Reclaiming a category through engineering and design
Hoover, a market veteran in the design and manufacturing of vacuum, steam, and specialty cleaners, began business in 1908 with the design of the 1st ever portable upright vacuum cleaner. After more than 100 years in business, Hoover was experiencing erosion of its share in the floor care industry by the entry and growth of foreign-manufactured products. Hoover came to Design Central to re-develop their series of wet/dry hard floor cleaner products to re-establish itself in the expanding market.
Client
- Hoover - TTI
Industry
- Consumer
Capabilities
- Product Design
- Engineering
- Prototyping
Re-establishing an icon
Design Central’s innovative and collaborative team used marketing goals as a guide for development to ensure the units would both meet consumer requirements and maintain the quality standards synonymous with the Hoover brand in order to benefit both consumer and corporate stakeholders. With the development of the Hoover Floor Mate series, Design Central’s future-focused product designers and systems engineering experts worked to help Hoover reestablish its position in the floor care category.
Engineering a quality brand
Design Central engineers developed three separate SKU’s, each with differentiating features, such as a fold-down handle for storage and accessories like scrubbers for tile floors and grout. The units would be beltless, lightweight and easy to clean with nearly 400 separately modeled parts in total. Each unit required air, wet and mechanical systems development, breadboard and working prototype development, regulatory testing and tool-ready files for manufacturing. Our developers conducted tooling reviews with manufacturers for each unit to optimize the designs for quality, function, manufacture and cost reduction.