american bungalow essays

american bungalow essays The article Manufacturing and Marketing the American Bungalow by Scott Erbes discusses the effects that The Aladdin Company had on the American Bungalow. The Aladdin Company was a main manufacturer of these mail order homes. By intense marketing and propaganda the Aladdin Company, along with several others, was able to promote and sell these precut homes by mail. The Aladdin Company was founded in 1906 in Bay City, Michigan by William and Otto Sovereign. William and Otto started their firm having had no architectural experience at all. They were inspired by a friend who was in the business of selling precut boats by mail so they decided to venture into selling precut homes by mail. In order for William and Otto to get their company started and up to the level that they wanted, it became necessary to use mass-marketing as a ploy to draw people into the idea of homes through the mail. Their way of enticing people to buy these homes was through their catalogue. They portrayed the homes by mail, bungalows, as an escape from lifes worries: A place where one could commune with nature. By taking the promotional aspect to such a high level the bungalow became very prominent in the America in the early 1900s. By 1917, William and Otto were selling more than three thousand homes per year. They had homes spread all over the United States and included in that array of owners were several large- scale companies such as the Dupont Company. Their success continued for the next two decades and William and Otto were able to broaden their product line from not only the houses but also the furnishings in the houses. However, the companies momentum was nearly depleted during the Great Depression. Aladdins output dropped drastically during the Great Depression but in the decades following the Depression, it was able to regain some of their profit but they never reached the lev...