Vax UK Ltd is a brand that manufactures electrical goods and cleaning products in the floor-care and air treatment sectors, and which has its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The brand is owned by a company called TTI Co. Ltd Group, which is based in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. Vax UK Ltd has its main headquarters and R&D centre located in the city centre of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

and a service, warehouse and depot operation in the village of

Hampton Lovett Hampton Lovett is a village and civil parish in the Wychavon district of the county of Worcestershire, England. It is just north of Droitwich. The church of St. Mary and All Saints is noted for its Norman features. English Heritage lists the c ...

, near

Droitwich Droitwich Spa (often abbreviated to Droitwich ) is an historic spa town in the Wychavon district in northern Worcestershire, England, on the River Salwarpe. It is located approximately south-west of Birmingham and north-east of Worcester. The ...

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

. Vax branded machines are manufactured in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Vax employs over 400 staff across its Birmingham and Droitwich sites in the UK.

History

Vax UK Ltd was founded in December 1977 by Alan Brazier, who had prior experience in the field of industrial carpet cleaning. Brazier developed a prototype of a machine suitable for a household but capable of washing carpets and handling accident spillages or flooding. In 1979, Vax launched an "orange tub" multi-functional floor-care machine to fulfil this purpose and initially engaged with consumers by door-to-door sales of the device. This product was a world first.

Trademark conflict with DEC and advertising slogan

Although

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

's VAX minicomputer was introduced October 25, 1977 and Vax UK Ltd was formed months later, DEC (for a while) still had a trademark problem. In 1986-87 and some later advertisements, the company adopted the slogan, "Nothing sucks like a Vax!" This echoed its competitor's slogan from the 1960s, "Nothing sucks like Electrolux". Playing on the double meaning of the word "sucks", the slogan "Nothing sucks like a VAX!" was used by critics of the

VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

computer and

complex instruction set computer A complex instruction set computer (CISC ) is a computer architecture in which single instructions can execute several low-level operations (such as a load from memory, an arithmetic operation, and a memory store) or are capable of multi-step o ...

s in general. Vax products were first offered for sale by high-street retailers in 1982, and the 111 Orange Tub model went on to become a top-selling vacuum cleaning product.

James Dyson and beyond

In June 1990 Vax contracted

James Dyson Sir James Dyson (born 2 May 1947) is a British inventor, industrial designer, farmer, and billionaire entrepreneur who founded Dyson Ltd. He is best known as the inventor of the dual cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner, which works on the princi ...

to produce an upright vacuum cleaner aimed at the British market. This deal involved a £75,000 licence. By July 1991, he had left the company to produce this product independently. In July 2010, Dyson attempted to bring legal action against Vax, over its Mach Zen vacuum cleaner, in the High Court for infringement of design patents. However, in 2011 the UK Court of Appeal rejected this claim. In 2011, Student Placement Engineer Jake Tyler developed Vax ev, a working prototype of the world's first cardboard vacuum cleaner. This product was featured across a number of tech and environmental online editorials including ''Gizmag'' and ''

TreeHugger ''TreeHugger'' is a sustainability website that reports on news, and other subjects like eco-friendly design, homes, and gardens. It was rated the top sustainability blog of 2007 by Nielsen Netratings, and was included in Time Magazine's 200 ...

'', and on the BBC Television series '' Bang Goes the Theory''. The cleaner is referenced as a key point in the history of Vacuum Cleaner development by the Best Cordless Vacuum Guide. In 2014 Vax diversified its product range from vacuums, carpet washers and steam cleaners to include pressure washers, air purifiers and de-humidifiers.

References

External links

Official website
{{Techtronic Industries 1977 establishments in England Companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands Electronics companies established in 1977 Vacuum cleaner manufacturers 1999 mergers and acquisitions Home appliance manufacturers of the United Kingdom English brands