Casablanca Fan Company

Casablanca was founded by Burton A. Burton in Pasadena, California, in 1974. Burton's unique marketing techniques included inviting customers aboard refurbished 1940s railroad cars from the New York Central Railroad and Rock Island Line. By 1980, Casablanca was selling about US$42M in fans per year. To better cope with the seasonal swings of the ceiling fan business, Casablanca purchased Lavery & Co. in 1984, a Van Nuys, California-based manufacturer of consumer lighting fixtures founded by Arthur J. Lavery in the late 1940s.

Following a hiatus, Burton regained presidency of Casablanca in July 1985, and was named chief executive of the parent company, Casablanca Industries Inc. Reporting to Burton was Richard Y. Fisher, who was named president of Casablanca Industries. He served as chairman and president of Milwaukee-based Diana Corp. (formerly Farm House Foods), which previously acquired a 47% stake in Casablanca. In addition, S. John Gorman remained president of Lavery & Co.

Casablanca continue to grow and thrive through the mid-1980s, competing alongside many of the leading competitors at the time, Hunter Fan Company, Homestead, and Emerson Electric. Under leadership from founder and chairman Burton, and their adopted slogan “An Investment in Quality”, Casablanca became the gold standard for ceiling fans, one that other companies had to compete with. By the mid-1990s, Casablanca decided to drop its secondary products, and decided to exclusively manufacture ceiling fans and portable fans, only growing their business model from there, doubling down on their main focus.

On March 7, 1991, Casablanca Industries Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, due to debt from a leveraged buyout and a housing recession. Casablanca had $71.9 million in assets, and $90.7 million in debts when the bankruptcy was filed. Following the filing, the company was acquired by a subsidiary of General Electric in June 1991. This included the sale of Casablanca's entire inventory and the company's manufacturing plants in City of Industry and Los Angeles. The company had 200 employees on staff at this time. Through this time, Casablanca continued to use Emerson K55 motors for most fans, however started supplying Samsung motors as a cost-cutting measure.

In 1993, Casablanca acquired rival ceiling fan manufacturer Homestead Products following a patent infringement lawsuit that weakened the latter company, and began to consolidate its lineup into its new "Airflow by Casablanca" brand. The Airflow name was phased out in the early 2010s.

In August 1993, Casablanca introduced a new tag variant that would be used for all of their models. This change was apparent on many fans produced around this time, when the city of Pasadena and ZIP code stopped being added onto their informational tags on most fans manufactured after July 1993. By November 1993, all models officially converted to the new tag variant.

In 1996, Casablanca was purchased by Hunter Fan Company, and started shifting manufacturing from their existing California-based plant to Hunter's manufacturing plant in Taiwan. In that same year, Casablanca, now owned by Hunter, decided to ditch their long-standing fixed downrod, and instead opted for a simple screw-in downrod, dubbed Perma-Lock. By 1997, all production of Casablanca fans were successfully moved completely overseas to Taiwan, officially ending the 22-year long tradition of their fans being made and assembled in the USA. The previous motors, supplied by Emerson Electric were replaced by a Casablanca-engineered motor, dubbed the XLP-2000, which was used by Casablanca until 2014. Hunter operated Casablanca as a wholly owned subsidiary until 2010.

In 1997, Casablanca moved from their City of Industry headquarters to their new corporate office in Pomona, California.