In the UK, Ireland and Australia the term “hoover” has long been synonymous with “vacuum cleaner” and generally the verb “to vacuum” referring to the Hoover Company’s dominance there during the early 20th century. Despite Hoover’s no longer being the top seller of vacuum cleaners in the UK, the term “hoover” has remained as a common phrase to describe the chore of vacuuming our homes.

How could a brand name of a product used to suck up dirt from the floors of our homes become so embedded in our culture, become part of our language (and even distort our language) and become so synonymous with a process we all dislike so much – vacuuming – sorry, hoovering!

Well, through need in the first instance, as is the case with most inventions, when in 1908 an asthmatic store janitor and occasional inventor by the name James Murray Spangler, invented the first upright vacuum cleaner to help minimize the impact of the dust on his asthmatic condition and speed-up the task of cleaning the department shop floor.

Once the vacuum cleaner had a name – “hoover” – the rest is history.

But it’s not quite so simple and easy though as just inventing something which helps us humans save time and makes life easier. Any inventor can’t simply revel in their glory of a great invention if they wish to make a business success of their invention and in the early days Hoover vacuum cleaners were given away free to American housewives in order to generate awareness of what a life changing contraption the hoover was in the early 1900’s and still is today – a must have household appliance. But please remember that the Hoover Company didn’t have the luxury of social media and the internet to generate awareness through what modern marketing teams take for granted today.

So… is STRUMIS a Hoover?

Obviously not, STRUMIS is a Management Information System software program for steel fabricators – definitely not a vacuum cleaner but there are some similarities in evolution of product origin, product quality and brand name recognition.

I have had the privilege of working with the STRUMIS program for over 28 years, 13 years as an end user and 15 years working for STRUMIS Ltd. I had the same experience as the American housewives to some extent, by adopting STRUMIS in my last steel fabrication business I worked for – we saved hundreds if not thousands of hours in time. We had a need for improvement in all departments in our business – STRUMIS provided the answer to our needs. The needs of the modern steel fabricators are many – from traceability to reducing man hours to saving cash on material and consumables to improving efficiencies to presenting a modern and forward thinking approach to technology to making our lives easier and ultimately improving profitability.

STRUMIS has evolved in much the same way as the vacuum cleaner, progressively improving to meet the demands of our clients and the steel fabrication industry in general. STRUMIS has gone through three iterations of re-development from DOS in the late 80’s through FoxPro in the 90’s to .NET in 2006 and this constant evolution coupled with extensive marketing, referrals, positive customer experiences, ease of use, comprehensive feature list and dedication and direction from the business directors has propelled STRUMIS on to the global stage in over 57 countries in less than 15 years!

How?

Brand recognition & quality.

We as humans often demonstrate a “loyalty to brand”. We fall in love with our gadgets, our cars, our televisions, our phones. We are driven to stay loyal to a brand which has helped our need, has made our life easier and more rewarding. But brand names don’t survive without quality of product, quality of service, evolution and progressive development of features.

Is the STRUMIS brand name so synonymous with helping the needs of steel fabricators across the world to the same level hoover vacuums helping us clean our floors? Perhaps not quite but the global spread of awareness and appreciation is spreading at an alarmingly pleasing speed and the more end users who experience the same benefit of using STRUMIS as I did is very satisfying to see.

So, again and finally, is STRUMIS a hoover? No, probably more like a Dyson would be my best analogy as the Top Seller today.

For more information on how STRUMIS can help with your steel fabrication needs visit www.strumis.com