I would like to welcome all of you to the TTI Group's 2017 full-year result announcement. The Group had a strong year, delivering once again a record revenue, profit, and gross margin. Our track record delivering outstanding results has continued in 2017. Our goal is to continue on focusing on our priorities on segments that deliver the highest return for our stakeholders, and to keep investing in products for future development. We have delivered eight consecutive years of revenue growth and nine consecutive years of gross margin improvement, which is a testament for the Group's strategy. Our focus on new product development continues, and I'm extremely confident about our future. I will now pass on the floor to Mr. Joe Galli, our CEO, and Frank Chan, our CFO, and you will hear some exciting statements be made. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Frank, why don't you start with the financial results, please?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As Chairman highlighted, another set of record results for TTI. Our sales increased by 10.6% to over $6 billion from the outstanding performance of our power equipment division, together with solid growth in all geography regions fueled by our exciting innovative products launched across all divisions. Milwaukee continued to deliver over 21% growth, outperforming the growth in the industrial and professional market. Momentum of RYOBI ONE+ also remained very strong and delivered double-digit growth as well. Gross margin increased by $241 million, or 12.1%, to $2.2 billion, with gross margin improved for the ninth consecutive year, as Chairman mentioned, to 36.7%, an increase of 50 basis points as compared to last year or 2016. The improvement mainly coming from new products, mix, volume, productivity gains through automation, value engineering, and our focus on global supply chain.
EBIT increased by 15.3% to $519 million, with a 40 basis points margin improvements to 8.5%. Net profit increased by 15% to $417 million. Net profit margin increased by 30 basis points to 7.8%. Earnings per share also increased by 15% to $0.257 per share. The board recommended a final dividend of HKD 0.3975 per share, an increase of 32.5% over that of last year. Together with the HKD 0.2775 interim dividend paid, the total dividend amount to HKD 0.675 per share, an increase of 35% over that of 2016, representing a payout ratio of 34%. It has always been our target that our EBIT improvements to outperform our revenue growth. We've managed to deliver this target.
Our sales delivered a 9% CAGR, compound annual growth rate, from 2011 to 2017, whereas our EBIT delivered a 15% CAGR for the same period. Power equipment division accounting for 84.7% of the group's business, led by Milwaukee and RYOBI, delivered a 14.9% growth in sales. Europe, despite still a challenging market, our power equipment division managed to deliver a 13.8% growth. Operating profits increased by 18.9% with a 40 basis point margin improvements to now 10%. Floor care and appliances business, representing only 15.3% of the group's revenue, was down by 8.3%. During the year, this division is in transition into cordless technology for floor cleaning and started to exit from certain non-strategic, non-core corded vacuum business, resulting in the decrease in the revenue. The cordless business, however, deliver a double-digit growth as compared to that of last year, an endorsement that our new strategy is effective.
The division delivered a small profit of $7 million during the transition from corded to cordless. We believe that the sales and operating margins of this division will improve as the industry transition from corded to cordless. From a geographic perspective, North America remained as our major market, accounting for 76.3% of the group's revenue, delivering an 11.2% increase in sales. Power equipment sales in this region grew by 14%. Our European business grew by 3.4% overall. Again, as I mentioned, our European power equipment business been up by 13.8%, just that the overall growth was diluted by the decrease in our floor care businesses in this region. Sales momentum in the rest of the world, led by Australia and South Korea, been very strong. We delivered a 20.8% growth. Rest of the world now account for 8.6% of the group's total revenue.
Power equipment in this region actually grew by 24.6%. Total SG&A increased by 11.2%, representing 28.2% of the group's revenue, which is pretty comparable to that of last year. The increase mainly coming from the increase in our strategic selling, advertising, and distribution expenses to penetrate new markets and segments, and to fuel the growth momentum. R&D spend remained at 2.7% of the group's revenue, same as that of last year. We've been able to leverage our revenue growth against increase in administrative expenses, with administrative expenses only increased by 4.2% on a sales increase of 10.6%. Net finance costs increased by 35% but only represent 0.23% of the group's revenue. The increase was due to the increase in the volume of business and that US LIBOR increased three times during 2017, offsetting the cost reduction we've managed to achieve throughout the year.
As a result of that, our effective cost of borrowing was slightly higher as compared to 2016. We will further leverage our very strong balance sheet and liquidity for more efficient and cost-effective financing solutions to control our finance costs. Also, in 2017, we took a one-time tax charge due to the tax law reform in the U.S. Through our very effective tax plans and strategy, we've been able to mitigate this one-time effect and have our effective tax rate be comparable to that of last year's 7.7%. We will continue to leverage our global operations and align our strategy to cope with various tax policies, charges, changes, with efficient and effective tax plans to continue to maintain our effective tax rates low going forward.
Our balance sheet continues to strengthen with net current assets increased by 31.9% to close to $1.5 billion, and shareholders' equity increased by 14.2% to $2.7 billion. The Group was in a net cash position at the end of the year as compared to a gearing of 5.2% in 2016. With a very healthy free cash flow generated together with our very disciplined working capital management and CapEx spend, we believe that this net cash position is very sustainable going forward. One key element to the improvement in our gearing is our very focused working capital management. Working capital as a percentage of sales in 2017 been very comparable to that of 2016 at 16.5%. Inventory was at 88 days, same as that of interim 2017 and two days higher than 2016. The additional inventory carrying been more than compensated by the six days increase in payables.
We projected that the payable days will remain at least in the high 80 days range to continue to finance the inventory carrying. Receivable days higher by five days to 67 days due to the timing of shipment. Our receivables are of the highest quality and no collection issues is anticipated. CapEx spend for the year was at $205 million, very much in line with our budget. We will continue to invest in new products, productivity, efficiencies, and quality. For 2018, we project our CapEx will be in the range of about $250 million, approximately 70%-75% spent in operations and the balance in infrastructures. Expanding R&D centers, labs, distribution and logistic centers, and production capacities. As mentioned, we were in a net cash position end 2017. Bank balances increased by 7.3% and total debts reduced by 8.5% as compared to that of last year.
Debt maturing in more than 12 months now account for 66% of our total debts. In 2017, we structured 12% of our debts in fixed rates as compared to 100% floating rate in 2016. In view of the potential further rate increase, we will focus in managing our financial resources and debt portfolios to be more cost efficient going forward. I would now pass the floor to our CEO, Mr. Joe Galli.
Frank, thank you. It's a pleasure to be able to share results that this team has worked so hard to deliver. As Frank pointed out, we were up over 10% this year, 10.6%, which is way above the growth rate of the markets that we serve. What's really exciting here is we have so much potential in so many parts of our company. This slide illustrates the nadir of our floor care business. I know we're going to get many questions here. I'll talk about power equipment, of course, but I've never felt better about the future of this company's floor care operation. We have a fantastic new product plan in floor care, and I think that you'll see that we're on the right track here shortly. Now let's look at the P&L. Net profit up 15%, EBIT up over 15%.
Our model within company is to grow sales close to double-digit every year, have gross margin grow at a faster rate. SG&A doesn't grow as fast as gross margin, and therefore, we improve EBIT at a rate that's above sales. Our SG&A, Frank, as you point out, was up. A lot of people have asked us, "Geez, it looks like the market's getting tougher. You're spending more money on advertising to get the same sales." Actually, that's not at all what we're doing. If you look at the two tools, we are developing one new category after another, and we invest upfront when we launch these new categories in end-user marketing, geographic-focused expansion. That is the driver of SG&A.
When you have a brand-new category like lighting or like drain cleaning, or like cordless mowers, which we are revolutionizing a global $8 billion market, the SG&A investment in those areas has nothing to do with toughness in the market conditions. In our core areas, we're actually spending less SG&A than we were in the past because we're ahead of our competitors. I know we'll get questions on this, Frank, and we can discuss it as we go. This chart really says it all. For eight years, we have increased our gross margin as a % of sales significantly without any hiccup, interruption, or excuses. Commodities go up or down, currency changes, and the gross margin just goes one way. I feel very confident that chart over the next five years will continue to illustrate the same sort of incremental improvement year after year.
I have to say, there's not many companies that can show you a chart like that for eight years, again, without any excuses, without blaming the economy, the environment, the President of the U.S., any of these other macro issues that seem to be very topical these days, right? We can't control who gets elected in political office, but our commitment and strategy is to control this trend. The other thing, there's a lot of talk about tariff, and tariff is always, of course, designed to attack dumping. We are growing double-digit each year with a gross margin that goes up. That means we're not going into the U.S. and taking market share on price. We are not a target or focus of any sort of dumping. We're taking share with higher prices, right?
That really makes us quite different issue in terms of the discussions in Washington today. Okay. Frank pointed out our disciplined working capital management. We had $334 million last year of free cash flow, $334 million. I've told you in the past, this company will be a cash machine. I think we're starting to show the ability to invest aggressively in fixed capital around the world, and in working capital to serve our customers, our service levels are fantastic, while we generate a lot of cash. This is a very exciting trend that you can expect to continue. Cash flow is a big deal for us, and it's going to be a strength of the company. We look at sales growth versus headcount growth as a basic measure of productivity.
Once again, Frank, for 10 years in a row, our sales have grown at a faster rate than headcount. We are adding headcount. We have to, right? Last year in the U.S., we hired over 800 people, in fact. We're hiring engineers all over the world like crazy. We're not going to under-invest in the strategic areas of the company in order to make our numbers. In fact, we're over-investing in engineering, particularly software development engineering, in order to drive the future growth. I think this chart really illustrates a disciplined productivity that this is a way to measure where you can't really doctor anything. It's a pure measure of productivity and managerial effectiveness. Okay, now, this is the number. We should leave this chart up for a long time.
If you see that wall on my left, if you just stare at that for a second and look at that 21.7%, what you're looking at is a once-in-a-generation, unbelievable, epic change in the marketplace. We are the Silicon Valley of power tools. People compare us to a lot of companies. We are not a company that's desperate to acquire other companies to make our numbers. We're focused on organic growth, and we're growing our core business 21.7% with all the issues around the world, with all the well-managed competitors we have, and we're doing it again and again and again. Now, year after year, we have pulled this off. In fact, look at this chart, the compound annual growth rate of Milwaukee for five years, over 20%. These numbers, it used to be a little easier when the base was small.
Now, I look at the base and it's not so easy. I can tell you that we have plans in place to perpetuate that compound annual growth rate for the next five years. You will see. The only regret I have today is I can't show you the products that we can't reveal publicly until July. I'll just show you a little taste of what's coming this year. I can tell you strategically, we have such aggressive plans for new product that we are determined to not ever go below 20% growth in Milwaukee, again over the next five years. Beyond five years, it's hard to see, but it's pretty clear five years out. Okay. Now, we had an amazing year in North America last year, 20.5% in Milwaukee growth. The Europeans, the Australians, and our team in Asia exceeded that growth rate.
People ask me all the time, "How are you doing outside the U.S.? You guys are very strong with The Home Depot. You're strong in the U.S." When Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and our Asian theater all outgross the U.S., that's a good sign, right? Now the base is massive in the U.S., the percentages are hard to change in terms of our sales, North America versus the rest of the world. This tells you that long term, we have traction everywhere that matters around the globe today. It's not just a U.S. play, like in the old days. Anyhow, very exciting times. Okay, we talked about the long-term potential served market. I'm afraid I made a mistake the last time we talked about this.
The closer we get to categories that we've never been in, the bigger they become and the more potential there is. There's a lot of new categories that we're focused on. I don't want any investor to believe that we're anywhere near topped out in terms of growth. If anything, I think we've misled you, and we've underestimated the size and the scope of that market that cordless labor-saving devices can potentially become. The more new cordless products we develop, the bigger this pie seems to get. Look, whether it's $50 billion in 5 years, $57 billion or $48 billion, there's a lot of room to grow here. We won't get all the business. We are on the vanguard here. We're the innovators. We're the disruptors. We're developing, in many cases, the cordless technology that is creating this market.
Our competitors are going to follow, and they're going to sell products in the same categories that we do. They'll sell them at lower prices. Their margins will be lower. Their product won't be quite as good. That's okay. We don't want to get all the market, we just want the part of the market that yields the highest profit and the most growth potential. That's exactly what we'll do. Now, predictably, I was on Bloomberg this morning, and for the 7,212th time I was asked, "What do you think about the housing situation in the U.S.? My goodness, isn't that going to affect you?" The res/con market in the U.S. is very important to us. It's almost 8% of the demand for the company.
The other 92% of demand is in all these other verticals that we never really discuss because I think, in general, the press and many analysts just don't realize how broad the potential is for cordless labor-saving devices to generate radical improvements in productivity and job site safety. I just don't think we've done a good job, Stephan, in explaining over the years this potential. I can assure you, res/con could collapse tomorrow, and you will not hear any word from TTI about any change in expectations. We love res/con. We hope it grows, and it's growing like crazy, but it's not the driver of the company. This is important. I regret that we were tempted, I regret we can't show you what we're going to launch in the second half of this year.
That means I can't wait till August, then we'll update you. Let me tell you just a few of the things that we can discuss publicly now that are off to a great start. Our competitors are racing to try and match our brushless motor technology, which is called FUEL. The FUEL cordless introductions in the company have been a spectacular success. The good news is we see FUEL like Apple sees iPhone. We want to have a new generation of our FUEL technology basically every 18 or 24 months. We just launched the second generation of our subcompact FUEL drill drivers. We launched this in January. No one else even has matched our first generation. We've already rolled out the second generation. This is a good example. Here's an inflator, cordless inflator that you can use on a job site.
You can inflate any vehicle, a truck, a wheelbarrow, a gator, whatever job site vehicle that has an inflatable tire. That little 12-volt inflator is a fantastic addition to the Milwaukee fleet that you would buy for a job site. This rivet tool, there's a brand called POP Rivet that I used to manage at Black & Decker. It was manual. It was an unwieldy nightmare to activate. This is an elegant cordless rivet tool that activates in seconds and will revolutionize the way sheet metal workers attach one piece of metal to another. First one ever. We rolled it out. It's off to a fantastic start. Last year we rolled out Milwaukee M18 Outdoor. The Milwaukee brand has never participated in the outdoor market. In the DIY arena, RYOBI controls now the cordless outdoor market around the world. We'll get to that in a sec.
We rolled out Milwaukee at prices that were in the ionosphere, as an experiment to see if Milwaukee brand would work in a different category. The number one selling item we had last year in many of our industrial construction distributors was the new Milwaukee string trimmer. It performed so well at a price that's basically double the normal string trimmer, that I think we all got caught off guard with the sales rate. Believe me, the forecast will be up this year. We love the outdoor space for cordless because we're basically moving from petrol, from the greenhouse gas issue, to an environmentally friendly lithium solution that we believe will be embraced.
Whatever the president of the U.S. does with this Paris issue, we believe that this will be embraced long term around the world and is a major factor, too, for the company in terms of driving growth. Okay. Let's talk about some new categories. I'll get back to the SG&A, Frank, item that we were talking about. Here, okay, we've launched a brand-new category called drain cleaning. This is not a terribly sexy category. Plumbers use these devices to make sure that your plumbing works well in an apartment or in a residential environment. The incumbent competitors here, there's only a couple. This has been a duopoly forever. They have sold corded products. Anyhow, the industry has been locked into the same product technology for years.
We will disrupt this industry globally with an amazing range of cordless drain cleaning products, little ones, big ones, high voltage, low voltage. Some of these products have two or three hundred feet long snakes that go into the plumbing. If you have a large facility, a large property, you can clean the plumbing out without the typical large devices that are sold by our competitors. The most important thing here is it's cordless, and it's the same battery platform as that we use in our power tool. Again, brand-new category. When we launch that, we have to add some SG&A because we have to call in a new user. We have a new department in Home Depot. We have a new department in Grainger, et cetera.
There's SG&A associated with that, which has absolutely, Frank, nothing to do with any competitor lowering their price on a circular saw, right? I need to do a better job of making sure investors understand that our SG&A investments are not reactive to our competitors. They are forward-thinking attacks in markets that are currently not cordless, and we intend to change them, right? Here's another example, lighting. For years, lighting has been a nightmare on a job site. Halogen bulbs are hot, incandescent burns out, fluorescent doesn't work. Then you have the other side. Lighting has been powered by petrol generators, which you plug the light into. You have a noisy, polluting generator on a job site day and night when you're trying to light up the work area.
What we have designed is this broad, sprawling range of new cordless lighting that uses the, of course, LED, so you never have to change the bulb. Never. The bulb here is forever. The battery is the same battery we use in a power tool. We have, as you can see, an unbelievable array of lights for various applications. We have focus lights, broad lights for power utility workers. We have lights for miners, et cetera. You will see in the next five years, lighting grow into a business that will be far bigger than anybody expects. The support from our customers and our end users here is very exciting. Okay. This is another slide you could leave up for a long time. This is the broadest line of lithium cordless professional power tools in the world, Milwaukee M18.
The problem with this slide is that we're about out of space. The next time we talk, there will be a lot more of these new items on this particular slide. We're committed to having the most extensive range of lithium cordless in the professional marketplace. I think what we'll launch the next three years will dwarf what we've launched the last three. It's a very exciting time for this. This is the world's broadest range of subcompact cordless, Milwaukee M12. We find that this market is underserved by our competitors. It's the fastest-growing part of the global cordless market. To have both in the same brand is a powerful statement from Milwaukee. Shifting gears, we have a wonderful opportunity since the Milwaukee brand is so hot today. We have an opportunity to develop the accessory side of the market.
This is an example. HOLE DOZER is a carbide-tipped hole saw. Hole saws are used to drill large-diameter holes in wood, metal, plastic, et cetera. This is a revolutionary product. It works great. We rolled it out last year. The DUST TRAP is an accessory that captures silica dust so that you have a safer work site environment when you're drilling holes in masonry. Okay. Here's another brand-new category that we haven't talked much about, and we're about to. Storage, tool storage is an enormous category. In fact, one of our competitors actually doesn't name their business Tools. They name their entire business Tools and Storage. That tells you storage is a enormous market that has a lot of potential since we have not even participated here in this space. We just rolled out something called PACKOUT. We were stunned at the reaction of PACKOUT.
If you go online and read some of the blogs and some of the reactions, you would think that we have just launched the iPhone here. The most elegant solution for storing tools, accessories, safety equipment for a job site. It's great for your garage. You wheel it into the job site. These different cases will all interlock, therefore, it's a system. The system is unique. We control the IP, and we were stunned at the reaction of PACKOUT when we rolled it out in the U.S. and Europe here in the past six months. We're going to have to start talking about storage as a category at TTI as well, because it's not going to be a little thing, and we have a vastly superior solution here versus the competitors that have served the space for many years. Okay.
Datacom installation is one of these categories that investors miss when they think about res/con. If you think about every residential or commercial building that's now under construction, there's a wall somewhere with Datacom, and it's massive. It requires different tools than what electricians used in the past. We have invented a series of Datacom installation tools. These are hand tools. This won't be a big business this year, but long term, this gets us into another space, another vertical that we didn't control in the past. What I love about this is we'll do the hand tools first, but then we will come up with cordless hand tools, power-assisted hand tools with our cordless technology that'll really revolutionize the space. Anyhow, we don't even know what we don't know yet in Datacom. It's a new category.
I can tell you, we're ahead of the market here, and it's an example of our innovation. Okay, this is a pretty slide. This category is the antithesis of the last category I showed you. Mechanics hand tools have been around forever. The shade tree mechanic used to be a big driver of demand in tools. Of course, those days are over. There's not a lot of shade tree mechanic demand around a Tesla. There is a huge market for mechanics hand tools in industrial or construction applications, and we've never been in this. This is an enormous global market that is brand new to us. We just rolled out a line of innovative, high-priced tools. We're focused on different competitors than what you're used to seeing us compete against, and I think the reaction so far has been very exciting. Here we go. Okay.
We have a new innovative line, David, of levels. These are concrete levels that also help you screed the concrete, which every masonry contractor has to do. No one ever had this kind of launch, and off to a great start. Okay, this picture, five years ago, we said we were going to get into the hand tool market. I think we're on the right track. That slide represents 700 different hand tools up from zero when we started. We have consistently said we plan to build a billion-dollar market around Milwaukee hand tools, and so far, we see nothing that will stop us from achieving a billion. The margins are good here, and it's a great complement to what we currently do today in power tools. Okay, if we shift gears, the RYOBI brand is now the number 1 brand in the world for DIY.
There's really no number two. RYOBI has captured the number one position for DIY power tools globally and for DIY cordless power tools and for outdoor equipment. That's really pretty incredible given where we've been in the past. The Black & Decker brand controlled this market for 80 years, and those days are over now, and we'll be number one. We will launch a series of new RYOBI ONE+ cordless products this year, as we have in the last 10 years. A focus here, interestingly, is floor care. RYOBI floor care is off to an amazing start because there's 30% household penetration in the U.S. for the RYOBI ONE+ battery system. That system, the world's largest, that is on a wall on my right, there are 30% of all U.S. households that now have that system.
We're also incredibly well-penetrated in Australia and over in Western Europe. The potential here for us to take floor care technology that we may develop in the floor care business and launch it under RYOBI is significant because people already have the power source. We can launch a product that will outperform all the vacuum cleaner companies today at a price that's way below because you don't buy the battery and the charger up front. This RYOBI Stick Vac is a good example. Here's another example. Here's a wet/dry vac that performs great. It's portable, it's cordless, and actually, its cleaning efficacy is above a corded traditional wet/dry vac because of the motor and the electronics. Here's another example. This is an interesting looking device called a Devour.
A Devour is a surface cleaning device you push, and it has the wheels that will rotate thanks to the cordless motor and battery. It helps you rapidly clean up a job site, a garage, a deck, et cetera. Devour gives you the idea that this thing will suck up anything, and leave you with a pristine job site, a pristine work surface, et cetera. It's the same battery as the RYOBI ONE+ system. Now here's a new area for us, pool vac cleaning. We have a vacuum cleaner with a RYOBI ONE+ battery, and you can now use this to vacuum your pool. It's a new category, new department for us in the Home Depots of the world. Again, it leverages that battery technology that we've had.
When you ask me about floor care, it's true, we have a lot of work to do in our floor care business. Floor care is not just Hoover and not just Vax. We have the world's number one DIY brand here called RYOBI. It's a wonderful way for us to leverage our floor care technology and go after that same user, maybe a little different way, in a little different aisle in The Home Depot. We're very excited about our floor care business, not only because of Hoover and Vax, but also because of these other brands. When we launched lighting in Milwaukee, we revolutionized a category. We can take that technology, we can reduce the specs a bit for a DIY application, and we roll out a whole line of RYOBI lighting.
The beauty is when we have Milwaukee on the vanguard of technology at a very high price point, we can take that technology and it can cascade down into the other brands in the company. If you think about it, that's a very powerful model because we don't just develop the industrial markets, we also want to continue to perpetuate our DIY leadership. That's a good example of that. Okay. One of the categories I'm most excited about is the cordless mower space. We sold no lawnmowers five years ago. The company was never in the category. The global market for petrol lawnmowers is $8 billion plus. This is a massive market. A petrol lawnmower is a polluting, noisy device. It requires a trip to the petrol station every week.
Every year you have to go to the lawnmower shop and have it tuned up, you have the carburetor checked, et cetera. We plan to transform this market with the broadest line of cordless lawnmowers that's ever been sold. We're the global leader in lithium cordless mowers. We have different sizes because there tend to be indigenous requirements. The U.K. market has a smaller mower requirement. Bigger lots in the U.S., Canada, Australia require bigger mowers. We have a sprawling line. It'll grow like crazy. Right now, we're number one in the world in the cordless mower market. I think this category has more growth potential than anything we've looked at so far, except for Milwaukee, of course. What I love about the cordless mower is it's the Trojan horse.
If you think about the garage, you go into a garage and there's always a mower, a string trimmer, a hedge trimmer, a blower vac, a chainsaw. Usually, they're different brands. When we sell a mower with a detachable battery, we now are in the garage with the Trojan horse, and we believe that that user will be an easy candidate to add to her collection and buy the other various RYOBI outdoor products, and it all works off that same system, right? Because we have the only overarching system between power tools and outdoor, this is really a unique situation for TTI. Okay. This slide represents the full line of RYOBI cordless outdoor power equipment. We had to build a bigger garage to make the slide. This is now the world's broadest line and the highest performance line of outdoor cordless that's available.
Man, there's a lot more new stuff here that you will see. Okay. Turning to floor care. We're not pleased with the numbers we delivered last year in floor care. We're extremely pleased with the progress that our team has made. We have a good team on floor care. We're focused on it in the company. Frank, we sold a lot of inventory last year, legacy inventory at margins that aren't great to clean this business up. You've been hearing that for a long time, but I can assure you, we are extremely aggressive about moving forward in floor care, and it starts with just eliminating any inventory that's not going to be in demand here going forward. In the future, the focus of floor care will be cordless. What you see here is only the cordless stick vacs in the Hoover brand.
These all perform at the highest levels for the category. Our sales were, as Frank said, way up last year in cordless floor care, although the business was down overall. We also have developed a new line of Hoover carpet washers. The two focus categories we have in floor care are pole vacs and carpet washing. Carpet washing is the only non-cordless focus we have. Eventually, these will all be cordless as well. Right now, the carpet washing still needs a cord. The rest of the floor care area will be focused on cordless.
In our Oreck brand, this is a commercial brand, we've launched a new line of cordless pole vacs with a pod that serves It's a vacuum cleaner bag that will expand so you can collect the debris and discard it and not have the issue of dust contamination in the air as you empty the dust cup. Then, finally, maybe the most exciting floor care product we've developed is this product called the Blade. In the U.K., our R&D team flipped the motor on the side, it turns out that this configuration is more ergonomic, easier to use. It's really cool looking. The suction is fantastic. This will serve as a catalyst, we think, in the U.K. and perhaps elsewhere, to grow our cordless floor care business.
I wish, again, I could share with you what we're working on for floor care that we probably won't be able to announce until early next year. Our goal here is to, once again, revolutionize a market with a cordless solution that's different and better than our competitors. We have, I think, the clearest floor care plan that we've had in a decade. It's taken a long time to sort this out, I think the future has never been better in this category. I'm very confident you'll be impressed as you see us roll out over the next few years, the floor care technology and strategy that we have in place.
As you look at the future, I think we've demonstrated, Frank, year after year after year, no matter what the macroeconomic environment is, no matter what our competitors have come up with, we've demonstrated an ability to just deliver the numbers. I'm sure somebody will ask about acquisitions here in a minute. I think we are a company that was developed through brilliant acquisitions by Horst Pudwill. I can't imagine anyone that's done a better job in terms of acquisitions in our space over the years. We're at a point now where if we don't buy anything over the next three years, we will still deliver the kind of numbers you're seeing today. We don't need acquisitions. We're not a desperate acquirers. We don't have targets for how much acquisition revenue we're going to add to the company.
Our target is to deliver strong single-digit top-line growth and 15% style EBIT growth with Milwaukee growing 20% a year with no acquisition help whatsoever. I think our competitors have raced around the world looking at acquisitions. You can be the judge whether those have been wise investments or not, but we are not going to be desperate acquirers. Our focus is organic development, technology, new product, and core.
Joe, thank you very much. As we have witnessed from our presentation, I have no doubt that our strategy will continue to deliver exceptional results. Of course, there's always room for further improvement in certain areas as DNA productivity and synergies. I'm very confident that we will be successful in giving the right direction in future. We're not making any political prediction here, but I can assure you that we are extremely well-positioned to deal with any likely or unlikely event, and remain highly committed on executing and delivering our goals. I would like to thank you for your ongoing confidence and support for TTI. Thank you very much for attending.