Haier

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Haier (Chinese: 海尔; pinyin: Hǎiěr) is a producer of household appliances ("white goods"), including air conditioners, laptops, refrigerators, etc. Its headquarters are in Qingdao, Shandong, China. They are now the third largest white goods manufacturer in the world. Haier Group reported sales of over $12 billion across all divisions in 2005. ^[1]

The Haier as we know now is generally officially founded on December 24, 1987 when Zhang Ruimin was nominated to be the general manager of the Qingdao Daily Appliances Factory, which is reported to be having 1.47 million yuan in negative equity. He was famous for having destroyed the first whole batch of refrigerators that came off his assembly line, unhappy with their quality. In the next year Qingdao concluded a joint-venture agreement with Liebherr which manufactured refrigerators under the name of Qingdao-Liebherr (Chinese: 琴岛—利勃海尔; pinyin: Qingdao-Libuhaier), and in 1986 the factory was renamed Qingdao General Refrigerator Factory. In 1991 the marque of Haier, which came from the last two syllabi of the Chinese transliteration of Liebherr, began to replace Qingdao-Liebherr.

Haier established a US division in 1994, and opened its Hong Kong subsidiary in April 2005. It is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and an index stock of the Dow Jones China 88 Index. The company is a worker-owned "collective", though there is some uncertainty about whether all shares are owned by current employees. ^[2]

In June 2005, Haier indicated interest in bidding to acquire Maytag Corporation, teaming up with private-equity fund Blackstone and Bain in bidding against Ripplewood Holdings.

Haier has factories in five African countries: Tunisia, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria and South Africa.^[3] Their United States manufacturing facility is located in Camden, South Carolina, on Haier Blvd. One factory is based in Italy.