Oreck Corporation

Oreck was asked to take over a failing RCA distributor in New Orleans. It came with the abandoned design for an upright vacuum cleaner by Whirlpool, a business RCA had a shareholding in. However, Whirlpool's largest customer, Sears was concerned the arrangement would compete with them so in 1963, Oreck and his brother Marshall set up Oreck Corporation to independently sell his own vacuum cleaners by mail order. By 1965, the firm was also the exclusive wholesaler for RCA products in Louisiana. His 8 pounds (3.6 kg) appliance was a third the weight of other machines available. Competitors used this to criticize Oreck's vacuum cleaner's effectiveness and durability. Oreck decided to first market to hotels where lightweight would be a selling point.
Over 50,000 hotels worldwide adopted the US manufactured vacuum cleaner, that was light enough to carry between floors, and domestic consumers went on to purchase them, often through the floor care centers Oreck established across the country.
Oreck explained, he had "a good idea, a lot of energy, and no money" but "it took 20 years of hard work to begin to succeed".
The Oreck family sold their vacuum cleaner business to private equity investors in 2003, initially American Securities Capital Partners. Ten years later, following Chapter 11 bankruptcy it was purchased by Techtronic Industries.