Cleret

Hanco Inc. was founded in 1987 by Alan Hansen in Lake Oswego, Oregon, to manufacture Cleret squeegees. The company name was later changed to Cleret. Hansen began designing the Cleret squeegee in 1986. At the time, he was director of corporate audit at Nike, Inc., and at Louisiana Pacific Corporation before that. After two years of working on concepts for a more attractive squeegee, Hansen hired Beaverton, Oregon-based Ziba Design, founded by Sohrab Vossoughi in 1984. The company generated $14,000 in sales in 1989, and over $1 million in its first year officially on the market, with 80% of sales coming from high-end catalogs such as Hammacher Schlemmer. In 1990, Hansen moved Hanco out of his home and into an office at the Water Tower in Portland's Johns Landing neighborhood. ==Products and design==

Ziba's designers determined that the traditional T-shape of a squeegee was not the most efficient for a wiping motion in a confined area such as a shower stall. The dual blades leave a surface cleaner than a single blade squeegee. The Oregonian wrote that it "looks like no other squeegee in history". Cleret products are manufactured and assembled entirely in Oregon. The company later expanded beyond shower squeegees to manufacture squeegees for windows, kitchens, patio doors and automobiles. ==Honors and awards==

• International Design Excellence Award (Gold), Industrial Designers Society of America, 1989 • Smithsonian Institution permanent collection, Product Design and Decorative Arts, acquired 1997 ==References==