NCET Biz Tips: How the Haws Corporation kept clean water flowing through the pandemic

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Amid a global health crisis, the team at the Haws Corporation didn’t slow down innovation. Instead, they accelerated the development of products and tools they knew would be critical to help healthcare workers, scientists, educators, and other essential workers.

Haws invents, manufactures, and builds drinking fountains and standardized and customized emergency response products. With more than 8,000 distribution locations and 250 employees worldwide, the family-owned and operated company continually focus on quality, service, reliability, and complete solution support.

“Our business is separated into two different categories,” said Katy Loos, chief of staff at Haws. “We have our hydration, and then we have our safety response. Both categories have products that are required by law. On the hydration side, we enable people to have access to free water. On the safety side, we produce emergency response equipment and maintenance services for a situation where somebody needs an eyewash or a shower to drench themselves from some type of contaminated substance. Both those solutions are located in schools, hospitals, oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and laboratories. Because we were servicing the medical and laboratory environments, we were deemed as an essential business.”

Globally headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, Haws is a family-owned business that dates back to 1906. Now in its fourth generation of family ownership, the leadership team’s focus is on the continued longevity  rather than short term financial results.

The Haws story began in 1906, when Luther Haws invented the drinking faucet and then formed the Haws Sanitary Drinking Faucet Company in 1909 in Berkeley, California. During the 1950s, Haws introduced emergency drench showers and safety eyewashes into its manufacturing line. After establishing its headquarters in Northern Nevada in 1996, Haws continued expanding, opening global locations in Switzerland in 1985, Singapore in 1999, and Brazil 2001.

Its product lines and solutions include:

  • Drinking fountains and electric water coolers

  • Touchless bottle fillers and fountains

  • Emergency eyewashes and drench showers

  • Haws Services

  • Enclosed tempering safety booths

  • Custom engineered solutions

“We really have quality products that we want people to feel like they can use, and they will use, and they want to interact with,” Loos said. “That’s what we’re morphing into as we transition to this COVID, sanitary, hygienic new world.”

Learn more about this more than 100-year old company that creates essential innovation for one of the most essential substances on the planet during NCET’s virtual Tech Wednesday event on Oct 14 from 4–5:30 p.m. For more information visit www.NCETwed.org

Dave Archer is president/CEO of NCET, which produces educational and networking events to help people explore business and technology.

Chris Ewing