Keymatic In The US?
Several US members in this and other Keymatic posts have commented that Hoover did not sell the Keymatic in the US and Canada. I believe that there are several reasons for this.
Firstly you have to give Hoover the credit for (generally) knowing their market and how to make the most of it. The washer market was already very well catered for by the major players (and indeed by 1961 several of the smaller, earlier manufacturers had either disappeared or were on the way out) and the market was almost entirely top loading washers. As a front loader this would have been very much a niche product, a niche already being very well serviced by the Westinghouse Spacemates which, incidentally, had their own matching tumble dryer. There was no matching dryer for the slant front machines. Aside from the Hoovermatic did Hoover ever manufacture laundry appliances themselves in the US? I know they sold other products, but were these not sourced from other manufacturers? Know your market and how to make the most of it.
Secondly, speaking of Westinghouse, although I believe mechanically different from the earlier Westinghouse slant front models, there are a number of conceptual similarities which might also have prevented their introduction into the US on patent grounds.
Thirdly as Mike noted above, particularly the early models, are mechanically very complex and we know that they were difficult to service in the field - we have heard stories of how Hoover service agents would keep spare machines that they could swop out with faulty machines so that they could be repair back at their own shop. Bad enough in the UK, but could imagine trying to do this all across the US? You might say, well what about the Hoovermatic which sold for many years in the US? This of course was another niche product, but very different in that it was a product cheap to manufacture and easy to maintain - two things that could never be said about the Keymatic which would have been produced in relatively small numbers - I cannot see how a justification could ever have been produced to warrant the financial investment Hoover would have needed to manufacture in the US. If they had been imported into the US there would, most likely, have been import tariffs too although they would probably not have been the same barrier into Canada.
Finally, they would most likely have needed to have made substantial modifications to the machine to sell in the US. Although most machines were hot and cold fill they still conformed pretty much to the European habit of heating the water (at least to some extent) in the early stages of the wash which would most likely necessitate special wiring and, even if they could get over the lack of a heater, timers etc. would have had to be made to run on US voltage. And there was no provision for the use of LCB and other additives so beloved in the USA - in the slant front washers you just chucked the detergent in with the clothes and that was it. And of course they would have taken longer to complete the wash etc.
So, whilst I certainly understand the curiosity value to members here, I think to have tried to sell the Keymatic in the US would have been a nightmare from start to finish and Hoover would not have gone near it.
Al
