Air Cleaners Could Capture New Revenue
Nicholas Garzon has such trouble with asthma and allergies that the 13-year-old’s mother gave him an over-the-counter antihistamine each night to help him sleep.
Gina Garzon had removed all carpeting from her home in Miami, covered the mattresses and tried portable air cleaners, with little apparent benefit.
When an air conditioning salesman mentioned a new machine that cleaned air throughout the house, Garzon decided to try it.
“Within a couple days, my son said, ‘Mom, I didn’t sneeze all night. I’m feeling great,’ ” Garzon said. “He hasn’t taken an allergy pill to sleep since.”
Garzon, a high school biology teacher, hasn’t seen the results of testing of the air in her home, but she believes the $1,400 machine is working. Nicholas and his younger brother are sleeping better, she says, and there is less dust when she does her weekly housecleaning.
Air conditioning manufacturers see consumers like Garzon as a huge source of new revenue. (Garzon got her machine free when she bought a new air-conditioning unit.)
Several companies are beginning to market whole-house cleaning systems as the best way to remove dust, mold spores and other forms of indoor pollution.
“There are a lot of people with asthma and allergies,” said Fred Poses, the chairman and chief executive of American Standard Cos., whose Trane division makes the unit that was put into Garzon’s house last month. “We’re going to make a big difference here.”
But independent experts question whether the devices will do much for anyone’s health. They say the units won’t catch all the airborne chemicals that can trigger asthma and allergic reactions, and that heavier particles such as dust mites don’t stay in the air long enough to be trapped in a filter.
Trane has just begun shipping its cleaner to dealers, and Lennox International Inc. has a similar product. Carrier, a unit of United Technologies Corp., plans to start selling one by the end of April.
The companies hope to capitalize on Americans’ growing concern with the quality of the air they breathe.
That could add 3% to the residential air-conditioning business’ current growth rate of 6% to 8%, said Jeffrey D. Hammond, an analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets.
The companies plan big marketing campaigns for their products. American Standard plans to spend in the tens of millions for the Trane air cleaner, the parent company’s biggest product launch since the Champion toilet several years ago.
Analysts think the campaign could pay off. American Standard’s Poses said first-year sales could be $50 million to $70 million, and could top $150 million by 2008.
The new systems are expensive -- from about $600 for the Lennox model up to $1,400 or more for the Trane, including installation. The Lennox and Carrier models also require annual replacement of filters that cost as much as $150.
Poses, however, figures that if people will pay a dollar for bottled water because they think it’s healthier than tap, they will spend what it takes for cleaner air.
Company executives are careful to stop short of making health claims, which could subject them to increased government regulation.
“We don’t go that far out there,” said Mike Branson, a marketing executive at Carrier, “but we definitely think it would be an improvement in their indoor environment.”
