The Secret Power of a Hoover Vac

Call it a clean sweep for the law of supply and demand.

In England and Ireland, where there are many competing brands of vacuum cleaners, Hoover Ltd. decided to stimulate sales last winter by offering free airplane tickets with each purchase (View, April 9). More than 200,000 people bought appliances. The company, which had badly underestimated demand, suffered a loss of $48.8 million.

In the former Soviet Union, on the other hand, where consumer goods are scarce and inflation is rampant, Hoovers are also in demand--as a substitute for a paycheck in rubles, according to Wolf Mathiesen, export manager for Maytag International.

This year, Hoover’s parent company arranged to supply 10,000 Hoovers to workers in a country where the only vacuums on the market are Asian or East European models.

The equivalent U.S. model of the basic canister vacuum has a suggested retail price of $139, but is often discounted to about $100. The price in rubles is unknown. Such an appliance represents a major expense for a Russian today.

But oil workers in Siberia and in the republic of Kazakhstan who are due to receive the machines probably will use them as barter for necessary goods, Mathiesen says, demonstrating that the machines’ trading power is more important than their cleaning ability.