Slogan: Makes a Difference
Today, this German company is one of the largest manufacturers of various cleaning equipment used both in everyday life and in various fields of activity. And few people know that she started with the production of heating systems. And it could not be otherwise, because the 23-year-old engineer Alfred Karcher practiced, for the most part, in this direction. For a long time he worked at his father's enterprise, then he decided to try to create his own company. It was in 1935 in the city of Stuttgart (Stuttgart). The first truly successful product was a salt furnace for hardening metals.
In 1939, Alfred sold his patents. With the proceeds, he purchases a piece of land in Winnenden and moves the company there. The city is still headquartered in this city. Karcher.
The Americans helped overcome the post-war crisis by ordering a system for heating the engines and wings of aircraft. When solving this problem Karcher turned out to be top notch. However, the main products in those years were various household items, ranging from small cooking ovens to trailers for tractors.
We can say that in its modern form the company was born in 1950, when the first steam cleaner in Europe was created - the DS 350 model. Success in this field indicated in which direction it makes sense to move on. The assortment begins to expand rapidly, the production of such products as all kinds of electric brooms, vacuum cleaners for dry and wet cleaning, equipment for car washes and much more, one way or another connected with cleaning (all for industrial use). What can I say, in this direction Karcher holds hundreds of patents.
Alfred Karcher died in 1959, having managed to catch the rise of his offspring. His wife also dies almost immediately, leaving the company to their children. And to this day Karcher remains a family business.
In 1984, the first household cleaner, the HD 555, is introduced. Karcher.
Interesting fact:
In Germany and Austria the word "karcher" has become slang and means not only the name of the company, but also the process of washing a car (it means washing using high-pressure cleaning equipment).
In 2005, then-French Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy used a phrase whose general meaning was that the streets of Paris should be cleared of all kinds of criminal elements as cleanly as if they were using Kärcher equipment. The result was unexpected - with a light hand (or tongue) Sarkozy was born even a verb "karcherize", meaning something between a total purge and the expression "to wet in the toilet", which also appeared thanks to a very famous politician. In 2007 the board Karcher turned to Sarkozy (by that time already president), with a request not to use the name of the company in such a context anymore.
