Our second largest conference room with direct access to the apple orchard.
When reading about Axel Wenner-Gren, it’s hard not to be struck by how modern he seems. Born in Uddevalla, he studied three languages, worked part-time for relatives, made a few quick profits on stamp trading, and continued his studies in Berlin — more or less what young people do today, except this was over a hundred years ago. And just like today, he wanted a name with a distinctive identity, hence the added hyphen between Wenner and Gren. Wennergren could be anyone. Wenner-Gren, however, there is only one of. Axel was a natural-born salesperson; he learned that during his years in the German branch of Separator where, despite his colleagues’ attempts at cheating, he won every sales competition. He was also the first to spot the business potential in society’s new fascination with hygiene.
In Vienna, he saw a vacuum cleaner in a shop window for the first time, but realized it needed to be much smaller and easier to handle for busy housewives. He had Elektromekaniska AB develop a Swedish version and soon arranged a merger with the newly purchased LUX AB. The success was like a landslide. Electrolux sold more vacuum cleaners than its larger competitors combined.
In less than a decade, Electrolux was established with 10,000 employees, factories in five countries, subsidiaries in 20, and agents in most of the world’s developed markets. And hygiene continued to be a goldmine. After the vacuum cleaner, Wenner-Gren managed to develop a fully functional refrigerator — something many had attempted but none had succeeded with. Today, 40 million customers in 150 countries choose to buy a new household appliance from Electrolux every single year.
