Alfred Andresen: Immigrant Entrepreneur Laurann Gilbertson, Vesterheim Chief Curator
After arriving in the Upper Midwest from Norway in 1892, Alfred Andresen started several businesses. With each venture, he took advantage of new ideas, markets, marketing strategies, and technology. His main businesses were importing, flax straw, and motion pictures. Alfred Andresen was born in Oslo in 1874, the oldest child of Peter (a master shoemaker) and Hanna Lund Andresen. Alfred left Norway in March of 1892 and arrived in New York in April. He was 17 years old and listed his occupation as “clerk.” Soon he was working as a clerk in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at a cabinetmaking firm. In 1894, he started Alfred Andresen & Co. in Minneapolis. The firm imported familiar products, such as cooking equipment, saws, and dairying supplies to the many Midwesterners who had come from Scandinavia. They also had articles for the home and farm specially manufactured. All of this was sold directly by mail order and through small, independent merchants throughout the Upper Midwest.1 Andresen promoted four main lines of goods. From Sweden, there were quality steel blades, such as straight razors, hunting knives, saws, and scythes. Articles for Home Industry were tools for spinning and weaving. Three styles of spinning wheels were manufactured in Minneapolis based on ethnic styles, and one wheel was imported from Norway. Articles for Home Baking included dairy supplies (rennet, butter, and cheese color from Denmark), sugar clippers, rolling pins, and a line of cast iron cookware. The cookware was manufactured in the U.S. from casts of tools, mostly from Norway. Andresen patented his designs for a heart waffle iron, rosette iron, patty iron (deep rosette), and krumkake iron. Andresen’s fourth line consisted of his exclusive imported products: Tobias U. Borthen’s cod liver oil from Norway; Whale Amber, a leather dressing from Norway; Smokine, a European extract of smoke for preserving meat; Heymann Bloch’s Health Salt from Denmark; and Phoenixbrand powdered dyes from Germany. Andresen marketed his imported products to immigrants and their children, “to satisfy the great demand” for familiar items from Scandinavia and Germany. His mail-
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order catalog was printed in several different languages. Instructions on product packaging also appeared in multiple languages. In his catalog, he recognized preferences between countries, such as styles of spinning wheels that had been commonly used in Germany, France, England, or Iceland. He even recognized regional preferences, such as a style of rolling pin used on the west coast of Norway.2 He advertised extensively in foreign-language American newspapers and magazines. In addition to these print ads, Andresen offered his products as premiums, incentives, and prizes for subscriptions. For example, if you brought in four new subscriptions to Qvinnan och Hemmet, a Swedishlanguage women’s magazine, you could receive a spritz cookie press or grooved rolling pin.3 He also advertised to a broader audience in Good Housekeeping and Delineator magazines for women, showing how well Scandinavian cookware could be used to prepare dishes for an American-style table, such as deep fried pastries (rosettes) topped with parsley and a poached egg or asparagus in cream sauce. Andresen had started small in 1894, with wool carders (used for preparing fibers for spinning) as his only product, and these he imported from Norway. He incorporated Alfred Andresen & Co. in 1900 and ran it until 1913, when he was forced to close his business due to difficulties getting shipments.4 When war in Europe began in 1914, Andresen saw another opportunity. He realized that the supply of flax fiber for linen from Russia would be cut off from manufacturers in Ireland and Scotland. He said he had discovered a process that could produce high enough quality fibers in America to be accepted by Irish cloth weavers, who guaranteed a good price for it for at least five years.5 Flax for fiber was grown in only a few places at this time. In 1915, the United States Department of Agriculture estimated that of the 3,000,000 acres in flax, less than one percent was planted for fiber flax. Flax was considered a “pioneer” or “new land” crop. The plant tended to deplete nitrogen from the soil, so while the first several years saw good yields, the success would not continue. By the
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