Alfred Kärcher SE & Co. KG is a German family-owned company that operates worldwide and is known for its high-pressure cleaners, floor care equipment, parts cleaning systems, wash water treatment, military decontamination equipment and window vacuum cleaners. Headquartered in Winnenden, Germany, it produces both cleaning equipment and full cleaning systems. The company is the world market leader in cleaning technology and employs more than 10,000 people worldwide. In 2017 it posted sales revenues of €2.5 billion and sold more than 13 million machines. Kärcher has 100 subsidiaries in 60 countries.
History
The inventor Alfred Kärcher from Baden-Württemberg founded the company in 1935 in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt. Initially Kärcher specialised in the design of industrial submersible heating elements, i.e. in salt smelters which were heated with immersion heaters. After numerous experiments, a hardening furnace for alloys was produced, the so-called “Kärcher Salt-Bath Furnace”. Some 1,200 units were sold up to 1945. Karcher invented the first modern pressure washer, the DS 350 in 1950. The company’s main focus then switched to cleaning equipment for professional and private users. Since then, Kärcher has made lead in the design and development of pressure washers. The company’s product range was expanded and now covers the entire field of cleaning. Kärcher also offers pumps and watering systems. In 1974 the corporate color was changed from blue to yellow. From that year, under the leadership of Alfred Kärcher’s widow Irene Kärcher, the company launched the HD 555, the first pressure washer for private users. Today the family-owned company, which is based in Winnenden near Stuttgart, is represented in 160 countries with 100 subsidiaries all over the world, selling commercial cleaning equipment as well as cleaning equipment for the private consumer. Kärcher owns the American brands of Landa, Hotsy, and Shark pressure washers, Cuda parts washers, Watermaze water treatment systems, and Windsor Kärcher Group floor cleaning systems, and Italian manufacturing company Hawk Pumps, or Woma Pumps in Germany. They are the primary supplier of cleaning systems to both NATO and the US Military.
Common noun
In some countries such as Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Georgia, Mexico and the United States the term Kärcher is colloquially used synonymously with a pressure washer used to clean cars, outdoor equipment etc. French politician Nicolas Sarkozy once declared that La Courneuve, a banlieue outside of Paris where a boy was killed by a stray gunshot, would be "cleaned out with a Kärcher" — meaning all criminals and other undesirables should be removed and washed out. This comment was highly controversial, as many French associate the banlieues with immigrants, especially North Africans. Sarkozy's use of the word led to it becoming a verb: "to Karcher" or "Karcherize". Presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen told residents of Argenteuil, many of them immigrants, "If some want to Karcherize you, to exclude you, we want to help you get out of these ghettos." As a response, Kärcher France sent a letter to all of the candidates in the 2007 presidential election asking them not to use the company's name this way, and has run ads in newspapers disassociating itself from the remarks.
