer Durables segment provides appliances comprises of refrigerators, freezers, cookers, dryers, washing machines, dishwashers, room air-conditioners and microwave ovens. The Professional Products segment comprises of food service equipment for hotels, restaurants and institutions, as well as laundry equipment for apartment-house laundry rooms, launderettes, hotels and other professional users. The company was founded by Axel Wenner-Gren on August 1, 1919 and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.“
“Electrolux Group History
The company originates from a merger of two companies, one an established manufacturer and the other a younger company founded by a former vacuum salesman who, incidentally, was a former employee of the former firm. The origins of Electrolux are closely tied to the vacuum, but today it makes all major appliances.
Lux AB, incorporated in 1901 by Sven Carlson, was a Stockholm-based maker of large kerosene lamps for railway stations, based on an invention by David Kempe. In 1912 it had factories on the Lilla Essingen island in Stockholm and in Riga, then part of imperial Russia. As competitors started to make similar models and electric lighting started to compete with kerosene, Lux needed a new product and in 1912 started to manufacture electric vacuum cleaners, in a design by Axel Wenner-Gren. The name changed to Elektrolux in 1918 when the company merged with Svenska Elektron AB. In 1918 the company had 400 employees.
Sales company to major manufacturer
In 1919 a Svenska Elektron AB subsidiary, Elektromekaniska AB, became Elektrolux. (the spelling was changed to Electrolux in 1957.) It initially sold Lux-branded vacuum cleaners in several European countries.
By 1925 the company had added absorption refrigerators to its product line and other appliances soon followed: washing machines in 1951, dishwashers in 1959, and food service equipment in 1962, etc.
Mergers and acquisitions
The company has often and regularly expanded through mergers and acquisitions.
While Electrolux had bought several companies before the 1960s, that decade saw the beginnings of a new wave of M&A activity. The company bought ElektroHelios, Norwegian Elektra, Danish Atlas, Finnish Slev, and Flymo, et al., in the nine years from 1960 to 1969. This style of growth continued through the 1990s, seeing Electrolux purchase scores[16] of companies including, for a time, Husqvarna.
Hans Werthen
Hans Werthen, a President and later Chairman of the Board, led the strategic core of an increasingly decentralised Electrolux—and was instrumental to its rapid growth.
Restructuring
While attempts to cut costs, centralise administration, and wring out economies of scale from Electrolux’s operations were made in the 1960s and 1970s with the focus so firmly on growth, further company-wide restructuring efforts only began in the late 1990s.
A public company
Electrolux made an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in 1928 (it was delisted in 2010) and another on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1930.
Currently its shares trade on the NASDAQ OMX Nordic Market and over-the-counter, too. Electrolux is an OMX Nordic 40 constituent stock.
2000 to present
In North America the Electrolux name was long-used by a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, Aerus LLC, originally established to sell Swedish Electrolux products. In 2000, Aerus transferred trademark rights back to the Electrolux Group. Aerus stopped using the Electrolux brand in 2004. Before 2000 Electrolux-made vacuums carried the Eureka brand name, and while Electrolux continued to make Eureka-branded vacuums after it regained the right to use its own brand, it also began selling Electrolux-branded vacuums, too. Electrolux USA customer service maintains a database of Electrolux-made vacuums and provides a link to Aerus in case an Electrolux-branded vacuum cleaner was made by Aerus.
Keith McLoughlin took over as President and CEO on January 1, 2011, and became the company’s first non-Swedish chief executive. In August 2011, Electrolux acquired fromSigdo Koppers the Chilean appliance manufacturer CTI, one of Latin America’s largest producers and owner of the brands Fensa, Gafa, Mademsa and Somela. Electrolux moved its North American headquarters from Augusta, Georgia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, announcing it in December 2009.”
*Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org
**Video published on YouTube by “ELECTROLUX BE“