BISSELL Homecare Inc. Overview

BISSELL Homecare Inc.

Introduction

Located in Walker, Michigan, a suburb of Greater Grand Rapids, Bissell Inc., also known as Bissell Homecare, is a privately held American corporation that manufactures vacuum cleaners and floor care products. With a 20% market share, the company is the largest manufacturer of floor care products in North America.

The company focuses on the manufacturing of cleaning supplies and household vacuum cleaners. The company sells accessories for bare floors, steam mops, sweepers, replacement bags, filters, and upright vacuums. Products from Bissell Homecare are sold all over the world.

Key and Significant Facts.

Founding year: 1876

Company type: Private household cleaning company

Trading type: Bissell is private so it doesn’t trade on the NYSE or NADAQ. 

Workforce strength: 2500

Company’s website: www.bissell.com

History.

Humble beginnings (1876 to 1890s)

Since 1876 the BISSELLs have been said to have a goal of helping to find ways to improve the sanitary of the home. It all started when In order to help keep their crockery shop clean, Melville and Anna Bissell invented the first carpet sweeping machine. In 1876, the machine received a patent under the name Bissell Carpet Sweeper. The first manufacturing facility for Bissell was established in Grand Rapids in 1883. During the period of the 1890s the company had already hit an international status and had started producing up to 1000 sweepers a day.

In 1884 the BISSELL factory suffered a disastrous fire incident.

Melville Bissell passed away in 1889 then his wife Anna took over as company president. From 1889 to 1919, she presided over the business as president, and from 1919 to 1934, she chaired the board.

As the first female CEO of America, Anna Bissell not only made Bissell the largest sweeper company in the world in 1899, but she also looked out for the welfare of her employees. Staff members from that time recalled that Anna refused to be fired even during the Great Depression, choosing instead to reduce work hours or change posts.

1930s till 1990s

The bissell sweepers quickly gained popularity all over the world. Through the organization’s decades of expansion, Anna Bissell served as chairman of the board until her passing in 1934. Her descendants carry on her innovative legacy.

In 1953, Melville Bissell III, a nephew of Melville, Jr., assumed control of the business. This Melville Bissell, unlike his uncle, was adamant that the Bissell name should be associated with more than just mechanical carpet sweepers. He perceived “floor care” and later full-service home care as the company’s primary markets. Bissell was aware that only surface dirt could be removed by the carpet sweeper. BISSELL had continued to avoid conventional vacuum cleaners because they could only brush up dirt in the top quarter inch of a carpet.Wet shampooing would be necessary to give a carpet a deeper clean that reaches the nap of the carpet. He commissioned the creation of a brand-new non-electric device called the Shampoomaster that only utilized water and detergent. Between 1957 and 1967, the Shampoomaster was produced, and during that time, it received more attention than BISSELL’s carpet sweeper.

Mellville decided to try its hand at something else after learning that the company could manage a palace. When the manual carpet shampooer was introduced in 1956, the tedious task of scrubbing carpets on your hands and knees was all but eliminated. The company’s goods started receiving honors a year later. The Shampoo Master received the Bachner Award for Achievement in 1957 for using molded and formed plastics in real-world applications. By the end of the 1960s, the company had become an expert on all surfaces, revolutionizing the cleaning process. A Vac/Floor Scrubber, Dry Powder Rug Shampoo and Applicator, and the Gemini Sweeper, which was the first two-brush sweeper, were all first made available by BISSELL.

The “stick vac,” a portable vacuum that could be handled like a broom, was first offered by BISSELL in 1960. Similar models made by Regina and General Electric vacuum cleaner manufacturers competed with the BISSELL stick vacuum.

In 1985, BISSELL unveiled a three-in-one vacuum cleaner that was designed for use in homes with second-floor staircases and other areas where a heavy vacuum cleaner would be unwieldy and impractical. The company introduced the BISSELL Promax, a new carpet shampooer, in 1992. (later renamed Powerlifter because of a copyright battle with Hoover). The BISSELL Big Green Clean Machine, which had additional attachments and capabilities, was released a year later.

2000s

BHC, which makes Bissell vacuums, was founded in 2004 by Chiaphua Industries of Hong Kong and Bissell. This move expanded BISSELLs reach to the Asian continent.

ForEverGreen is a corporate team that BISSELL established in 2006 to incorporate environmentally friendly practices into every facet of its operations. BISSELL strategies employ a variety of reduce, reuse, and recycle techniques to address its key objectives of resource efficiency in products and operations, responsible use of chemicals and open reporting of product ingredients, and responsible management of waste throughout a product’s lifecycle.

2010s

A new age for the company began as the company stepped into the world of pet care. The “one home for one pet” and pet adoption were the cornerstones of the 2011 establishment of the Bissell Pet Foundation by Cathy Bissell, Mark Bissell’s fourth successor and wife. On behalf of Bissell, she sponsored a number of pet initiatives and competitions and featured TV commercials of new products with pets.

After Chiaphua Industries’ Chiaphua Appliances (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. left China in 2014, Bissell and business tycoon Flex came to an agreement. At the former Chiaphua Industrial Park, Flex continued to produce Bissell vacuums. The city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, erected a statue of Anna Bissell in 2016 to honor her achievements.

A few parties from China paid the Bissell corporate office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a visit in 2017. They anticipated that Bissell, which is a homophone for “doomed victory” in Chinese, would help bring about another Dyson miracle in China. Without accounting for overseas distribution, the company’s overall sales were estimated to have been close to $1 billion.

Acquisitions.

For any company to grow they will need to do some strategic acquisition of either their competitors of a product idea from their competitors. BISSELL was not a stranger to this strategy as the company made a number of acquisitions during the long run of their company. Some of the major acquisitions made are listed here:

• The Ohio-based Wood Shovel and Tool Company was purchased by BISSELL in 1965. More than 300 different garden tools were produced by the company, but all but the snow shovel line were spun off after just three years.
• BISSELL acquired a Swiss electric shaver business in 1970. However, when European currencies were made floatable in 1973, production costs rocketed. In 1971, BISSELL entered the printing business by acquiring the Michigan Tag Company, which was later renamed BISSELL Printed Products. Despite selling all of the company’s assets, BISSELL retained an electric motor technology that was later developed into a headlight wiper motor for BISSELL’s French subsidiary RIAM S.A. BISSELL also purchased a second company, Imperial Business Forms, and two more companies, Atlas Tag & Label and Marion Manufacturing, all of which later became a part of BISSELL Graphics.
• In 1971, Melville III’s cousin John M. Bissell took over as CEO of the business. He disagreed with Melville and thought the business shouldn’t risk losing the market it knew best: floor care. The carpet sweeper, in his opinion, was the hub of that enterprise. Based on that enterprise, BISSELL concentrated its acquisitions on fresh approaches to safeguard and expand its floor care enterprise. In 1974, BISSELL acquired the Penn Champ Company, a producer of fabric shampoo and aerosol cleaners. In an effort to give retailers a full line of BISSELL floor care products, the company created a second token line of vacuum cleaners and, in 1980, revived the idea of carpet shampooing with The Carpet Machine, a straightforward household wet extraction device.
• In 1982, BISSELL purchased the Chicago-based Fred Sammons Company. Sammons, a company that produces self-help tools for people with disabilities, initially catered to institutional markets before launching its new Enrichments line for private consumers. BISSELL established a small network of retail stores with the same name and positioned them in malls to support sales of these products. Sammons products were primarily sold through direct mail catalogs by the early 1990s.

Conclusion

The BISSELL Homecare INC is a result of innovation and hard work. And now the Bissell company flourishes with a workforce strength of 2500 employees and is one of the remaining old timers in the business that still operates as a private corporation.