David Oreck - Oreck Corporation

In 1963 David Oreck started the Oreck Corporation to sell vacuum cleaners by mail. Here is the story as told on Oreck's website, Oreck.com:

On a cold snowy day in Chicago, carrying the vacuum cleaner under his arm a la Willy Loman, the call came. In New Orleans, the RCA distributor was fighting for last place and winning, and the company wanted to know if he’d be interested in taking it over. "I flew down to New Orleans that day. The sun was out. It was beautiful. I was still in my heavy winter overcoat. I said to myself, 'Wow. I’m missing something here.’”

Oreck had acquired an abandoned design for an upright vacuum cleaner from Whirlpool and a failing RCA distribution facility in New Orleans, Louisiana. The 3.6-kg (8-lb) vacuum cleaner was a third of the weight of other machines available. Competitors, however, used this fact to criticize Oreck's vacuum cleaner's effectiveness and durability. Oreck decided to first market to hotels where lightweight would be a big positive factor. The machines now are used in thousands of hotels worldwide.

Oreck machines are either assembled in the United States with parts manufactured in China or imported fully assembled. The company employs more than 1,500 at its retail stores, corporate headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, and assembly center in Cookeville, Tennessee, to where it moved from Long Beach, Mississippi, in 2007. One such product is the Oreck XL Air 8 Purifier, which featured in an informercial running since 1999.

As Oreck has explained, he had "a good idea, a lot of energy, and no money." Oreck claims it took about 20 years of hard work to begin to achieve a semblance of success, but he was a believer in Winston Churchill's maxim, "Never, never, never give up."

Since 2003 the corporation has been jointly owned by private investment firm American Securities Capital Partners and David's three children.