will the real electrolux please stand up part 1
hi everybody ,
i remember that issue of the electrolux news . really cool to see the pic/article again ...thanks !!
i have lots of stories but i do not want anyones ears to bleed so to speak ...
electrolux unlike many companies, especially these days , seemed to encourage a family relationship including blood kin . that went from field sales to the factory in old greenwich to the home office !!
generations of families have passed through electrolux's doors . i can only speak for my fathers time as obviously that's what i know most about .
lux [ ok to keep the name short for types sake ?] in my fathers day at the sales and executive helm [ mid 60's - mid 80's give or take] ] blasted the competition . in fact during the jubilee/silverado models , lux yearly sold more cleaners in the us then all other competition combined including store purchased cleaners!!!!
back to clarify what i remember on the wet/dry ... it was originally a commercial tub cleaner [ the cb ] with a modified head motor unit . they had issues with that modification and ultimately came out with a true to itself unique wet/dry model for a short short time . why it bombed i do not remember but i could ask one of my brothers who was in a unique service program with lux for some years .
back to speaking of family orientated lux was. many people in the biz had siblings and beyond commence to work with the company.
in my immediate family alone there were 6 of us at one time or another worked in the factory , home office , sales , service etc !
i started working at the home office in the mailroom after classes at school when i was 16 . also attempting to sell door to door at 17 for lux and also for fuller brush which was a division of ours at the time . then after hs at 17 still i went on the road with the electrolux museum van .
this museum van was the coolest job a kid or anyone could have . you got paid to drive and see the country . the van was a superior 28 or 29 foot [ like winnebago ] . it was decked out inside with walls full of all types and makes of old cleaners from manual pump suckers to early electric tubs . then there was a wall showing the evolution of the lux from the model 5 to the model 1205 or jubilee [ i cannot remember ].
so what i did was take this to anytown usa and have the local sales branch set me up at a mall , strip mall , downtown shopping area on main street , fairs or anywhere there was lots of shopping and people .
i would setup shop and local sales and or branch manager would be on hand to get sales leads that either i developed during my little tour and speech on the history of the vac or that the salesperson made bending the ear of whomever they could while the unsuspecting visitor made their way out of the van tour [ lol ! ]
really though it was not high pressure sales at all and i felt most everybody who went through it thought it was an interesting little spin of history and if nothing else quite a unique idea .
now being still a kid at the time i naturally had to have a cb radio and the best cassette deck available in the van for those long lonely drives from town to town or when on very rare occasion some sales branch would stick me in a super mall 3 miles out on the edge of a parking lot so vast you could barely see the mall itself and where no one had parked since the pavers lined the parking spots !! and when the temp was about 100 in the shade..... well then , take off the jacket and tie and crank up the rock and roll . even then some die hard would come all the way out and i would have to scramble to look presentable but by then they would have heard the music from afar and comment like " wow procol harum and electrolux far out "
or "do the beach boys really get paid to endorse electrolux ?" lol !
here are the states i worked the van in, so in case any of you ever been in the van it very well may have been me who gave you your guided tour : va , de , wash d.c , md , fl , la , ga , part of al and ms , part of ca .
where the van is today or where the old cleaners are is anybodys guess.
the van did not last too much longer after my stint . one of the home offices sons took over from me in ca . when i "quit" [ what a knucklhead i was] the van job . then not long afterwards they took the van off the road if i remember correctly .
well gotta run . hope this stuff is not boring to you . someone said they were starved for lux info so i did not know where to start from .
and as for the other person who thought i might have or have access to old lux machines . i do not .
i did have lots of rare stuff when i was on the road in sales and had a branch myself but that is a story for another day .
i will say i at one time or another did have virtually everything lux ever made in the states . model 10 , 11 you name it . i could have had a model 5 a couple of times around but at that point i was not collecting and had either trashed or given most all my collection away . i know one of my brothers has or had up till recently a rare chrome b7 [ similar to a b8 but with a t bar handle and was a stripper buffer machine only ] someone correct me if i am wrong as i forget if that was called a b7 or something else .
