I'm looking forward to doing the Bison presentation in Omaha later this year (I just typed "next year" and realized how time flies!) Fred and Charlie keep telling everyone how I'm going to do a demonstration of the machine. I may get a little stage fright here. It's been over 30 years, and frankly, my association with Bison was not one of my most pleasant memories, though now that has faded. I don't know that I'd remember how to do the demo, especially without the demo flip chart. (Anyone have one of those???) But I'll be more than delighted to share my Bison reminiscences.
The Bison was more successful than several other knock-off companies, Bison being a knock off of Kirby, made by a former Kirby distributor who thought he could build a better machine, but more importantly build a profitable organization. They primarily attracted former Kirby people who blamed the Kirby Co for their failure to move upward in that organization. I was with them only from 1973 until 1975. The people they attracted were generally of very low caliber - they had a Divisional Supervisor who could not read or write - he had another goon to accompany him to do his reading and writing. The machine was so unreliable it would frequently break down during the sales demonstration in the customers' homes. I do not believe there were any lawsuits from Kirby - Kirby never needed to consider Bison any serious competition. They sold few machines compared to Kirby, and never built a large organization. They also never solved the reliablility problems revolving around the carpet cleaning head. They simply went out of business in the early 1980's
