One of the oldest companies in Michigan and the United States grew out of a couple’s frustration with cleaning sawdust and straw trapped in the carpeting on the floors of their crockery and china shop in downtown Grand Rapids.
Their solution to that problem in 1876 not only revolutionized housecleaning in America and around the world, it also was the precursor to the trailblazing career of the first female CEO in U.S. industry.
Store owners Melville R. Bissell, who suffered with asthma and allergies, and his wife, Anna, were frustrated dealing with a problem unique to their shop.
All their merchandise was shipped to them in wooden containers, and the fragile inventory was packed in sawdust and straw that invariably ended up on the floor and was tracked into carpets throughout the building. Brooms were nearly useless, as they wedged the powdery material deeper into the carpet fibers.
At that time, carpet sweepers had been around for nearly 50 years, but they weren’t effective against fine particles like sawdust. Home and business owners took their rugs and carpets outside to shake them clean, or hung them up and bashed them with carpet beaters to dislodge dirt and other material.
Melville and Anna Bissell thought there had to be a better way than the earliest sweepers, which were equipped with brushes that picked up some of the dirt and lint. Their invention consisted of a wooden box set on rubber wheels that drove rollers covered with bristly hog hair.
Dirt and debris thrown up by the bristles went into a compartment as the sweeper was pushed back and forth over carpets. The top of the box had a lid that allowed a user to dump the contents into a trash bin.
On Sept. 19, 1876, the Bissells filed a patent claim for their invention with the United States Patent office, and a new industry was born.
Anna was delighted with the sweeper. When neighbors confirmed her enthusiasm, the couple set about producing their own sweepers in a room above the china shop. Anna recruited housewives who lived nearby to make the rollers, and she and her husband made sales calls to housewares stores in and around Grand Rapids.
As word spread about the efficient Bissell sweeper, housewives clamored for them. Anna, a natural salesperson, for years had been the face of their crockery business, traveling around the city and neighboring towns selling china. She easily slipped into same role with the sweepers, which were priced at $1.50 each, and journeyed around the state by train or stagecoach demonstrating the invention to hundreds of storeowners and consumers. In addition, she coordinated the manufacturing and distribution of the sweeper.
Anna secured the company’s first major client when she convinced Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia, one of America’s first department stores, to stock the sweeper. From there, the couple sold their china and crockery business and became full-time manufacturers and distributors.
Seven years after their patent was approved, the pair incorporated Bissell Co. and built a five-story factory in Grand Rapids. Their reputation for maintaining high quality standards boosted the Bissell sweeper’s appeal, and it quickly became the dominant product of its kind on the market.
Unfortunately, tragedy soon struck. A year after opening the new factory, it was destroyed by a fire. Eager to rebuild, Anna negotiated a loan with a bank, mortgaged the couple’s home and Melville’s stable of horses, and received $150,000 to reconstruct the factory.
Still, the relaunch was a rocky one, as early manufacturing problems forced Bissell to recall a series of defective sweepers at a cost of $35,000. Five years later, in 1889, tragedy struck again when Melville contracted pneumonia and died at age 46, leaving Anna to raise their five children.
She also took over running the business and became the first female CEO to oversee a registered enterprise, Bissell Corp. Drawing from her earlier experience on the road selling sweepers, Anna Bissell established marketing guidelines for her sales team.
She then took the Bissell name international, expanding the sweeper’s reach to Canada, England, Europe, and South America. Branch offices were set up in 22 countries, and factories were built in Toronto, London, and Paris.
Her daughter, Anna Bissell McCay, summed up her mother’s attributes: “Trusting her own judgement even in the face of discouragement, she had great self-reliance, believed in enterprise, and had faith in her own resources.”
Luck played a role in the company’s success, as well, when Britain’s Queen Victoria became a fan of the sweeper and ordered Buckingham Palace “Bisselled” every week.
By 1900, Bissell became the largest manufacturer of carpet sweepers in the world, turning out 1,000 units a day. The co-founder continued to run the day-to-day operations until 1919, when she became chair of the board. She was succeeded as CEO by her son, Melvin Bissell Jr.
Her business acumen was far ahead of the times. She adopted progressive reforms, unheard of back then, to strengthen the company and improve working conditions for employees, introduced fixed work hours and annual leaves, and instituted a pension plan for employees. She also established a worker’s compensation program that made payments to workers injured on the job.
As a result, she enjoyed a reputation as a mother figure to her employees. Her impact on the business and the Grand Rapids community earned her admittance as the only female member of the National Hardware Men’s Association.
In 1897, she created the Bissell House, a center where immigrants could learn how to assimilate into society. The house offered youth recreational programs, sports activities, drama and music classes, business training for women, and instruction in the arts and gardening.
Bissell, a force in the community, believed in philanthropy, as well. She served on the boards of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Blodgett Children’s Home, and Memorial Medical Center.
The social clubs to which she belonged were centered on women’s empowerment, including the Ladies Literary Club, Women’s City Club of Grand Rapids, Zonta International, and the Clark Memorial Home.
Upon her passing in 1934, at age 87, Bissell was chair of the company. Her legacy included diversifying the product line from carpet sweepers to vacuum cleaners to home care cleaning products. Along the way, the company branched out into such fields as graphics and labels, health care products for patient rehabilitation, and orthopedic and therapeutic treatments.
In 2022, the business, now Bissell Inc., reported sales of $800 million and a workforce of 2,500 employees.
Anna Bissell was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1989, and was honored as a Grand Rapids Community Legend with a seven-foot bronze statue unveiled at DeVos Place in 2016, near the former site of the china shop she started with her husband.
“She ran the company well. She defended the patents and fended off competitors, all while she raised a family and got involved with the community,” Mark J. Bissell, her great-grandson and CEO of Bissell, said on the company’s 125th anniversary in 2001. “She remained a widow and never remarried. She really did a tremendous job of running the company.”
