Anyone that does a quick Google search for “emglo air compressors” will find that the search comes up with about twenty thousand different pages, which would tend to suggest that this is a major brand. However, you rarely see “Emglo” compressors for sell at your local hardware store, so why is this? After all, if the brand was as popular as the Internet suggests it is one should see them in the real world a lot more than they do.
The original Emglo company, known as Emglo Products LLC, was established in 1957 and remains based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in the United States. With more than fifty years of experience, they have long been industry leaders making a wide range of air compressors for various purposes. In 2000 Emglo Products LLC was purchased by the Stanley Black & Decker Corporation, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of tools and machinery. Since this time, Emglo has been intimately ties to another Stanley Black & Decker brand: DeWalt. This is why one does not see many Emglo branded compressors in the stores, because most of the Emglo products are sold as DeWalt or as DeWalt/Emglo products. Needless to say, everyone sees DeWalt tools in the hardware stores all around the world.
So if Emglo no longer mass produces many products in its own name, why is the name so popular online? This is because of a number of Chinese companies that have associated their products with the word “emglo” – usually spelled with a small “e” instead of a capital one – as a means of confusing possible buyers. Since Stanley Black & Decker does not regular use the Emglo name in day-to-day business and since taking measures against Chinese companies falsely associating their products with those produced by Western companies is a costly – and usually fruitless – endeavor, so far Stanley Black & Decker has not taken aggressive action against this name appropriation.
There are two primary Chinese companies associating their products with the “emglo” (note the small “e”) name: Zhejiang Liyang Compressor Co., Ltd. and China Ningbo Xinda Group Co., Ltd. However, there are also a whole series of subsidiaries and resellers in China operating under different names and selling the same basic products. It can be difficult to tell precisely which entity is the manufacturer and which one is the reseller, since they all claim to produce the compressors and they all sell them online.
The compressors sold by Zhejiang Liyang Compressor Co., Ltd are mostly fairly easy to identify because they specialize in compressors designed for refrigerators, water dispensers and ice-makers and therefore primarily sell their products on a wholesale basis to other manufacturing companies. China Ningbo Xinda Group Co., Ltd. – and its assorted resellers – is considerably trickier even selling a product called “emglo model I” and the like online. Again, the Chinese companies all tend to use the lower case “e” at least online, but resellers may not be so discriminating.
Of course, there is no evidence that there is anything specifically wrong with the Chinese compressors per se, but the marketing by appropriating a long established name (“Emglo”) certainly calls their marketing strategies into question. If you are looking to buy an inexpensive air compressor, the Chinese models may well meet your requirements. However, if you specifically want an Emglo air compressor (with a capital “E”) you should probably compare the compressor’s model number with the DeWalt model numbers and/or send an email to Stanley Black & Decker customer service to confirm that the model number of the compressor you are buying is in fact one of theirs.
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