Murray Spangler works as a night-time doorman in Canton, a small town in Ohio. It is not an easy job. Murray suffers from asthma and the dust stirred up while he cleans staircases and rugs does nothing but worsen his health.

He finds a solution: he takes a soapbox, a fan, a silk pillowcase and a broomstick and he assembles everything into the first vacuum cleaner ever seen. He uses it with encouraging results.

Spangler is a resourceful man: he understands the potential of the tool, and he wants to market it. But, he is not well off, lacking the resources to develop his idea. He needs a sponsor, but first he needs to see how the users welcome this new, unusual broom. He offers it to a friend, Susan Hoover: a move which makes his fortune.

Susan is an open-minded person: she tries the vacuum cleaner for a few days in her house. She is hooked: results are excellent, time and fatigue are halved, dust is not simply moved, but eliminated. She talks to her husband, William H. Hoover, about it.

"Boss" Hoover, as he will soon be called, manufactures and markets leather products in his shop in Canton. He sees the enthusiasm of his wife and, with the flair of a true entrepreneur, understands the market potential of the new tool.

He buys Spangler's patent and starts producing vacuum cleaners in a corner of his shop. He hires six workers and starts producing six units a day. It’s 1908: Hoover was born.

The market of a small town in the USA is considered too restrictive for Hoover’s ambitious plans. He spends some time thinking about marketing the product on a national basis and decides to publish an advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post offering respondents a free ten-day trail. The responses however are not directed to the head office but a well established shop in each city.

With time the sales techniques are improved. The "Boss" is very attentive to the sales techniques employed in the business. Since the very beginning, well-prepared trained representatives were assigned to door to door sales. In addition showrooms were set up to demonstrate to potential consumers the advantages of cleaning “according to Hoover”.

Having been successful at home, William Hoover looks abroad. In 1911, he establishes the first commercial contacts with Canada; in 1919, he enters the British market. In 1932, the site in Perivale, West London, was inaugurated. The rapid rate of growth leads to the presence of the Hoover company in four continents in just a few short years.

Mr. Hoover is an excellent marketeer, yet, as a true entrepreneur, he understands that to last in the market he must invest in product innovation. He does not have the technical background and he hires a team of specialists to initiate a technical and design development programme. In 1909, i.e. only two years after the invention on the steps of a dark building in Canton, plans are already in hand to facilitate future product development and industrial growth.

The growth in the first few years is impressive, based on perpetual innovation. After years of research, in 1926 the first vacuum cleaner carpet sweeper is created. While a metal bar gently beats the carpet, a brush cleans it while an aspirator eliminates the dust. "It beats, as it sweeps as it cleans”, recites the advertisement, a few years later. This system, much modified and improved, is still at the heart of current hi-tec Hoover vacuum cleaners.

In 1936, Hoover patents a cleaner with an extraction pipe: today a common feature on modern vacuum cleaners. At the end of the 1930s, Hoover is the leading producer of floor-care cleaners in the United States. But times are changing, the Second World War creates a period of economic instability and manufacturing is diverted to help with the war effort.

In keeping with his character, Mr. Hoover did not limit his commitment to manufacturing. Following bombing of the area around the Perivale site in London, he arranged for eighty-four English children to be relocated to North Canton to stay with the families of his employees.