Marketbuster

The standard-size vacuum cleaner, squatting in countless American closets, is a veritable symbol of drudgery. But now there is a little vac hanging on the wall, designed just to clean up the spilled potting soil and the scattered cat litter. It is the Dustbuster, and its phenomenal success is dramatically changing the fortunes of its maker, Black & Decker.

Cordless and snout-shaped, the Dustbuster is 14 1/4 in. long and weighs 1.4 lbs. To clean up small domestic disasters, the user grabs the Dustbuster from its wall rack, vacuums up the mess and returns the machine to its base. There, its three nickel-cadmium batteries are recharged so that it will be ready for the next spill. Life expectancy: 150 hours, or five years of 15-to-20-second bursts.

Dustbusters were introduced in 1979, but sales got a charge in the past few months from a $3 million advertising campaign. With about 10 million Dustbusters sold, the product's success led rivals to introduce competing models. Black & Decker fought back by filing patent-infringement suits against more than a dozen competitors.

Black & Decker, founded in 1910, has long experience with battery-powered tools. Astronauts carried its portable drills to the moon. In the mid-1970s the company introduced a power handle with drill, flashlight, hedge-trimmer and vacuum attachments. The product failed, though, because consumers often forgot to recharge the batteries. But when the handle was joined permanently to the vacuum alone, a success was born.

The Dustbuster has transformed Black & Decker from a power-tool company catering to do-it-yourselfers in their workshops to a maker of products for the entire home. Says Vice President Stephen Britt: "Dustbuster got us out of the basement and upstairs." Last year the company moved deeper into the housewares market by paying $300 million for General Electric's small- appliance division. As sales swelled from $1.17 billion in 1983 to $1.53 billion in 1984, profits went from $44.2 million to $95.4 million.