America’s Ailing Ceiling Fan Industry And Why Almost All Ceiling Fans Come From China

Here we discuss the history of ceiling fans and why they are no longer made in America and what can be done about it. Given that the United States was one of the first countries in the world to make and use them, it’s a sad legacy that we’ve lost that ability, but there is hope. Read on for more information.

Electric ceiling fans were first manufactured in the 1890s primarily by General Electric, Westinghouse, and Emerson Electric. These companies were the largest of the electrical device companies at the time and were at the forefront of developing new electrical products. Initially, fans were very expensive for the time and were used almost exclusively in commercial applications such as bars, restaurants, hotel lobbies, and meeting rooms. They were very heavy and made of solid metal casting with bears that needed to be filled with oil regularly. But they worked fine and ran almost forever. Many still function today in restored condition. Fans are generally very simple and unassuming by today’s standards, but they were considered a utilitarian device for feeling and not hearing or seeing. There was no air conditioning at the time so the ceilings were quite high and fans kept the air moving. Fans continued in this fashion essentially unchanged, but gradually dropped in price to become more affordable (and lighter) in the 1960s. At this point, they became less popular as central air conditioning and heating became more popular. in the norm and the height of the ceilings dropped to the standard 8 foot height. In the late 1970s there was a resurgence in fan popularity with the “energy crisis” and renewed interest in saving electricity, though that faded again in the 1980s as power became cheap again. There was a major change in ventilator evolution in the 1980s and 1990s when cheaper production factories came online in Taiwan. But first a bit of history on the manufacturing of ceiling fans.

Ceiling fans are fairly simple devices, a motor, a hanging bar, and arms of 3 to 5 blades that hold the blades, usually made of wood. The engines were generally made by a handful of large companies and used in a variety of makes, keeping costs down. You can choose between two engine sizes, but otherwise they were pretty similar. The decorative outer shell and blade arms were the most expensive part to develop. They required expensive dies and other castings and often took years to recoup development costs. Therefore, few companies wanted to risk developing and paying for new shapes, styles, and designs when there was no perceived need. Therefore, the fan style was kept quite simple and boring. Remember when the upgrade for fans was blades with woven cane inserts? All of that initially changed with Taiwan than with China in the late 1990s. Its much lower labor and tool costs did two things; 1. It allowed existing fan companies to more profitably create entirely new models and 2. It created an opportunity for new companies without factories of their own to suddenly become fan companies. Examples of the latter are Craftmade, Minka Aire, Concord, Fanimation, Quorum, Regency, Copper Canyon, Ellington, Hunter, and many more. In fact, only Emerson remains of the original companies that make ventilators. GE went out of business and Westinghouse went bankrupt and sold the name to a new company.

This was the first major explosion in fan variety and popularity. As more and more options became available, consumers discovered that fans were no longer just for moving air, but were now decorative items that brightened up a room. Then the housing boom of the 1980s further increased sales and the options became almost unbelievable. The downside to all of this was that the companies that made ceiling fans in the US had to close or move overseas to keep up with radical style changes and increasingly picky consumer demand. After about 10 years, all US companies were out of business or now just importers. Once this happened, all the supporting industries that used to make the fan parts also moved to different areas or went out of business as well. For a while, some companies like Emerson built fans here with parts made abroad or in Mexico, but they eventually gave up and now strictly import all their fans. This scenario worked very well for many years, as the housing boom continued into 2007, when disaster struck.

One of the “devil’s deals” that fan companies had to make with large foreign factories was to buy large numbers of these fans, usually 500 to 1,000 at a time of each model. That was great as long as there was a lot of market. What has happened now is that these companies suddenly had warehouses full of fans that were no longer being sold and they could no longer afford to create new models or even order inventory of models that were selling well until the old inventory was sold, which It didn’t happen very fast. The next major problem was that prices started to rise dramatically as the cost of crude metals and petroleum products skyrocketed in 2007-10 due to massive demand in Asia. As the lighting and fan business entered a dramatic turnaround, many companies had to merge or were bought out and this trend is expected to continue for some time. So the question now is how do companies survive in a shrinking market, with rising costs and consumers still expecting new and different styles? That is a very difficult order that will require either a dramatic decrease in ventilator companies and therefore capacity, or the companies must be much more nimble and able to produce smaller quantities and still be profitable. Actually, both are happening and in 2011 the market is starting to stabilize, although there are still buyouts going on, like the one anticipated between Ellington and Craftmade.

An added complication in all of this is the change in retail distribution due to the Internet and “Big Box” stores. Traditionally, fans were sold through local lighting showrooms with hardware stores selling at best a few very basic models. With the advent of the internet and the growth of mega hardware stores across the country, that has completely changed the fan retail landscape. You can not buy and check the price of thousands of models from any computer connected to the Internet. Big Box stores are now importing fans directly from China and can sell them for less than lighting showrooms can often buy. The normal 2x or more profit margin previously enjoyed by the showroom has also been eroded due to the Internet, so the lighting showroom business, which was the traditional mainstay of these fan companies, is is wobbling Traditional fan companies have been forced to embrace internet companies and try to sell to Box stores with mixed success. Big box stores are notorious for letting smaller fan (and other product) companies take all the risk in developing new designs, then taking proven hits and manufacturing them in their own factories in China for less.

There is another option that only a company specialized in lighting and ceiling fans has adopted; reassemble and finish fans in the USA Copper Canyon is known for its artistic rustic and western style ceiling fans. Even in this very limited and low volume market, they have grown dramatically in the last 5 years by keeping inventory low and offering more variety even when other companies are cutting back. They bring in partially finished ceiling fans from abroad, then add their own decorative panels and made-in-the-USA fixtures and hand-finish the fans to order. The cost is higher per fan this way, but it allows for less inventory, provides jobs in the US, and more choice for customers.

As more and more companies grapple with the rising costs of manufacturing and doing business in China, this trend is likely to continue, benefiting everyone. Manufacturing consumer-grade ceiling fans here in the US will probably never happen again, but like auto companies, why not assemble and finish fans here with imported and domestic parts? The tremendous profits of the past may never be the same again, but that is the price of staying in business and we have to begin to assess the real cost of losing so many jobs to foreign suppliers.