Techtronic Industries Co., owns both Royal Appliance Manufacturing and the Hoover vacuum company. Oreck, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past spring, has about 70 employees in Nashville.

A major vacuum cleaner brand on the market today, Hoover has a long and storied history dating back to the early 1900s. In 1907, a nighttime janitor called James Murray Spangler from Canton, Ohio ...