Electrolux

B Electrolux is a Swedish company, one of the world's leading manufacturers of household and professional appliances. Every year, the company sells more than 60 million of its products to consumers from 150 countries. Electrolux is headquartered in Stockholm.

Electrolux was founded by Axel Wenner-Gren. In 1908, Wenner-Gren worked as a sales agent for Separator in Sweden. It is believed that the idea of ​​mass production of household vacuum cleaners came to Wenner-Gren during a business trip to Vienna, when he noticed an American-made Santo vacuum cleaner weighing more than 20 kilograms in a store window.

In 1910, Wenner-Gren founded a company in Stockholm under the name Elektromekaniska AB. In 1912, Elektromekaniska AB began to cooperate with AB Lux (Stockholm, Sweden), which has been producing street kerosene lamps since 1901. But due to the further widespread distribution of electricity, Lux urgently needed to reorganize its production. In 1913, the company successfully launched the production of the first domestic vacuum cleaner (model Lux 1) weighing 14 kilograms. Then Wenner-Gren developed a prototype device even smaller. The second model of the Lux vacuum cleaner was introduced in 1914 and already weighed 9 kilograms.

In 1919, the company name changed to Elektrolux AB (the spelling will be changed to English - Electrolux - in 1957 due to the increased popularity of the company's products outside Sweden). Just 10 years after the founding of Electrolux, Axel Wenner-Gren turned it into a global company with offices and factories around the world. The ideological basis for the success of Wenner-Gren was the idea that the business should change in accordance with the needs of customers. So, in 1921, Wenner-Gren himself offered the developers an innovation in the construction of vacuum cleaners, saying: “It is necessary to place the vacuum cleaner on skids made of thick wire. Those who are not strong enough to carry a vacuum cleaner can drag it. ”

In 1925, Wenner-Gren saw significant potential in the development of Karl Munters and Balthazar von Platen and invested his own funds in it. Thus appeared the world's first absorption refrigerator, which operated on gas, kerosene or electricity. By 1936, Electrolux had produced its millionth refrigerator. At the same time, Albert Einstein developed and patented a similar design of the refrigerator. Axel Wenner-Gren bought a patent for Einstein's refrigerator to avoid a licensing dispute. But the design of Munters and von Platen turned out to be more successful, and as a result, it was precisely it that was implemented in refrigerators.

Along with home appliances, the company produces equipment for professional kitchens, laundries of large hotels and hotel complexes. The company uses a number of technologies that are used in solutions for professionals in products for the home: processing products with steam in the oven, washing dishes under high pressure, processing clothes with steam and others.