In August 2019 it will be 100 years since Swedish white-goods giant Electrolux was founded by mythical business mogul Axel Wenner-Gren. The company celebrates this with an anniversary book called “Shape living for the better: The first 100 years of Electrolux”, published by us at Business History Publishing.
Axel Wenner-Gren (1881-1961) was one of Sweden’s great entrepreneurs. He created a company that almost from day one was a global success. He turned the vacuum cleaner and the fridge into products that every household could afford, which revolutionized every day life, not the least for women.
The book “Shape living for the better: The First 100 years of Electrolux” (Business History Publishing, 2019) is written by business journalist and historian Ronald Fagerfjäll. It begins with the early life and successes of Axel Wenner-Gren. He made his fortune with Electrolux and became one of Sweden’s richest people, living a life of grandeur, working on various (more or less imaginative) business project, all the while donating money to research.
After Wenner-Gren’s departure from the company in the 1950s, Electrolux continued to provide homes with new innovations in smart design. Iconic products were the vacuum cleaner “The Loaf”, the bench dish washer “Round Can”, the chargeable vacuum cleaner Ergorapido and the world’s first robotic vacuum cleaner Trilobite. By the end of the 1980s, Electrolux had become the world’s largest white goods manufacturer, after the new leadership under Hans Werthén acquired several competitors.
