Hotpoint
Encyclopedia
The Hotpoint Electric Heating Company (generally known simply as Hotpoint) is a British brand of domestic appliance
s. The brand is currently fully owned by Italy's Indesit
.
There is also a Hotpoint brand in North America
owned by General Electric
, which manufactures similar appliances but is now unrelated to Hotpoint in Europe. From 1989-2008, Hotpoint in the UK was 50% owned by GE of the USA.
(moving to Britain in 1920), and they are well-known for their refrigerators and washing machine
s. The company, including Creda and Indesit, produces the largest amount of kitchen appliances in the UK. The headquarters was in Woodston, Peterborough with about 1,500 people based there making fridges and freezers. The fridge plant closed in 2008.
Hotpoint is the market leader for domestic appliances in the UK
The Hotpoint Electric Heating Company (generally known simply as Hotpoint) is a British brand of domestic appliance
s. The brand is currently fully owned by Italy's Indesit
.
There is also a Hotpoint brand in North America
owned by General Electric
, which manufactures similar appliances but is now unrelated to Hotpoint in Europe. From 1989-2008, Hotpoint in the UK was 50% owned by GE of the USA.
(moving to Britain in 1920), and they are well-known for their refrigerators and washing machine
s. The company, including Creda and Indesit, produces the largest amount of kitchen appliances in the UK. The headquarters was in Woodston, Peterborough with about 1,500 people based there making fridges and freezers. The fridge plant closed in 2008.
Hotpoint is the market leader for domestic appliances in the UK
The Hotpoint Electric Heating Company (generally known simply as Hotpoint) is a British brand of domestic appliance
s. The brand is currently fully owned by Italy's Indesit
.
There is also a Hotpoint brand in North America
owned by General Electric
, which manufactures similar appliances but is now unrelated to Hotpoint in Europe. From 1989-2008, Hotpoint in the UK was 50% owned by GE of the USA.
(moving to Britain in 1920), and they are well-known for their refrigerators and washing machine
s. The company, including Creda and Indesit, produces the largest amount of kitchen appliances in the UK. The headquarters was in Woodston, Peterborough with about 1,500 people based there making fridges and freezers. The fridge plant closed in 2008.
Hotpoint is the market leader for domestic appliances in the UK, and was for many years (until 2001) the only British-owned manufacturer of white goods.
of 1905, invented by the American (Wisconsin
) Earl Richardson (1871-1934) having formed his Pacific Electric Heating Company at Ontario, California
in 1906. It was known as the Hotpoint iron, with its hottest point at the front and not the centre. In 1912 the company began making electric irons, and electric cooker
s in 1919 in the USA. Earl Richardson also invented the first iron that switched automatically when a maximum temperature was reached.
It is claimed to have developed one of the earliest electric toasters in 1908, known as the El Tosto, and later under GE and the Hotpoint brand name became one of the most popular brands of toaster in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s. Richardson founded his own settlement, Adelanto, California
, in 1915.
In 1918 the company, known as the Hotpoint Electric Heating Company from 1912, merged with the Heating Device Section of General Electric
, becoming the Edison Electric Appliance Company, later just a division of GE in 1927 when it bought the factory and entire company. It became known as the Edison General Electric Company in 1931.
, forming the Hotpoint Electric Appliance Company Limited (HEAC) to market GE (USA) branded goods in the UK. HEAC was already an American company.
It was famous for its all-white products, and hence the generic product name white goods.
(AEI) group and became a part of The General Electric Company or GEC group (not to be confused with General Electric) in 1967. By the 1960s it was the UK market leader, followed by Sweden's Electrolux
.
Hotpoint continued as a subsidiary of GEC until 1989, when it was merged into a new division of GEC called General Domestic Appliances (GDA), 50% of which was purchased by General Electric (USA), with whom it owned the joint venture. Around the same time Whirlpool Corporation (since 2006 the largest maker of white goods in the world) of the USA took a 53% stake in a joint venture with the white goods division of Holland's Philips
, later buying it outright in 1991. In 1998, the Redring and Xpelair brands also joined GDA, and Hotpoint was categorised as part of GDA Applied Energy.
that makes tumble dryers, now owned by Indesit. Most machines are now made in Italy as opposed to the UK. They made washing machines at a plant in Bodelwyddan
, in Denbighshire
, North Wales
, UK. The site made around 800,000 washing machines in 2007 with about 1,000 employees. Their fridges are made in Turkey. It has a distribution centre at Raunds
.
, Stoke-on-Trent
closed in December 2007 and the closure of the manufacturing facilities at Peterborough followed in late 2008. The company had a site in Llandudno Junction
near Conwy
which is now the north Wales base of the Welsh Assembly
.
at Louisville, Kentucky
.
is currently starring in their 2010 Campaign for Cooking Confidence. In 2009 it worked with Kelly Hoppen
to produce its interior design
Hot Style campaign. The company has also worked in conjunction with the P&G detergent brand Ariel
.
In 2002 it had a 23% share of the white goods
market in the UK.
Major appliance
A major appliance, or domestic appliance, is usually defined as a large machine which accomplishes some routine housekeeping task, which includes purposes such as cooking, or food preservation, whether in a household, institutional, commercial or industrial setting...
s. The brand is currently fully owned by Italy's Indesit
Indesit
Indesit Company, an Italian multinational company based in Fabriano, Ancona province, Italy, a leading appliance manufacturer in Europe.- History :...
.
There is also a Hotpoint brand in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
owned by General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, which manufactures similar appliances but is now unrelated to Hotpoint in Europe. From 1989-2008, Hotpoint in the UK was 50% owned by GE of the USA.
Product range
Hotpoint was formed in 1911 in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
(moving to Britain in 1920), and they are well-known for their refrigerators and washing machine
Washing machine
A washing machine is a machine designed to wash laundry, such as clothing, towels and sheets...
s. The company, including Creda and Indesit, produces the largest amount of kitchen appliances in the UK. The headquarters was in Woodston, Peterborough with about 1,500 people based there making fridges and freezers. The fridge plant closed in 2008.
Hotpoint is the market leader for domestic appliances in the UK
The Hotpoint Electric Heating Company (generally known simply as Hotpoint) is a British brand of domestic appliance
Major appliance
A major appliance, or domestic appliance, is usually defined as a large machine which accomplishes some routine housekeeping task, which includes purposes such as cooking, or food preservation, whether in a household, institutional, commercial or industrial setting...
s. The brand is currently fully owned by Italy's Indesit
Indesit
Indesit Company, an Italian multinational company based in Fabriano, Ancona province, Italy, a leading appliance manufacturer in Europe.- History :...
.
There is also a Hotpoint brand in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
owned by General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, which manufactures similar appliances but is now unrelated to Hotpoint in Europe. From 1989-2008, Hotpoint in the UK was 50% owned by GE of the USA.
Product range
Hotpoint was formed in 1911 in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
(moving to Britain in 1920), and they are well-known for their refrigerators and washing machine
Washing machine
A washing machine is a machine designed to wash laundry, such as clothing, towels and sheets...
s. The company, including Creda and Indesit, produces the largest amount of kitchen appliances in the UK. The headquarters was in Woodston, Peterborough with about 1,500 people based there making fridges and freezers. The fridge plant closed in 2008.
Hotpoint is the market leader for domestic appliances in the UK
The Hotpoint Electric Heating Company (generally known simply as Hotpoint) is a British brand of domestic appliance
Major appliance
A major appliance, or domestic appliance, is usually defined as a large machine which accomplishes some routine housekeeping task, which includes purposes such as cooking, or food preservation, whether in a household, institutional, commercial or industrial setting...
s. The brand is currently fully owned by Italy's Indesit
Indesit
Indesit Company, an Italian multinational company based in Fabriano, Ancona province, Italy, a leading appliance manufacturer in Europe.- History :...
.
There is also a Hotpoint brand in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
owned by General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, which manufactures similar appliances but is now unrelated to Hotpoint in Europe. From 1989-2008, Hotpoint in the UK was 50% owned by GE of the USA.
Product range
Hotpoint was formed in 1911 in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
(moving to Britain in 1920), and they are well-known for their refrigerators and washing machine
Washing machine
A washing machine is a machine designed to wash laundry, such as clothing, towels and sheets...
s. The company, including Creda and Indesit, produces the largest amount of kitchen appliances in the UK. The headquarters was in Woodston, Peterborough with about 1,500 people based there making fridges and freezers. The fridge plant closed in 2008.
Hotpoint is the market leader for domestic appliances in the UK, and was for many years (until 2001) the only British-owned manufacturer of white goods.
Formation in California
Hotpoint was founded in 1911. The name of the company comes from the hot point of the revolutionary first electric ironIron (appliance)
A clothes iron, also referred to as simply an iron, is a small appliance used in ironing to remove wrinkles from fabric.Ironing works by loosening the ties between the long chains of molecules that exist in polymer fiber materials. With the heat and the weight of the ironing plate, the fibers are...
of 1905, invented by the American (Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
) Earl Richardson (1871-1934) having formed his Pacific Electric Heating Company at Ontario, California
Ontario, California
Ontario is a city located in San Bernardino County, California, United States, 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Located in the western part of the Inland Empire region, it lies just east of the Los Angeles county line and is part of the Greater Los Angeles Area...
in 1906. It was known as the Hotpoint iron, with its hottest point at the front and not the centre. In 1912 the company began making electric irons, and electric cooker
Electric cooker
An electric cooker is an electric powered cooking device for heating and cooking of food.an electric cooker often has four stoves and one or two ovens. there will be knobs to determine the temperature of the ovens and stoves. Unlike gas stoves that are powered by gas it is powered by electricity....
s in 1919 in the USA. Earl Richardson also invented the first iron that switched automatically when a maximum temperature was reached.
It is claimed to have developed one of the earliest electric toasters in 1908, known as the El Tosto, and later under GE and the Hotpoint brand name became one of the most popular brands of toaster in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s. Richardson founded his own settlement, Adelanto, California
Adelanto, California
Adelanto is a city in San Bernardino County, California about northwest of Victorville. The population was 31,765 at the 2010 census, up from 18,130 at the 2000 census.-Name:...
, in 1915.
In 1918 the company, known as the Hotpoint Electric Heating Company from 1912, merged with the Heating Device Section of General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, becoming the Edison Electric Appliance Company, later just a division of GE in 1927 when it bought the factory and entire company. It became known as the Edison General Electric Company in 1931.
UK market
In 1920 it established a joint venture with US competitor General ElectricGeneral Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, forming the Hotpoint Electric Appliance Company Limited (HEAC) to market GE (USA) branded goods in the UK. HEAC was already an American company.
It was famous for its all-white products, and hence the generic product name white goods.
GEC
In 1929, HEAC joined the Associated Electrical IndustriesAssociated Electrical Industries
Associated Electrical Industries was a British holding company formed in 1928 through the merger of the British Thomson-Houston Company and Metropolitan-Vickers electrical engineering companies...
(AEI) group and became a part of The General Electric Company or GEC group (not to be confused with General Electric) in 1967. By the 1960s it was the UK market leader, followed by Sweden's Electrolux
Electrolux
The Electrolux Group is a Swedish appliance maker.As of 2010 the 2nd largest home appliance manufacturer in the world after Whirlpool, its products sell under a variety of brand names including its own and are primarily major appliances and vacuum cleaners...
.
Hotpoint continued as a subsidiary of GEC until 1989, when it was merged into a new division of GEC called General Domestic Appliances (GDA), 50% of which was purchased by General Electric (USA), with whom it owned the joint venture. Around the same time Whirlpool Corporation (since 2006 the largest maker of white goods in the world) of the USA took a 53% stake in a joint venture with the white goods division of Holland's Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
, later buying it outright in 1991. In 1998, the Redring and Xpelair brands also joined GDA, and Hotpoint was categorised as part of GDA Applied Energy.
Indesit
GEC was eventually transformed into Marconi plc, from which Indesit (then called Merloni Elettrodomestici) bought 50% of GDA (Hotpoint and Creda) on 21 December 2001 for £121m. At this point, Hotpoint employed around 7,000 people at its four UK sites. Indesit UK has been based at Peterborough since 1 June 2003. At the beginning of 2007, Indesit completely took over Hotpoint and merged it into its own historic brand Ariston, creating a single entity known as Hotpoint-Ariston. In 2008, the Indesit Company acquired the final quota of shares from General Electric for US$ 57,120,000.Manufacturing sites
There is a plant in YateYate
Yate is a town in South Gloucestershire, England, at the southwest extremity of the Cotswold Hills, 12 miles northeast of the city of Bristol. At the 2001 census the population was 21,789. The town of Chipping Sodbury is continuous with Yate to the east...
that makes tumble dryers, now owned by Indesit. Most machines are now made in Italy as opposed to the UK. They made washing machines at a plant in Bodelwyddan
Bodelwyddan
Bodelwyddan is a village and community in Denbighshire, Wales now bypassed by the A55 road. It has a population of 2,106. The village lies east of Abergele, south of Rhyl, and north west of Ruthin....
, in Denbighshire
Denbighshire
Denbighshire is a county in north-east Wales. It is named after the historic county of Denbighshire, but has substantially different borders. Denbighshire has the distinction of being the oldest inhabited part of Wales. Pontnewydd Palaeolithic site has remains of Neanderthals from 225,000 years...
, North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
, UK. The site made around 800,000 washing machines in 2007 with about 1,000 employees. Their fridges are made in Turkey. It has a distribution centre at Raunds
Raunds
Raunds is a small market town in rural Northamptonshire, England. It has a population of 8,275 , is a civil parish, and is part of the East Northamptonshire district.- Geography :Raunds is situated 21 miles north-east of Northampton...
.
Site closures
Indesit UK's (former GDA) Creda plant in Blythe BridgeBlythe Bridge
Blythe Bridge is a village situated in the Staffordshire Moorlands District, although it is effectively a south-eastern suburb of the city of Stoke-on-Trent.-Etymology:...
, Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
closed in December 2007 and the closure of the manufacturing facilities at Peterborough followed in late 2008. The company had a site in Llandudno Junction
Llandudno Junction
Llandudno Junction , once known as Tremarl, is a small town in the county borough of Conwy, Wales. It is part of the ancient parish of Llangystennin, and it is located south of Llandudno. It adjoins Deganwy and is to the east of the walled town of Conwy, which is on the opposite side of the River...
near Conwy
Conwy
Conwy is a walled market town and community in Conwy County Borough on the north coast of Wales. The town, which faces Deganwy across the River Conwy, formerly lay in Gwynedd and prior to that in Caernarfonshire. Conwy has a population of 14,208...
which is now the north Wales base of the Welsh Assembly
National Assembly for Wales
The National Assembly for Wales is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in Wales. The Assembly comprises 60 members, who are known as Assembly Members, or AMs...
.
USA
In the USA, Hotpoint branded products are made by GE Consumer & IndustrialGE Consumer & Industrial
GE Consumer & Industrial is a subsidiary of General Electric headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky at Appliance Park. GE Consumer & Industrial is one of the largest suppliers of appliances in the world. It was created in January 2004 when GE Consumer Products merged with GE Industrial Systems...
at Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
.
Marketing
The Holby City actress Lisa FaulknerLisa Faulkner
Lisa Tamsin Faulkner is an English actress and television personality.-Early life:Faulkner was educated at Tiffin Girls' School, Kingston upon Thames.When Faulkner was 16, her mother, Julie, died of cancer...
is currently starring in their 2010 Campaign for Cooking Confidence. In 2009 it worked with Kelly Hoppen
Kelly Hoppen
Kelly Elaine Hoppen MBE is a South African-born British interior designer and owner of Kelly Hoppen Interiors.-Career:Hoppen began her career at the age of 17. Her first restaurant design was the Gary Rhodes restaurant Rhodes W1. She went on to design apartments for a number of celebrities...
to produce its interior design
Interior design
Interior design describes a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an effective setting for the range of human activities are to take place there. An interior designer is someone who conducts such projects...
Hot Style campaign. The company has also worked in conjunction with the P&G detergent brand Ariel
Ariel (laundry)
Ariel is a marketing line of laundry detergents made by Procter & Gamble. It is the flagship brand in Procter & Gamble's European, Mexican, Japanese, Brazilian, Peruvian, Turkish, Filipino, Colombian and Venezuelan portfolios. In some U.S. stores, Mexican Ariel is available.Ariel first appeared on...
.
In 2002 it had a 23% share of the white goods
Major appliance
A major appliance, or domestic appliance, is usually defined as a large machine which accomplishes some routine housekeeping task, which includes purposes such as cooking, or food preservation, whether in a household, institutional, commercial or industrial setting...
market in the UK.
News items
- Closing Peterborough fridge plant in May 2008
- Welsh factory in December 2007
- Girl dies in Hotpoint tumble drier in June 2005