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Shop-Vac was founded by Martin Miller in 1953 under Craft Tool Company of New York. Miller wanted to replace the broom and dust pan in his workshop with a vacuum cleaner capable of collecting wood and metal chips too large for a conventional machine.
Wickes Group plc trading as Wickes is a home improvement retailer and garden centre, based in the United Kingdom with more than 230 stores throughout the country. Its main business is the sale of supplies and materials, for homeowners and the building trade. [ 2 ]
Brothers Henry Dunn Wickes and Edward Noyes Wickes moved to Flint, Michigan, from New York in 1854, becoming involved in the area's lumber industry.The brothers, along with partner H.W. Wood, later established Genesee Iron Works, a foundry and machine shop; after buying out Wood, the business was renamed Wickes Bros. Iron Works and moved to Saginaw, Michigan, to be closer to a source of pig iron.
The jobbing builder market was lost to the new UK Wickes chain. Following poor trading, WH Smith extricated itself from the merger and then Boots sold Do It All to Focus DIY in 1998. The Focus group retained some of the Payless own-brand ranges and successfully bought up Wickes - later selling them at a substantial profit to Travis Perkins. [3]
Early steam-powered vacuum cleaners were mounted in a heavy carriage equipped with a long hose so they could be moved from one location to another, providing a specialized cleaning service by appointment. Stationary-powered vacuum cleaners were built-in and centralized, due to the large and heavy machinery needed to produce the required airflow.
By 2002 the chain had grown to over 450 stores following several buyouts including the Wickes DIY chain. Archer and his partners received over £650 million from the sale of Wickes in 2005. When his core Focus business was in financial difficulty, US private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management bought Focus for £1 in June 2007.
An eccentric rotary vane pump Another eccentric rotary-vane pump design. Note that modern pumps have an area contact between rotor and stator (and not a line contact). 1. pump housing 2. rotor 3. vanes 4. spring. A rotary vane pump is a type of positive-displacement pump that consists of vanes mounted to a rotor that rotates inside a cavity. In ...
Focus DIY, Belper, Derbyshire (2005) Focus DIY, Rawtenstall, Rossendale (2012) Focus was a British do-it-yourself and home improvement retailer, founded in 1987.. The retailer grew by acquiring rival retailers such as Payless, Do It All and Great Mills; by its peak in 2002, it was the second-largest home improvement retailer in the United Kingdom with 178 stores and over 3,000 employees ...