Vacuum Cleaner
Bio Statement |
The industry agreed to move forward on development of the tag at a subsequent meeting in April of 1990, and Hoover did not pursue the issue further. Then in September of last year, with amperage escalating on upright cleaners, Hoover withdrew its support of the fact tag and created one of the most controversial schisms in the industry. Hoover's contention was that the industry was not going to abide by the spirit of the fact tag--to replace amperage with a more meaningful rating system. In a bold move, Girdlestone pulled amperage ratings off of all Hoover products and developed hang tags which rated cleaners on the Cleaning Effectiveness (C.E.) standard developed by the ASTM. Girdlestone also launched a controversial trade advertising campaign that challenged various brand names to be tested against Hoover cleaners on C.E. Hoover's bold posture and attacking ad campaign set the rest of the industry talking. Competitors said Hoover wanted to eliminate amps to compete on brand alone--a war Hoover could easily win. Competitors were also critical of Girdlestone and Hoover not so much for the stand against amps, but for the aggressive assaults on companies that rate vacuums by amperage alone. Retailers, aware that Hoover's motives might not be altruistic but also cognizant that amps are not accurate, challenged the company to come up with a fair way of comparing vacuums. The result is the company's new cleaning effectiveness/amp rating system. THE NUMBERS GAME The system uses the ASTM F60889 carpet embedded-dirt removal and effectiveness test and compares it to amps. Dirt removed is expressed by a percentage compared to a geometric mean of 29 (an average of four different types of ASTM carpet tests) then the percentage is divided by name-plate amps on the individual cleaner. "True features and performance have become secondary. That is why we decided to create a new number based on both amperage and efficiency." While the system might sound complex, it is actually quite simple. For example: If a 7.0 amp cleaner scores a geometric mean of 32 on the four different ASTM carpet tests, then it performs 110 percent better than the geometric mean of 29. The expressed percentage (110 percent) is then divided by energy used (7.0 amps) and the cleaner has an cleaning effectiveness/amp rating of approximately 15.7. What makes the system interesting are the resulting numbers, which just happen to tumble out at levels the consumer might easily associate with (and compare to) amp ratings on other models on the sales floor. While many upright cleaners rated by amps are in the double digits, none can be rated higher than 12 amps. With the new cleaning effectiveness/amp rating system, numbers of 16.5 or higher are very easily possible. Indeed, most if not all of Hoover's upright models rate higher than 15.0 on the new scale. While it would seem that Hoover has designed a system that allows a consumer to make a very easy transition between amperage and cleaning effectiveness/amps, Hoover officials deny they had this in mind when designing the system. "New tags on all our cleaners will carry this rating, but we are also including the unit's amperage rating on the tag," added Girdlestone. "I will tell you one thing, the cleaning effectiveness/amp rating is a lot more meaningful than amps alone. "There are a couple of competitive models out there that will do very well on this new system," he added. "We only want a fair fight for the industry and meaningful numbers of consumers." Indeed, retailers believe the way the numbers tumble out will actually help the system to become adopted by the entire industry. "Naturally, we'll have to see how the customer responds to it," said the mass merchant buyer. "But the numbers being slightly higher than 12 will help the consumer make the transition from amps and will also force other manufacturers to follow suit because they can't go higher than 12." "The guys [vendors] with the good products don't have worry," the buyer added. "Some of the other guys will." Source article: Sears to start market-tests of national-brand vacuums |