EdenPure to shift some production from China to Ohio

A former Hoover vacuum factory in Ohio may become a manufacturing site for EdenPure products if the North Canton city council grants the company a tax break on Monday. Suarez Corp. Industries, whose EdenPure space heaters sell like hot cakes, already produces some of the heaters in Ohio and hopes to eventually move 90 percent of its product line from China to the U.S., the Canton Repository reports.

Because the relocation would create 250 jobs, North Canton Mayor David J. Held says that passage is likely. [Update: The measure passed on May. 9.] A few years ago, Suarez, which markets and sells EdenPure heaters, vacuum cleaners and air purifiers, began moving some space heater production to Ohio. "We ended up selling about a million a year," company owner Ben Suarez told the Repository. "The problem was getting it here from China. When the weather gets cold, our sales spike," and the company was unable to respond fast enough.

Consumer Reports hasn't tested the EdenPure sweeper but the EdenPure Gen 3 space heater is featured in our space heater Ratings, where it landed in the middle. It cost quite a bit more than heaters that performed better. We also checked EdenPure's claims that using the Gen 3 could cut heating bills by up to 50 percent, presumably because you would you use your main heating system less. That's a myth we busted in our tests.

In February, Consumer Reports reported that Costco pulled the EdenPure US 1000 space heater off its shelves after a store employee complained that the plastic casing of a unit she bought had melted. Costco notified the Consumer Product Safety Commission and sent letters to more than 200 Costco members who had purchased the unit. An EdenPure spokesman told Consumer Reports that the company concluded that the unit's overheat-protection sensor had been damaged, probably by being dropped during shipping, and the CPSC did not announce a formal recall.

Such mishaps haven't prevented Suarez from boasting about his stable of infomercial products. If the move to the Hoover factory is approved, he told the Repository, "we will be manufacturing, ironically, a sweeper that out performs Hoover sweepers."