In 1987 Valmet Loimaa factory turned into Vallox, as it is known today. There is a funny story behind the name Vallox and how the company was named. The story is told by one of the former owners of the factory, Olavi Suominen.
It was autumn 1986 and we – the four white-collars of the Loimaa factory at that time – were about to purchase the factory from its present owner, Valmet. During the purchase process we were wondering how to name the new company. At that moment, the telex-address of the factory was Vallo, so we simple thought “That´s it!” That would be the name of the company starting at the beginning of 1987.
At the beginning of December, during Finnish Independence Day, we were about to start off with the entire factory staff to a cruise from Turku to Stockholm. We had told everybody that it would be pre-Christmas party, but the real reason was to declare the company acquisition and the new name of the company. It was a big event that would start a new era in the history of manufacturing ventilation units in Loimaa as Vallo Ltd. Dark blue scarfs and caps with a white label “Vallo” had been acquired and all sorts of other marketing material as well.
At the end of December, between Christmas and the New Year, me and Rauno Mäkelä were on our way to Valmet to negotiate about the company acquisition. Because we were already in Helsinki, we decided to go to the National Board of Patents and Registration and register the name Vallo. I drew money to buy the revenue stamps and collected them from the General Post Office in Helsinki. Then we drove to the office of the National Board of Patents and Registration that located at the time in Boulevard, Helsinki. We put the revenue stamps to our registration application and entered the agency.
In the agency, we told the female clerk, why we had come. She wanted to see and check our application in case there were any flaws. She typed the company name Vallo to her computer and immediately declared that the name cannot be adopted. “Vallo” was a family name that was already protected.
So we discussed with the clerk what we could do. The new company will officially start operations on the first of January 1987 and Valmet Loimaa factory will finish on the 31st of December 1986. We had only a few days left.
The clerk calmed us down and told that usually these kinds of problems are solved by using the letter x at the end of the name. This new alternative Vallox, instead of Vallo, felt better, so we changed it to the application form.
Even today the name Vallox sounds much better than Vallo.
Olavi Suominen