5 Appliance Brands That Are Owned By Electrolux

The appliance market is filled with different brands, each vying for the attention of buyers online or on the floor of a showroom. Many of these brands are owned by larger parent corporations: take, for example, Whirlpool, which owns at least 10 different brands that buyers might recognize. Electrolux is another major player in the appliance market, selling products both under its own name and under a variety of subsidiaries. The company has been selling appliances since 1919, and today it sells more than 60 million products annually.

Company founder Axel Wenner-Gren turned Electrolux from a small Swedish vacuum cleaner manufacturer into a global brand partly by orchestrating a series of high-profile marketing stunts. Among other things, he created vacuum-shaped cars in the company's early days, and even managed to sell a vacuum to the Vatican by showing how ineffective his competitor's products were.

Still, those stunts wouldn't have translated into long-term sales success so well if the company's products weren't also consistently well-liked by buyers. Over the decades, Electrolux gradually eventually acquired a number of other rival appliance brands, with these five being the most notable brands that remain available to buyers today.

AEG can trace its roots back to the 1880s, but the brand name is now used by two separate companies. The tool brand AEG is owned by Chinese tool giant TTI, which also owns the likes of Milwaukee and Ryobi, while the appliance brand AEG is owned by Electrolux. Back in the 1970s, the original, unified AEG was a major German technology company that was significantly bigger than Electrolux, but it was creaking under the weight of its own size.

It made some bad investments and failed to keep up with its rivals in other segments, and it eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1982. Over the following decade or so, the different divisions of AEG were slowly spun off or sold to other companies, with Electrolux acquiring AEG's appliance making division in 1994.

AEG appliances are not sold in America, but they're available across Europe, Australia, and some Asian markets like China and Japan. Electrolux considers AEG to be one of its "three main brands," alongside its own Electrolux-branded products and Frigidaire.

The most famous Electrolux-owned brand in America is Frigidaire, which has been around since 1919. It can take credit for inventing both at-home refrigerators and freezers, eventually becoming so popular that many Americans used the name "Frigidaire" to refer to any home refrigerator.

The brand's original owner, Guardian Frigerator Company, was founded in Indiana three years before it coined the Frigidaire name. For six decades between 1919 and 1979, the Frigidaire brand was owned by GM, before being later acquired by White Consolidated Industries. Its ownership changed again when Electrolux bought White Consolidated Industries in 1986.

Under the stewardship of GM, Frigidaire broadened its product lineup to encompass more than just fridges and freezers, and still offers a varied range of appliances today. Its kitchen appliance range includes cooktops, ranges, microwaves, and dishwashers, while its laundry range includes washers and dryers. It also still makes air conditioning units, which is notable because it was the first company to offer a room air conditioner in America.

Alongside its trio of main brands, Electrolux also owns various smaller brands, including Anova. The brand is best known for its sous vide cooker, but also offers combi ovens and vacuum sealers. Electrolux bought the brand in 2017 for an upfront sum of $115 million, just four years after it was founded. It's headquartered in San Francisco, CA.

Sous vide cooking was once a technique reserved for chefs in high-end restaurants, but Anova designed its sous vide cookers to be suitable for home use. As well as chefs, Anova cookers have attracted interest from some more unlikely groups of enthusiasts, with film photographers using them to develop professional-grade photos at home.

Anova is one of a number of home appliance makers that is embracing AI as a way to add further capabilities to its products. The brand's Precision Oven 2.0 features an AI agent that can suggest cooking methods based on the ingredients that it identifies when they're placed in the oven. Using the companion smartphone app, users can also import cooking instructions from the back of food packets.

Many of its brands sell essential appliances like fridges, vacuum cleaners, and washers, but there's one brand in Electrolux's portfolio that's much more niche. Vintec sells wine cooling cabinets, mostly in Australia and in a number of major Asian markets. It was founded in 1998 and was bought by Electrolux in 2016. Its entry-level wine cabinets are designed to fit average-sized home kitchens, but at the other end of its range, it also offers walk-in wine cellars that can hold several thousand bottles.

Today, Vintec cabinets are available in America through a network of dealers, with the smallest cabinet available to U.S. buyers being able to hold 41 bottles of wine. It carries a retail price of $1,999. Meanwhile, a tall 201-bottle cabinet will set buyers back $4,499. Once buyers purchase their cabinet, they're eligible for membership into Vintec's owner's club, which hosts periodic dinners and wine tasting experiences that are subsidized by the company.

Italian appliance maker Zanussi is another historic Electrolux-owned brand, having been founded in 1916 by Antonio Zanussi. The company remained family owned after Antonio passed away in 1946, with his two sons, Lino and Guido, taking the reins. A tragic airplane crash in 1968 resulted in the death of Lino Zanussi and several members of the company's management team, but the company continued under new leadership and expanded over the following years.

By the early '80s, the company was no longer profitable, despite remaining popular among buyers. Electrolux stepped in to acquire it in 1984. It still remains a notable home appliance brand in markets like the U.K., but in many other markets, it's better known for its line of professional appliances. Zanussi Professional operates in markets across the globe, from South America to Europe and the Middle East, but it's not currently available to buyers in the U.S.