TENNANT COMPANY:

Founded in 1870 by George Henry Tennant, the Tennant Company of Minneapolis initially produced wood flooring. By the 1930s, though, the direction of the company shifted from floor covering to the production of mechanized floor maintenance equipment. Following the Second World War the Tennant Company became a major manufacturer and supplier of industrial grade power sweepers and vacuums. Tennant designed its various models of sweepers to clean factory floors, city streets, and the runways of airfields. The scope of the Tennant Company's market share expanded beyond the industrial Midwest and East Coast with the establishment of international distributors in the Netherlands and Japan. Even as the company's fortunes waned with the decline of American manufacturing during the 1970s and 1980s, Tennant managed to remain a viable enterprise by developing a line of commercial carpet cleaning products. Tennant further moved to consolidate the carpet market through its acquisitions of Castex, Inc. in 1994 and the German company Sorma in 1999.

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The Tennant Company collection documents approximately forty of the company's most productive years. The bulk of the material contained within this collection comes from the 1950s through the late 1970s. The collection is divided into four major sections: Corporate Records, Company Literature, Advertising, and Photographic Records. The materials in these sections include: patent information, office memorandums, financial statements, meeting reports, company newsletters, promotional material, and photographs. Additionally there are also some miscellaneous artifacts incorporated into the collection such as a pocketknife and the master copies of the gears used in Tennant machinery.

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These documents are organized into the following sections:

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Tennant Company Records. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples

Accession Information:

Accession number: 16,055

Processing Information:

Processed by: Kit Smemo, June 2005

Catalog ID number: 990036935350104294

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This section contains information from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s. The materials consist of a host of meeting reports from Tennant's marketing, engineering, and sales divisions (1947-1957). These meetings document the expansion of the company from the Midwest to the Eastern seaboard and to the Netherlands. The financial records and statements found in this collection (1969-1973) document and highlight the Tennant Company's continued growth both domestically and internationally. The wealth of interoffice memos provides considerable insight into the company's business strategy and corporate culture. Of particular note are the memos concerning Project Ibex (June 20, 1969-July 17, 1970), a "low-cost" walk-behind sweeper that many in the firm hoped could push Tennant beyond its traditional factory and textile mill market. These memos exhibit the extent of debate within the company over its commercial viability, as well as the impact such a decision would make upon the course of the company.

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The advertising section covers the 1930s through the early 1970s. The promotional materials included in this collection range from single page ads (July 1941-circa 1970) to full catalogs of Tennant products (1945-1992). This considerable span of time demonstrates the changes in Tennant's advertising scheme. For instance, the catalog for the Model K floor sweeper (1942) touts that Model K is a part of the "Arsenal of Democracy" due to its use in defense plants; forty years later Tennant ads attempt to convey the confidence of a strong company in the face of economic stagnation (1979).

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This section is comprised almost entirely of photographs of Tennant equipment in use, as well as tradeshows and company executives. The bulk of these photos come from the 1950s, with some material dating back to the 1930s and 1940s. Most of these photos are simply shots of the various applications of Tennant machines; many of these photos, though, do reappear in subsequent ads.

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Other company publications are available in the Minnesota Historical Society serials collection.

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Cleaning machinery and appliance industry -- United States.

Cleaning machinery and appliances -- Minnesota.

Floor care machinery industry -- Minnesota.

Floor cleaning machines.

Industrial housekeeping.

Manufacturing industries -- Minnesota -- Minneapolis.

Places:

Minneapolis (Minn.) -- Industries.

Document Types:

Advertisements.

Photographs.

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