Who Owns Speed Queen & What Appliances Does The Company Make?

Speed Queen is one of the most reliable names in laundry appliances, but the company behind the brand has more to its name than just this one appliance brand. Speed Queen is part of Alliance Laundry Systems, a Wisconsin-based company with more than a hundred years in the laundry equipment business. Though the company remains primarily rooted in the Midwest, Alliance also has offices in Brazil, China, and Spain plus manufacturing sites in its native Wisconsin as well as Thailand.

Originally named Barlow & Seelig Manufacturing Co. and first established in 1908, the company officially introduced Speed Queen as a brand name in 1928. It debuted its first automatic washer in 1953 and went on to acquire several other laundry-equipment brands over the decades that followed. The company took the Alliance Laundry Systems name in 1998, took on the IPSO brand in 2006, and acquired the Primus brand in 2014. These washing machine brands sit alongside the legacy brand Speed Queen as well as Huebsch, acquired in 1978, and UniMac, acquired in 1994.

So, what sets all these laundry brands apart? For buyers, the most important thing to know is that Speed Queen has a larger consumer division than the other more commercial-oriented brand names in the Alliance portfolio. For the record, Speed Queen does have commercial offerings as well, but it's known best for residential appliances such as its Consumer Reports-approved gas dryer.

Meanwhile, UniMac focuses mainly on on-premises laundry equipment for places like hotels, health care facilities, fire departments, restaurants, correctional facilities, and dry cleaners. Huebsch focuses more on laundromats and other businesses, while Primus makes heavy-duty commercial laundry equipment for an international market. Likewise, IPSO supplies commercial machines to its global network. Speed Queen is undoubtedly the company's best-known residential-facing brand.

That's a lot of focus on washers and dryers, but Alliance Laundry Systems also has a line of ironers available. Both Primus and IPSO make large ironing machines, but again, mainly for the commercial crowd.