History

It all started in Sweden 1994, with a bankruptcy in Germany...

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the late 80's and early 90's, the young engineer Johan Sundström, ran a small distributing company, TD Production, supplying Swedish customers in the lighting business with professional lighting equipment, including imported smoke machines & fluids.

In those days, a smoke machine was an expensive monster, using low-tech designs to create smoke, often resulting in wet or overheated smoke, unexpected surprises and  frustrated lighting designers. 

Hazers were still very uncommon, remote controls a luxury and DMX not yet introduced with smoke generators. Many machines in those days used a combination of old-fashioned mechanics and new, untested electronics, giving their owners many a hard time. You mostly had to use very expensive original smoke fluids, as there were very few alternatives available.

 

In the early 90's, a German company, MvM, started to manufacture a high-quality smoke fluid, which worked well with most common smoke machines. The fluid was called "MvM Original fluid B" (still today, no one knows whether there ever was a "fluid A"). The fluid combined high quality with a low price compared to original fluids - and it worked with almost ALL common smoke machines. Every month, the German fluid company increased their sales, making manufacturers & distributors of "original" fluids unhappy. In Sweden for example, an importer of a well-known UK brand threatened to go to court, as the Germans marketed the fluid as a good replacement for the original fluid. A significant part of the UK-brand importers' profits came from "original" fluid sales, which probably was more important than finding out if the universal fluid really worked or not...

 

The German fluid was imported and distributed in Sweden by Scandinavia's biggest wholesale distributor, Bellalite. In 1994, on account of an accident in the German fluid factory, the company manufactured, by mistake, a batch of fluid containing the wrong chemicals, resulting in hundreds of damaged smoke machines. The German manufacturer was probably not insured, and went bankrupt, the owner of MvM disappeard and was never heard of again. From one day to another, the Swedish distributor Bellalite had no supplier of smoke fluid. Smoke machine users all over the country had been spoiled with a quality fluid that could be purchased at much lower prices than "original" fluids, and people were screaming for another high quality universal fluid. Now, there was a desperate need for a supplier of fluid!

 

Johan had no time to lose. Having spent many years in the business, he had seen most major brands, and owing to a great technical interest and many years experience with repairing and modifying smoke machines and fluids, he had the know-how needed for producing a high-quality smoke fluid, with low overhead costs. He founded the company Swefog, and the first pallet of smoke fluid could be shipped to Bellalite in December 1994.

The fluid, called "Swefog Neutral-Pro" was an immediate success, on account of its high quality. Using medical grade chemicals and crystal clear de-ionized Swedish natural water, combined to produce great value for money.

 

The company grew, and in 1997 Swefog decided to design the company's first "hardware" product, a haze machine. With an obsession for making the best and most reliable hazer the market had seen, Swefog launched its first hazer, the Ultimate I, first shown in March, at the SIB '97 exhibition in Rimini, Italy. This fair was also the company's first international exhibition. The first step to become a renown exporting company had been taken.

Unfortunately, the Ultimate I became too expensive to produce, due to the use of many industrial stock components. At the same time, it was sold to a low introductory price, making no profit for the new company. During the early years, Johan was a better inventor than businessman. The Ultimate I hazer was also many years ahead of the needs of the market, as it contained many special solutions in order to achieve silent operation (solutions no one yet knew was available and therefore no one was asking for); One example was the experiment with a special (and very expensive) visco-elastic paint covering the inside of the housing, reducing the compressor noise and vibrations. Today, many years after Ultimate I was discontinued, manufacturers in the automotive industry are using visco-elastic paint for noise reduction in cars... (visco-elastic paint was invented by a Swedish engineer as a replacement for heavy bitumen rubber mats used for sound damping in car audio subwoofers).    

 

For Johan, giving up was never an option, and the Ultimate II was developed and released in 1998. This model was an immediate success, due to the clever combination of high performance, Swedish assembly quality and reliability. The Ultimate II competed with the popular US-made cracker DF-50. Ultimate II became the professional's first choice because of the service-friendly design, where nozzle units could easily be cleaned, something that could not be done  with the more expensive DF-50. The DMX option was also a feature that was first offered by Swefog.  

In 1999, the seperable model Ultimate III was launched, and became first choice and industrial 

standard for theatres, as it was the first portable machine that combined the high quality haze from a cracker hazer with quiet operation and a very compact size.

 

During the following four years, 1999-2002, many new models and updates  were released, like the Optima water hazer, the first model using Swefog's "whisper technology", a feature that makes the overall noise from a hazer very low. Ultimate II & III were also discontinued and replaced by Ultimate 200 & 300.

Swefog's net of distributors was growing and in 2004, Swefog decided to widen its range of products to become a manufacturer with a complete range of products. As always, the use of OEM products or solutions produced or developed by other manufacturers was not an option. All components are in-house produced to ensure highest quality and performance.

 

At the end of 2004, 10 years after the first pallet of fluid was shipped, Swefog released the Live T 26 model, probably the most powerful smoke machine in the world, using a 1-phase power supply. The T 26 contains a specially designed, very powerful heat exchanger using Swefog's X-power technology for maximum capacity. The X-power technology is approximately 30-40% more efficient than conventional designs. 

 

The T 26 is controlled with the use of Swefog's Merlin microprocessor-based control module, which is the most advanced and most versatile smoke machine controller ever made for use in a commercial smoke machine.

The work on developing the T 26 continued for almost two years, between 2003 and the end of 2004. It is by far the most demanding and costly project for the company so far, but the end result was fantastic. 

The Merlin electronics is 100% software controlled, and will be used - with modified softwares - as a platform for many new Swefog models coming up.

 

All through the years Swefog has been an important supplier to the professional lighting industry. Many things have changed, competitors have come and gone, models have been introduced and discontinued. But there is one thing that never changes; Our passion for making the finest smoke & haze generating machines.