Electrolux

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Electrolux is consistently ranked the world's largest appliance maker by units sold, trailing only Whirlpool, and it runs its business from headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. That scale traces back to a modest start most people have never heard about. How did two small, unrelated workshops merge into one of the biggest appliance companies on earth? Why does an Electrolux vacuum cleaner sold in Australia carry a completely different name than one sold in Chile? And why did a company famous for vacuum cleaners spend part of the Second World War building a rifle instead? Those questions are where this story begins.

• 2. A Motor Meets a Lamp

  ›

  Engineer Sven Carlstedt founded a company called Elektromekaniska in Stockholm on the 19th of January 1910. It built universal motors for vacuum cleaners, designed alongside a collaborator named Eberhardt Seger. Two years later, in 1912, Carlstedt met a salesman named Axel Wenner-Gren. Wenner-Gren suggested a partnership with Lux, a kerosene lamp maker founded in 1901 and owned by Carl G. Lindblom. Both men agreed, and Lux began building vacuum cleaners under license from the Keller Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia. Those machines, sold in America as Santo vacuum cleaners, were fitted with motors built by Elektromekaniska.

  In 1915, Wenner-Gren launched his own company, Svenska Elektron, selling a vacuum cleaner under the Elektron brand. Another firm built the machines on commission, and the line sold well. In 1916, Svenska Elektron bought a controlling stake in Elektromekaniska, and Wenner-Gren took over its management. Two years later, in 1918, it also acquired a significant share of Lux. On the 29th of August 1919, the company officially changed its name from Elektromekaniska to Elektrolux. The new name simply combined the old one with Lux, the partner handling its sales abroad. Wenner-Gren, now majority shareholder and president, had turned a small motor workshop into a company ready to expand far beyond Sweden.

• 3. From Elektrolux to Electrolux

  ›

  Electrolux made an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in 1928, decades before it was delisted there in 2010. A second listing followed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1930. Its shares now trade on the NASDAQ OMX Nordic Market and over-the-counter markets, and Electrolux is a constituent of the OMX Nordic 40 index.

  In 1923, the company acquired a business called Arctic and began adding absorption refrigerators to its lineup. Food service equipment followed in 1962, widening the company's reach beyond home appliances. In 1957, the company dropped a letter from its name, becoming Electrolux instead of Elektrolux. That small spelling change marked the start of decades of rapid expansion through acquisitions rather than new inventions.

• 4. The Acquisition Machine

  ›

  Between 1960 and 1969, Electrolux bought ElektroHelios, Norwegian Elektra, Danish Atlas, Finnish Slev, Flymo, and other companies in quick succession. In 1968, it sold its American subsidiary to Consolidated Foods and exited the United States market entirely. Electrolux returned in 1974, acquiring Eureka-Williams from National Union, one of the oldest names in the vacuum cleaner industry. It kept selling vacuum cleaners under the Eureka brand name in North America until 2004. Through the 1990s, Electrolux kept buying companies, including, for a time, Husqvarna.

  One president, later chairman of the board, guided this increasingly decentralized structure and drove much of its rapid growth. Cost-cutting and centralizing attempts were made during the 1960s and 1970s, but growth stayed the priority. Company-wide restructuring efforts did not really begin until the late 1990s.

  In North America, a separate vacuum cleaner manufacturer called Aerus used the Electrolux name for years, having been set up to sell Swedish Electrolux products. In 2000, Aerus transferred those trademark rights back to the Electrolux Group and stopped using the Electrolux name by 2004. Meanwhile, vacuums made by Electrolux carried the Eureka brand, a name the company kept using even as it also sold Electrolux branded vacuums after 2000. Electrolux USA's customer service still maintains a database of Electrolux made vacuums and points owners of Electrolux branded Aerus vacuums to the Aerus website.

• 5. Recent Deals

  ›

  Keith McLoughlin became president and CEO on the 1st of January 2011, the company's first non-Swedish chief executive. In August 2011, Electrolux acquired the Chilean appliance manufacturer CTI from Sigdo Koppers. That deal brought several new brands into the fold, including Fensa, Gafa, Mademsa, and Somela.

  On the 6th of February 2017, Electrolux agreed to acquire Anova Applied Electronics, the American maker of the Anova Precision Cooker. On the 23rd of March 2020, Electrolux completed the spin-off of its professional division, which became the separate company Electrolux Professional.

  In September 2023, Electrolux sold its refrigerator manufacturing facility in Nyíregyháza to Qvantum, a heat pump technology company headquartered in Malmö. The sale price was reported at 38 million euros. Decades of dealmaking had reshaped Electrolux into a sprawling collection of factories and brands scattered across continents.

• 6. A World of Brand Names

  ›

  In the Americas, Electrolux sells appliances under names like Frigidaire, Gibson, Tappan, and White-Westinghouse, alongside its own premium Electrolux ICON line. Its Chilean brands, Fensa, Gafa, Mademsa, and Somela, remain widely available across Latin America. The vacuum cleaner brand Eureka, long associated with Electrolux in America, was sold to Midea in 2016. Anova Applied Electronics, maker of the Anova Precision Cooker, also sells under its own name in the region.

  Across Europe, Electrolux owns AEG, Arthur Martin, Faure, and the vacuum brand Progress, among many others. Rex, Zanussi, and Zoppas, all Italian appliance manufacturers, became part of Electrolux in 1984. The Hungarian brand Lehel was acquired in 1991 but has not been used since 1999. Other names include Corberó in Spain, Rosenlew in Finland, Voss in Denmark, and Samus, a cooking stove maker based in Satu Mare, Romania.

  In Australia, Electrolux sells kitchen and laundry appliances under the Westinghouse name and air conditioning and refrigeration under Kelvinator. Two budget-oriented brands, the dishwasher line Dishlex and the laundry brand Simpson, were discontinued in August 2021 and July 2022. In the Middle East, the Israeli brand King is made by Rex, and Olympic Group serves the Egyptian market.

  Other global names include Beam for central vacuums, Dito and Molteni for professional kitchens, and Tricity Bendix. Kenmore, IKEA, and John Lewis all sell Electrolux made appliances, but none of the three own any part of the company. Electrolux only manufactures products for them under contract, a distinction that matters more than the packaging suggests.

• 7. Firsts and Milestones

  ›

  The Lux vacuum, launched in 1919, was the first product Electrolux ever sold. In 1925, the model D became the company's first refrigerator, an absorption model. By 1937, the Electrolux model 30 vacuum had joined the lineup.

  In 1940, the Assistent, Swedish for assistant, became the company's only consumer product introduced during the war, a mixer and food processor. A year later, in 1941, Electrolux developed the Charlton automatic rifle from the Lee-Enfield design. It was built to fill gaps left by shortages of the Bren light machine gun and the Lewis gun in the Home Guard.

  In 1951, the W 20 became Electrolux's first home washing machine, manufactured in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 1959, the D 10 became its first dishwasher, a countertop model nicknamed "round jar." The Electrolux Trilobite, a robotic vacuum cleaner, launched in 2001, decades after the company's first vacuum had started it all.

• 8. Nothing Sucks Like an Electrolux

  ›

  Electrolux's current international slogan is "Shape living for the better," a considerable change from its older line, "Thinking of you." In the 1960s, the company marketed vacuum cleaners in the United Kingdom with a bolder line: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux." Many Americans assumed it was an accidental blunder, since the word sucks already carried an informal, unflattering meaning in the United States. In Britain, though, that same slang meaning was already well known, and Electrolux chose the double entendre on purpose to grab attention.

  In Indonesia, Electrolux ran a different slogan altogether: "Kalau saja semua seawet Electrolux." Translated into English, it reads: "if only all are as durable as Electrolux." Unlike the British wordplay, the Indonesian slogan made no joke at all, promising instead that Electrolux products would simply outlast everything else.