Because of such competitors as Aladdin Industries of Nashville, AMCA International of Bowling Green, Ky., and Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, which distributes Panasonic brand heaters, Kero-Sun's market share plunged to less than 30 percent last winter from 100 percent in the 1970's. If consumer concern about the safety issue dissipates, as Kero-Sun predicts, the biggest challenge to the company will be price competition. In January, Kero-Sun closed its Energy America outlets and laid off nearly 140 employees. Although it would not disclose figures, Kero-Sun said that sales for the year fell considerably short of that target. The company had predicted a 50 percent rise in sales in 1982, to $150 million. Some of the test data have been presented to the Federal Consumer Product Safety Comission, which is studying the issue and expects to issue a report next month. The company has conducted its own tests, it said, that prove the heaters' safety.
![kerosun monitor 30 heater manual kerosun monitor 30 heater manual](https://www.kerosene-wicks.com/Kerosene-Heater-Parts/pics/Kerosene-Heater-Parts-04-0103.jpg)
But it dropped the action last month, saying that further litigation would be unproductive. Vigorously disputing the report, the company filed a $41 million suit against the magazine. In an enclosed room, it said, the emissions exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency's standards ''by significant amounts.'' The standards, however, measure the level of pollutants out of doors. In its October cover article, Consumer Reports, the nonprofit publication of Consumers Union, criticized kerosene heaters as a ''hazardous appliance,'' based on its tests of 18 popular models.Īccording to the magazine, tests showed that the heaters emit noxious gases, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. National Advertisingīy 1982, Kero-Sun was selling more than a million heaters a year and was opening Energy America retail stores that sold a wide range of energy-related products. ''I didn't have to look for the market, the market chased me,'' Mr. The next spring he went to Japan and convinced the unit's manufacturer, Toyotomi Kogyo of Nagoya, to let him represent the company in the United States. He decided to offer the product at the Country Stove, a wood stove store that he and his wife had opened in a renovated post office in Kent, a town of 1,800 people. ''Immediately, I knew it was right,'' he recalled. Litwin, then a pilot for Pan American World Airways, saw a kerosene heater on the deck of a friend's pleasure boat in San Francisco Bay. The trade group projects sales of 4.5 million to 6 million units this year.īefore the first energy crisis in 1974, kerosene heat connoted Depression austerity, disagreeable fumes and deadly fires. Last year, however, 17 national distribution companies sold more than 4.5 million units. But Kero-Sun's successes and setbacks are similar to those of numerous companies that entered booming markets for energy-saving home products in the 1970's and now must adapt to slower growth and increased competition.Īccording to the American Kerosene Heater Association, an industry trade group, only 3,500 kerosene heaters were sold in this country in 1974.
![kerosun monitor 30 heater manual kerosun monitor 30 heater manual](https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/sDMAAOSwA5ReHzkV/s-l225.jpg)
Many of the company's problems are unique to the kerosene heater industry. Litwin, a 52-year-old former airline pilot, said recently as he showed a visitor through Kero-Sun's modern executive offices in Kent, Conn. ''I lived in an unreal world that had to crumble,'' Mr. Litwin was forced to scrap expansion plans this year and had to lay off half of his work force.
![kerosun monitor 30 heater manual kerosun monitor 30 heater manual](http://www.milesstair.com/Heater_Parts/Parts_List-Tropic.jpg)
Sales were battered further by an unexpectedly warm winter, stiffening competition and falling oil prices. Last October, on the brink of the vital winter sales season, the widely read Consumer Reports magazine attacked kerosene heaters as unsafe. Litwin and his company, Kero-Sun Inc., have had to adjust to a harsher reality. His idea -selling Japanese kerosene heaters to American homeowners with high heating bills - spawned an $800 million-a-year industry.īut for the past seven months Mr.
![kerosun monitor 30 heater manual kerosun monitor 30 heater manual](https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/aiwAAOSwHYpaR7rs/s-l225.jpg)
Litwin built a $100 million-a-year company and a nationally known product. Starting with an idea and a clapboard country store in a small Connecticut town in 1975, Mr.