Duracraft was founded in the late 1980s by Tim Chen, Bernard Chiu and Ronald Izen in

Southborough, Massachusetts Southborough is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. It incorporates the villages of Cordaville, Fayville, and Southville. Its name is often informally shortened to Southboro, a usage seen on many area signs and maps, though ...

. Duracraft manufactured home appliances such as fans, humidifiers,

dehumidifiers A dehumidifier is an air conditioning device which reduces and maintains the level of humidity in the air. This is done usually for health or thermal comfort reasons, or to eliminate musty odor and to prevent the growth of mildew by extracting ...

and

air conditioners Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, China, and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...

. they were famous for selling desk pedestal and window fans

History

Early sales of Duracraft were through

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began ...

, Eckerds, and

Kmart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inco ...

. Today Duracraft products are sold online as well as through

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

and

CVS Pharmacy CVS Pharmacy, Inc. is an American retail corporation. A subsidiary of CVS Health, it is headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. It was also known as, and originally named, the Consumer Value Store and was founded in Lowell, Massachusetts, in ...

, and many parts are sold online. In 1993, Duracraft had an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

. The company received recognition from numerous organizations, including Fortune. In 1996,

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

approached Duracraft with an unsolicited offer. Duracraft was sold to Honeywell for US$283 million. In 2002, Kaz Incorporated (privately held) acquired Honeywell's Home Environment business for an undisclosed sum. This acquisition added

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...

-based manufacturing capabilities that fueled the company's ability to enter new markets competitively. In 2011, Kaz became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Helen of Troy Company, for $260 million in cash.Drug Store News
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References

Boston Globe ArticleBernard Chiu Bio from First Act

External links

Honeywell ProductsKaz Products
Companies based in Worcester County, Massachusetts Southborough, Massachusetts Boat builders {{US-manufacturing-company-stub