1910s The first Nilfisk

In 1910 Fisker patents a vacuum cleaner using the name based on the company’s telegram address - Nilfisk. It is the first electric vacuum cleaner in Europe. His design weighs just 17.5 kg and can be operated be a single person.

The Nilfisk vacuum cleaner is in great demand at home and abroad, and Fisker quickly realises that export marketing has to be properly organised - this he achieves as early as 1911. That same year, export accounts for half of total production. Nilfisk opens its first foreign sales office, in Berlin, in 1914.

The vacuum cleaner becomes an essential aid to housewives and their hard-pressed husbands.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 causes the market for electrical appliances to collapse, forcing Fisker to realize the necessity of having a more varied product range. He launches the ‘Nimbus’ motorcycle in 1919, and makes around 1,250 examples before it for at time falls victim to the renewed success of the vacuum cleaner.