Hoover Licensing

[constellation86]

I was surfing the web and came across this Constellation made by Fisher & Paykel Ltd.
Was this very common for other companies to build vacuums for Hoover? I know that they do now, but what about the good old days?

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Antiques-collectables/Art-deco-retro/Appliances/auction-85235226.htm

 

[74simon]

How interesting!

I've seen non-vacuums made by other companies with Hoover branding (mixers, cooker hoods and shavers in the UK; an washer/dryer combo from the USA), but never a Hoover cleaner made by someone else!

I guess New Zealand wasn't big enough to have a Hoover plant of its own, but I wonder why they just didn't ship them from Australia instead.

It's quite a hybrid - that colour and floor tool were used on early 1970s European Connies, but we never had tilted ones over here, or ones with the tool caddy.

Well spotted! I'm hoping someone turns up African or Asian market Hoovers too eventually - the variations between countries are very interesting.

 

[petek]

They probably didn't ship them from Australia for political Kiwi job protection reasons so they had F&P manufacture them under license.
This is a very common scenario in Canada for the last century. Our small population isn't large enough to support our own manufacturing and be slammed by an onslaught of giant US companies. So various excise taxes and duties were put in place to make US imports unattractive unless the US company built a plant in Canada or licensed a Canadian manufacturer to build some of their product here for the Canadian market.
Hoover and Electrolux built plants, Eureka and quite a few others had their Canadian machines built by licensee's in Canada. Also, during the 1900's, if a US company had some of their products "made in Canada" those labelled products would be exempt or pay less of the punishing import duties/taxes that other British Commonwealth countries imposed on US made goods in order to protect their own manufacturing bases.

 

[74simon]

That makes sense, Petek,

and also goes some way to explaining why my 1932 750 was built in Canada - I thought it was just so that it could be 'Empire Built' as the badge says, and hadn't thought about any financial reason behind it.

 

[ozhoover]

Here's the Australian made Connie in the same colour from 1971 the 864D which was the budget Connie in the line up with the Super Constellation in orange and white with tool caddy at the top of the range.

Mark