Anna Bissell took charge of her family's business in 1889 and became the first female chief executive in the United States, according to a Times of India account drawing on the company's own history.
Anna Bissell took charge of her family's business in 1889 and became the first female chief executive in the United States, according to a Times of India account drawing on the company's own history. She led the firm for 42 years, until 1931, overseeing its growth into what the company describes as an international household name. The story is a reminder that the corporate histories firms tell about themselves are also arguments about who gets credit for building them.
The business began in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Anna and Melville R. Bissell ran a crockery shop in 1876. Sawdust was a constant nuisance in the shop, prompting Melville to invent an improved carpet sweeper. The couple travelled to Philadelphia to sell the machines to distributors, dividing the work between them on State Street. Anna eventually outsold her husband, selling five or six dozen sweepers to Wanamaker's, the high-fashion department store.
Production moved from a makeshift shop to a five-storey factory on Mill Street in 1883. Fire struck the factory in 1884, but staff cleared the debris and resumed shipping products just 19 days later. Anna had been involved from the earliest days, working in operations as well as marketing and sales, and in 1889 she succeeded Melville at the head of the company.
By the late 1880s and 1890s the firm had grown to 250 associates and said it held 75% of the world market. It also reported having sold more than two million sweepers over its history. Under Anna's leadership the product crossed the Atlantic in 1890, and Queen Victoria insisted that her palace be 'Bisselled' every week. The Grand Rapids Sweeper won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition in 1900, and four years later the BISSELL Sweeper took the Grand Prize at the World's Fair in St. Louis.
Melville Bissell Jr. became president when Anna's tenure ended in 1931. The company later introduced the ShampooMaster carpet shampooer in 1956, its first electric product and combination vacuum and floor scrubbers in 1960, and in time deep-cleaning machines, upright vacuums and products designed for homes with pets. Its 150-year history presents these developments as a line of innovation running back to Melville's carpet sweeper.
Much of the detail here rests on the company's own account, and the claim to be America's first female chief executive is presented without independent corroboration in the report. The precise date of Anna Bissell's appointment, the scale of the business at the moment she took over and the terms on which she held the post are not set out. What the record does establish is a long tenure at the top of a manufacturing firm in an era when few women held any executive authority at all.
