FROM PRODUCT INNOVATION TO HURRICANE KATRINA REBUILDING - ORECK CORPORATION FOUNDER DAVID ORECK HONORED FOR LEADERSHIP

June 23, 2006

He developed a breakthrough product innovation and built it into a top consumer brand and leading national company that continues to grow and succeed after 40 years. Hit hard by Hurricane Katrina last year, his company came back quickly and powerfully against all odds.

David Oreck of vacuum cleaner fame, the founder of The Oreck Corporation, was recognized for his outstanding business leadership by Pace University and its prestigious Lubin School of Business. Oreck received an honorary Doctor of Commercial Science degree from Pace in its Centennial year.

"David Oreck is a true business genius whose ideas and marketing acumen created a corporate empire from a single product at the beginning," said Pace University President David A. Caputo. "Oreck Corporation's remarkable rebuilding of its business and its employees' lives after Hurricane Katrina exemplifies his leadership." The Pace University honorary degree citation praised Oreck as a "devoted and innovative founder, talented and driven chairman, and charitable civic leader."

Oreck lectures extensively at business schools throughout the country, imparting his expertise on building a brand and a business. David Oreck served as an Entrepreneur in Residence in 2003 at the Lubin School of Business, ranked in the top 20 business schools by USNews & World Report magazine, where students were fascinated by his ideas on how to build a premium brand.

David Oreck founded Oreck Corporation in 1963. Going up against industry giants, he developed a breakthrough, lightweight, effective 8-lb. upright vacuum cleaner. The New Orleans-based, family-run Oreck Corporation today sells products throughout North and South America, as well as in Europe and Asia, and employs 1,500 people in the U.S.

Named Heroes of Katrina in 2005 by CNN, the Oreck family is committed to business and jobs in the U.S.

Despite the devastation of Hurricane Katrina which hit both its New Orleans headquarters and Gulf Coast Mississippi plant, Oreck Corporation was the first to reopen a national headquarters in New Orleans and to reopen a plant on the Gulf Coast.

Oreck brought back jobs and hope to the company's employees, bringing in food, water, housing, generators, medical supplies and counselors in the aftermath of the hurricane. The company set up the Oreck Employee Relief Fund through the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, seeding it with a $500,000 corporate donation, and created a national donation drive for material contributions at Oreck Clean Home Centers across the country.

David stays true to the fundamentals that established the brand bearing his name. His advice to entrepreneurs and businesspeople: "Never give up. Never take no for an answer. When I first introduced my vacuum, the 'experts' told me, 'It's too light,'" he said. "I've sold millions of my eight-pound Oreck XLs all over the world."

"You have to be a marketing visionary and a strong business manager," said Oreck.

His company's own best salesman, David Oreck appears in Oreck's long-running advertising.

Under his leadership, the Oreck brand evolved into a Total Cleaning System^tm. The Oreck product line encompasses advanced hypo-allergenic bagged upright vacuum cleaners, canister vacuums with tools, multi-floor cleaning machines, air purifiers and cleaning solutions.

David Oreck also believed that controlling distribution is a key to success and developed his own retail operation. Oreck products are sold in 450 Oreck Clean Home Centers across the country.

David Oreck is the recipient of countless national advertising and marketing awards. He was awarded the American Marketing Association's "Marketer of the Year" in 2003 and was named both U.S. National Finalist and Louisiana Entrepreneur of the Year.

Before founding his own company, David Oreck helped introduce black and white and then color television while at RCA. He helped introduce other home breakthroughs from automatic washers to microwave ovens. At the start of the cable TV industry, he created a master antenna company in New York.

Born in Duluth, Minn., he joined the Army Air Force at the age of 18 and was a navigator in World War II on B-29s.