I'd like to welcome you to TTI's group of companies 2016 first half results announcement. Some of you look happy, some of you look sad. 12% dive as of now. We will make up for it. Don't worry. We are a solid company. The group had a strong first half, delivering another period of record revenue, profit, and gross margins. I'm particularly excited about our power tool equipment, our power business, power tool business as a whole, growing 13.6% before currency adjustment. Currencies, like Joe said this morning at Bloomberg, it's a difficult thing to predict. We had the Brexit issue, we had the Australian dollar, we had the Canadian dollar. I think we managed to do a fantastic job in our business over the past six months and going forward.
We delivered performance throughout all geographic regions while delivering our eighth consecutive period of gross margin on profit improvement. Our new product development remains as strong as ever, and I'm very confident about the strategy going forward in driving continuous improvement and focusing on innovation. I will now pass the floor to Mr. Joe Galli, our group CEO, and Frank Chan, our CFO, to go into more details with our figures and results. Frank, are you starting first or?
Yeah.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, I will start first. As Chairman stated, another set of record first half results. Our gross profit, our EBIT, and our net profits all increased for the seventh consecutive period, with our gross margin increased for the eighth consecutive halves. Our revenue increased by 8.6% to $2.6 billion. As Chairman said, currency had continued to negatively affected our top line upon translation. It's only upon translation. Excluding this currency effect, our revenue increased by 9.7%. We grew in all geographic regions through innovative new products and strategic marketing programs. Our power equipment businesses delivered double-digit revenue growth, outpaced the power tools industry. Milwaukee continued to lead the growth momentum, delivering another impressive growth of 20.2%, excluding FX globally. Gross margin increased from 35.6% to 36.1%, another 50 basis points improvement, with gross profits increased by 9.9% to $969 million.
EBIT increased by 11.3% to $201 million, with margin improved to 7.5%. Net profit increased by 11.6% to $177 million, with margins improved to 6.6%. Earnings per share also increased by similar percentage, 11.7% to $0.0969 per share. The board declared an interim dividend of HKD 0.20 per share, an increase of 25% over that of last year, representing a payout ratio of 26.7% as compared to 23.8% same period last year. Power equipment division accounting for over 82% of the group's revenue, led by Milwaukee's strong growth, together with our highly recognized RYOBI brand in both consumer tools and outdoor products, also delivered double-digit growth, increased by 12.6% or 13.6% after currency. Operating profits increased by 15.4% to $185 million, with margins improved to 8.4%.
Floor care and appliances division's revenue accounting for the balance 17%-18%, declined by 6.7% or 5.3% after FX. Our cordless categories, our commercial business, and our European business all delivered growth in the first six months. Operating profit was at $16 million, with a margin of 3.4%. Actually, it's 150 basis points improvements if we compare to the margin delivered by floor care division of the full year 2015. This reflected our strategic decision to focus on cordless and commercial cleaning categories while exiting non-strategic low-margin businesses. We believe our floor care business is now well positioned to leverage our powerful brands and ORECK, and the stream of exciting new products, which Joe will share with you later, to drive the business to a new success in the years to come.
From a geographic perspective, North America market, representing over 75% of the group's revenue, delivered a 9.7% growth. The growth actually will be double digit at 10.1% if we exclude the FX effect. Europe, despite the uncertain economic conditions and currency headwinds, we still managed to deliver a 5.5% increase or 7.3% excluding currencies. Our Milwaukee and consumer power tools and outdoor products actually delivered double-digit growth in this region as well. Rest of the world, again, due to currency decline, delivered only a 4.8% growth, but 11.4% excluding currency in local currencies. Australia and South Korea continue to be the main growth driver in this region. SG&A increased it by 9.5% to 28.7% to total revenue.
The increase was mainly due to volume growth, strategic spend to maintain our growth momentum, market share gains, and geographic expansions. R&D grew in line with revenue, representing 2.6% of turnover, comparable to the spend that of last year. Administrative expenses increased it by only 7.6%, further leveraging on our revenue growth. Net finance cost remains flat as compared to last year at $8 million, despite a revenue growth of close to 10%, cost of financing slightly higher during the period, and when compared to that of last year, and higher working capital requirements in the first half. Net finance costs only represent 0.3% of total revenue. Effective tax rates remained at 8.5%. We continue to maintain that this effective tax rate will be between 8%-10%, and we believe that it is very sustainable. Our balance sheet remains strong.
We've showed this equity increased by 9% to $2.23 billion with net current assets increased by 15.2% to $978 million, close to a billion. Gearing ratio remains low at 16% as compared to 17.7% last year. Working capital requirement is normally higher at interim, and gearing is projected to come down by end of the year. Working capital as a percentage to sales was at 19.3% below our target level of 20%, which we believe that is best in the industry. Increase in inventory days is mainly due to the build to support the strong demand in the second half of this year, which is very much in line with the strategy to maintain our service level. The increase in inventory days were partly financed by the increase in the payable days. Increase in the receivable days, DSOs, was just because of timing.
Our receivables remain to be of very high quality and no collection issues as anticipated. CapEx spend increase was due to the timing mainly. Operating CapEx for the full year will be at $170 million-$180 million as projected, together with infrastructure CapEx, to expand capacity to a total of approximately $200 million for the full year 2016. Total net debts reduced by 2% when compared to same period last year, with the strategic increase in working capital and higher CapEx spend during the period. We continue to maintain an approximately 65% short-term, 35% long-term debt structure. Currently, all our debts are on floating rate to capture the still low-cost environment. However, we will adjust our portfolio when we consider appropriate for the long-term benefit of the group. With that said, I'll pass the floor to Mr. Joe Galli, our CEO.
Thank you, Frank. Just to recap our financial results, we had record sales. Our sales were up at local currency 9.7%. We outgrew the market again with outstanding market share gains because of our new product flow in our power equipment business. In fact, power equipment was up for the six-month period, 13.6%. That's an extraordinary level of growth in the markets we compete in. I'll show you the flagship Milwaukee business was actually up 20%, again, for yet another six-month period, in a marketplace that's growing low single digits. We were thrilled with our performance in the first half in terms of top-line growth. Floor care and appliances was down 5.3%. Remember, this business includes appliances which we're exiting. We have a lot of OEM business that we moved away from, and there's parts of that business that are no longer strategic or profitable.
The top line is down, but we have tremendous enthusiasm about our Floor care business out over the next three years. It's not a business that's going to change overnight, but you will see, and I'll show you today some direction. We are very confident that Floor care will contribute to this company's profit growth as we go forward. I think our credibility is pretty good because 82% of the company is setting record after record with one six-month period of success after another. In fact, you see the P&L, as Frank pointed out, sales up 10%, gross margin up another 50 bps. That's the eighth consecutive period, Frank, of gross margin improvement. Our top line grows double digit while the gross margin goes up, which means we're growing the company without cutting price.
We're actually growing the company with premium price products that are priced above competition, thanks to the outstanding technology and the new product machine that we have built in this company. Of course, net profit up at a record level, up 12% on the net line. We are investing some of our gross margin improvement back in SG&A in a very thoughtful plan so that we can drive more new product in the future. We can build and market our brands, and also are committed to geographic expansion. We had, as Frank pointed out, outstanding success outside of our core North American market. In fact, our European team did a tremendous job in the first half, in Asia we're seeing real traction in some focus markets that we're after.
The company is no longer just a North American story, and that's thanks to the investments that we make in SG&A. As we point out, this is not an easy thing to do. Gross margin up six-month period to six-month period, year after year. The progress here is extraordinary, and I can tell you that this will continue. We believe over the next five years. There's still a lot of room for TTI to expand that gross margin. As Floor Care gains traction with its new products, as we continue to capture market share with our leadership position in our Milwaukee and our RYOBI, you will see the gross margin of the company will continue to show excellent, steady, solid progress. It's not like there's one incident, Frank, that drove gross margin up. This is 30 basis points, 50 basis points, 70 basis points.
Every six months, you see us grinding out improvement in gross margin while we grow the company double digits. I can tell you, this is a very difficult thing to do in the industry that we're in, and something we're very proud of. Frank pointed out inventory and working capital. We still are best in the world in terms of managing our working capital in this company. We put inventory in place in the first six months to cover the new product flow to customers like Home Depot, who demand high service level. We believe that we have the highest level of service to our customers of anyone in the industry, and we will be rewarded for that as time goes on. With that said, we're very focused on working capital and on inventory specifically.
This is an area that you'll see improvement on this year and in the next couple of years. We won't compromise service to our customers. That's a key part of TTI. A basic measure of productivity, of course, is looking at our sales growth versus headcount. Sales are up 10%, headcount up in the six-month period, Frank, 1.5%. What does that tell you? That tells you that our operations are increasingly efficient. The productivity plans, the automation that we're investing in is working beautifully. That's another reason why our gross margin continues to go up and another reason why we have so much potential in gross margin.
We've made the expensive and difficult investments in CapEx to allow the company to offset the potential inflation of labor and to continue to improve our profit as we grow the company, no matter what happens with the labor force that we work with around the world. I shared with you that Milwaukee was up 20% in the first half. If you look back over the last three years, we're growing this business at a 20% clip like clockwork. This is an extraordinary, unprecedented level of growth in a mature global power tool industrial marketplace. It's amazing. We are doing it not just in our core market. North America had a fantastic first half. Europe was up 22% in the first half. 22% growth in Milwaukee in Europe. With all the issues in Europe, we are taking market share like crazy and growing at an incredible clip.
In the rest of world, our business is paced by Australia, where we've become the number one power tool company by far, and we had an amazing first half in a tough economy. Actually, Frank mentioned Korea. We have invested in South Korea. We put a Milwaukee organization in place, and our results are so far ahead of plan, it's highly encouraging. We will build a very significant Milwaukee business in Korea, which is an advanced market that rewards productivity and technically advanced products. You'll see that as time unfolds. Overall power equipment up 13.6%. We have OEM businesses here that were actually down where we're de-emphasizing. Milwaukee up 20%. RYOBI had a record-breaking amazing first half. The RYOBI brand has become the number one brand of DIY power tools and outdoor equipment in the world. The number one brand.
I don't think investors realize yet what this means. The former number one brand, which is a company I used to work for, held that position for 80 years. We have passed everybody in the global DIY marketplace, and I don't think investors realize yet what this means. TTI is now the number one DIY brand of power tools and power equipment worldwide with RYOBI. The key to RYOBI's success has been the RYOBI cordless ONE+ system, which is now the number one cordless DIY program that's available in the world today. With all the competitors that we face and all the challenges, for us to be number one in DIY is a pretty extraordinary situation. Of course, Milwaukee is the fastest-growing industrial brand in the world today in power tools. Long term, the potential for Milwaukee is unbelievable.
I don't believe investors have any idea of how much upside there is with these two brands. Let's talk about why are we in a position of leadership. David, hand me a water, please. Today, TTI is the clear leader in the most important part of the power tool market, which is cordless. We have invested like crazy over the last decade in breakthrough leadership cordless technology. We did it before it was fashionable. We did it when the whole world was selling nickel cadmium. We invested in lithium. We invested heavily in onboard electronics. We invested in all sorts of advanced technology, and the payoff is in this room today. The payoff will be very evident over the next five years. Our competitors are trying to catch up. They're trying to follow us.
We love the position of leadership, but we plan to not relinquish that position, and you'll see why here in a moment. With Milwaukee, we have designed the FUEL program, which is the world's most advanced cordless power tool line, thanks to a brushless motor that's really based on onboard electronics and advanced circuitry in the tool. To make the FUEL leadership position even stronger, we are pleased to announce today that we have developed the world's most powerful battery for a power tool. This is a nine amp 18-volt battery. When used with the tools that we offer today and with the new tools I'll show you get unprecedented corded type of performance with cordless tools. All the competitors will try and follow this. No one has one today. I'm sure after today, there'll be a lot of announcements.
We're first, once again, and we're first with, again, the world's most powerful battery for power tool use. With that battery, we can do extraordinary things with cordless. For example, we have introduced last month the world's first full-size rotary hammer for drilling holes in concrete. For those of you who do a lot of large diameter hole drilling in concrete, this is a 5 kg rotary hammer. Literally, it'll drill holes of 1 9/16 in diameter. That's a full-size rotary hammer, and there's no cord. It's unbelievable. It's actually lighter than a corded version. You can do demolition work. You can take a chisel and chip with this product. With our 9 amp battery for 20 consecutive minutes. That's the most rigorous application you can imagine, and we're the only company in the world that's got one of these rotary hammers.
Next, we have developed what we believe will be the top-performing cordless miter saw in the world. Historically, people have tried to develop cordless miter saws with little tiny blades, which give you an unsatisfactory performance. We have competitors that are now taking their corded miter saws and trying to adapt them to cordless. The problem is they weigh a ton, and they're awkward, unwieldy to take to the job site. The whole idea of cordless is to be small, compact, lightweight, maneuverable and portable. That's what this saw gives you. This saw will be a 10-inch saw. It will perform 96% of the applications a miter saw user requires, and it'll be 25 pounds lighter than a product that our leading competitor just introduced last week. 25 pounds lighter, which is a big deal to the end user. This is just the beginning.
We have a full line of FUEL Milwaukee cordless nailers. We launched this two months ago. We can't keep these in stock. These nailers dramatically outperform the competitors in the category. Our largest customer is delighted with the performance of these products. They're premium priced, but they work so well. Once people pick these up and try them, they won't put them down. They're just going to buy them. They are priced at a level that the industry has never seen for these kind of nailing products. Today, we'll show you this is the first ever full-size cordless polisher. This is a great example of our cordless technology. This product, which weighs two pounds lighter than a corded polisher, allows you to polish your car, your boat, your Ferrari, whatever, your motorcycle, without a cord. It's so light that it can be used by any end user.
Landscapers love it. They can polish a sculpture and a statue in the garden. This will open up a whole new marketplace for the category of polishing, as opposed to always having a generator or a cord. It performs so well, people can't believe. They look for the cord. They can't believe the technology. Because of our motors, because of the electronics on board, we're able to design cordless products that actually perform better than the corded products they replace. This is amazing. Not only do we outperform our competitors' cordless options in the power tool business, but we can beat the corded products that have been used for 20 years because the motors are smaller and because the tools are so cleverly engineered with a series of innovations on board. We also have developed the world's best-performing drywall screw gun.
If you ever go into a job site in North America, you'll see a lot of drywall, and you'll see these products used to drive drywall screws to put up for the interior construction. Because of the brushless motor in the onboard electronics, this drywall screw gun is faster than any corded or cordless screw gun in the market today. It's also much more quiet because the brushless motor has a much more forgiving sound. If you've ever been in a job site in the U.S. and you've heard a contractor use one of these, the sound is like nails on a chalkboard. That's why they always buy earplugs to cover up their ears. This has got a delightful sound. It's fast like crazy, and it's a pound lighter than anything in its class. As you can see, this just goes on and on.
We have so many of these leadership cordless products in the works that the market's about to be attacked by a Milwaukee range that will permanently change this marketplace. The upside potential, if you just think of the next five years, we're going to keep doing this year after year for the next five years. All these products are highly accretive in terms of gross margin. All these products create an aftermarket of batteries. When people buy cordless, they come back, and they buy extra batteries. They come back, and they buy extra tools that work off those batteries. As you can see, this is a virtuous cycle that will generate an amazing long-term financial performance for the company. One of the most exciting things we've ever done in an area where we're way ahead of our competition again is ONE-KEY.
ONE-KEY is actually a range of products where we have a Bluetooth capability. Our tools connect to your iPhone through a unique Bluetooth with our own Milwaukee cloud. We launched this six months ago. As of today, the Milwaukee Bluetooth app is in the top 10% of all apps downloaded on Apple. The top 10%. Can you imagine all the apps? It may not be in the top 10% of the folks in this room because not a lot of you are plumbers and electricians on commercial job sites. The people who buy ONE-KEY love this app. Once they get it, they download it, and really, you can't live without it. I'll give you an example why. We just introduced yet another extraordinary ONE-KEY product. This is a Sawzall, a cordless recip saw. This is a very powerful product for cutting all sorts of materials.
A contractor who uses this has a difficult time setting the strokes per minute. In other words, the speed of this product is something we refer to as strokes per minute. This product actually has, if you pull the trigger, will give you 3,000 strokes per minute, so that blade goes back and forth 3,000 times a minute. If you pull the trigger and cut that fast in something like stainless steel, you will actually melt the material because of the heat buildup. With ONE-KEY, we actually are able to take your iPhone, and you can punch in the application, stainless steel, and the saw will automatically adjust to the proper strokes per minute, which is about 1,850 strokes per minute versus 3,000. All you do is punch in the application. The saw will adjust its cutting speed, and it doesn't matter what the contractor does.
He can squeeze as much as he wants. It will cut at the perfect speed and leave you with a perfect cut with no damage. There is no one in the world even close to this kind of technology. There are probably hundreds of applications where that ONE-KEY Bluetooth download gives you an advantage, and you will see that as time goes on. Actually, when we launched ONE-KEY six months ago, we were shocked at the level of sell-through. Let's just say people really understand the power of using their smartphone to control something as advanced as a power tool on a job site. Okay. We continue to be surprised at our commanding leadership position on the subcompact market. You might remember, six years ago, we created a market, a 12-volt cordless market we call subcompact. These are ultra-small tools that are much easier to use than, say, a full-size tool.
Here's an example. These subcompact cordless tools actually give you the same kind of performance, runtime, durability as the traditional full-size tools did because of the brushless motors and the advanced electronics on board. We have 88 different tools in our M12 platform. 88. The leading competitor that we go up against has 10. No one's even come close to TTI's leadership in this critical and growing market, and it's another example of our commanding leadership position in cordless. Okay, maybe the biggest opportunity that we will talk about today is a whole new area called lighting. High output lighting is an area that we think has massive potential long term for the company for profitable growth. Here's why.
If you're a job site, if you're in the middle of a high-rise construction, whether it's night or day, inside the building before the power is on, it's dark. It's always dark. Lighting on a job site is a big deal. Historically, lighting on a job site has been halogen, incandescent, or fluorescent. Okay? Halogen lighting is so hot, if you touch it, you get third-degree burns. In fact, halogen lighting can be 150, 180 degrees Fahrenheit. And the technology of halogen lighting on a job site is about 40 years old. It's dated, old technology. These lighting products are all AC. They plug in the wall, and they're unsatisfactory, to say the least, and unsafe. We have pioneered a range of LED lights using Milwaukee's unique battery system, and we think we can change this job site lighting environment permanently and expand on our leadership in cordless.
Here's an example. This is a light we call a RADIUS light. This is a light that you would put in a room like this. If this room was under construction and it was dark, you'd have a light like this that would light up the room so the workers can get their job done. Historically, all these lights that we compete with are floor-mounted, and they're huge. In the middle of this room, you would have a giant light so that workers can get their work done. The problem with that is, first of all, you have to plug it into a generator, which makes a lot of noise. Secondly, the halogen is 150 degrees Fahrenheit. This is dangerous. And third, how do you work if the middle of the room has a big giant light in it?
You have to maneuver around the light. We have a ceiling-mounted light called a RADIUS light. By the way, it is connected to ONE-KEY. Your iPhone, you can set where to point the light, when to turn it off and on. These lights can connect together. You can put 10 of these in a room, in a large ballroom, interconnect them, and control them all on your iPhone. There has never been anything like this in the industry. Remember, every one of these lights is powered off the same battery that you use in a drill, in a power tool. We have begun selling some of these lights. You cannot believe the reaction. The gross margins are highly accretive. Here is another example. This is called a searchlight.
This device is used by, say, a utility worker if the power lines have a problem, which is never during the day, right? There is a storm, it is night. The workers have to go out and figure out where the power lines have some sort of issue. This Milwaukee searchlight will shoot a beam 540 meters. 540-meter beam. You can identify the issue in the I do not want to shoot anybody in the eyes over there. You can identify the issue. The problem with traditional searchlights, which have about half the beam strength as ours is, you spot the problem, but you cannot see 2 feet in front of you because it is dark and the beam only shoots a long way away. This has a floodlight capability.
You push another button. You can see 3 feet around you. You do not step into a ditch or on an alligator or something bad. If people look at this as a flashlight, this is an amazing breakthrough for a utility worker, for an infrastructure worker, whether it is a nuclear power plant, an offshore drilling rig, or any sort of electronic utility company or whatever. You need to TTI using our batteries and our technology. We have now in our lighting program, remember, this did not exist 12 months ago. 12 months ago, there was no lighting. We now have 16 high-performance LED lights, each one with unique features and capabilities that no competitor can match.
All of our competitors now seem to be adding lights to their story. Their lights are just me-too lights where they are plugging a battery to an off-the-shelf made-in-China commodity light. Every one of these products was designed with specific input from a job site. We think will end up being something that will be a must on high-performance job sites around the world. Okay. 5 years ago, we said we are going to get into the hand tool market. We had never sold hand tools. We now have a massive line of hand tools broadly distributed around the world. We are expanding it. For example, here is a new line of locking pliers, which the largest customer in the world just put our locking pliers in and discontinued the former world leader, which was called VISE-GRIP. It is pretty incredible we replaced an iconic brand. We did.
This is an example of what we're doing in hand tools. We're methodically going category after category, attacking competitors with better product at a premium price and winning market share. We also were very fortunate to buy a company called Empire almost three years ago. We will double this business in three years, and we'll double it again in another three years. We're about to launch with Empire Technology, a line of state-of-the-art Milwaukee brand levels, of course, priced up with the performance that's at a whole new level. This is an example of how we've gone into the hand tool market with zero business, and now we've become a very formidable competitor here. Long term, we believe we'll get this business to $1 billion plus. The other part of the power tool and power equipment story is RYOBI ONE+.
If you look over here, we have had amazing success taking our RYOBI cordless DIY platform and developing this line and marketing it globally. Much so that today, as I mentioned, RYOBI is the number one DIY brand of power tools in the world. RYOBI ONE+ is the number one cordless DIY line in the world, and RYOBI is also the fastest-growing line of DIY tools in the world. This is incredible with all the competitors we have. A big reason for that is that we had the foresight to use the same battery with our power tools and with our outdoor equipment. We have an overarching platform. Our competitors create a series of orphan platforms. They'll develop one battery for power tools and a whole separate battery for outdoor or for other products.
If you were loyal to a competitive brand, your garage would have sometimes two, three, four different chargers, all kinds of batteries, and none of it works together. That's why people have just flocked to the RYOBI ONE+ system because we've been very disciplined about maintaining one platform. The marketing for RYOBI has been extremely successful. Here's an example of a TV ad we ran in Sweden.
You have a little to fix. Hang up a picture or three. Trim the hedge. Sand a molding. Mow the lawn. Be a winner. Oh. It's all these little jobs that make a house a home that can grow. One battery for all your tools. Discover the power of ONE+.
Okay. If you don't speak Swedish, I'd be happy to translate that for you. Actually, what we've done around the world is tailor our marketing to the local markets with a universal goal of being the number one line of DIY power tools in the world. This has worked better than we could have imagined. The growth rate of RYOBI ONE+ is off the chart, the momentum we have here is really extraordinary. The reason is we have the same battery, we keep launching great new products. In power tools, we already have the leading line of cordless DIY power tools. We're launching all kind of new products this year. This is a really cool QUIETSTRIKE pulse driver. This is a screw driving device that makes no noise. For a DIYer, it's a real breakthrough, it performs beautifully.
We also have, of course, lighting in our DIY program. We take the same technology we have in Milwaukee, we adapt it to the do-it-yourself environment, we're launching a whole range of these here in the next 6 months under RYOBI ONE+. In outdoor, we have developed a wide range of outdoor power equipment, all using that same battery. This program has also been incredibly successful, we also continue to drive more new product flow here in ONE+. For example, we launched this blower earlier this year. This is an 18-volt blower that it will outperform anything in its class. It's selling like crazy, it's just another good example of taking the ONE+ battery and expanding it into other areas. A brand-new area for us is garage door openers.
We this year, earlier this year, rolled out what we think is the most brilliantly engineered line of garage door openers in the marketplace today. If you live in North America in a single-family home, if you have a garage door, it's likely that you would have an opener, when you pull up to that garage door, you'd push the button, the garage door would activate and come up. Okay. How does this tie into RYOBI ONE+ batteries? Well, we were able to engineer a garage door opener so that if the power goes out in your house, the RYOBI battery in that garage door opener will actually allow you to open and close the garage door 100 times on one charge. 100 times.
If you think about it, the worst time in the world for the power to go out is when you pull up to the garage, it's raining outside, your kids are inside, there's no power, ordinarily, you'd have to get out of the car and manually activate the garage door, which is a nightmare. With RYOBI, you just push the button, it works just like it does if you have full power in the home. This is such a breakthrough concept that initial sales are, let's just say, very encouraging. We believe we're going to be a leader in this garage door opener space. Remember, it's all linked back to RYOBI ONE+. We're not developing orphans around the store of Home Depot. We're developing a universal platform with products that work in a whole lot of different areas in and around the home.
RYOBI ONE+ now is an incredible line. It's the broadest line of DIY cordless products in the world today. We have dozens and dozens of new, cool, innovative products we're developing that will expand this line. If you looked at our competitors, no one has anything like this. They have outdoor products, but nobody has this overall family. Finally, let's talk about floor care. Floor care, our results are down in the first half. Our enthusiasm about the business is high. Why? We have an outstanding plan in floor care to develop this business in terms of sales and profit. We believe the future in floor care is cordless, robots, and commercial. Those three areas.
We're going to focus on cordless floor care products, on robots, which is a brand-new area for us, and on commercial, which is a massive opportunity for the floor care business. What you see here is an example of cordless. This is a pole vac. This is a super light, convenient, high-performance vac. You can operate it as an upright vac. The suction is great. It weighs a third as much as a traditional upright vac. It's cordless. We think the potential for this element of the floor care market is significant. We're rolling out a variety of these pole vacs that target the convenience and space-oriented floor care end user. We've developed three different robots with all kind of functionality. We've been thrilled to see the early reaction from our customer base on robots.
The major customers in North America have embraced our robot line, you will see tremendous distribution and sales in the back half for the Hoover robot series. We will also roll these out later this year over in Europe. Remember, when you look at our floor care results, we've never had robots. The robot market is almost as big as the entire upright vacuum cleaner market. It's a massive market. It's an area where cordless matters a lot because these are all cordless. Guess what? We are very good at cordless technology. We're optimistic that we can compete and flourish in a robot market that has a lot of promise. A couple of years ago, we bought a commercial brand of floor care called Oreck. Oreck is a highly respected commercial brand in North America.
It's also a brand that many high-end consumers love. This is a first brand-new, newly engineered Oreck product that's been out in six years. It's a bag system for superior cleanliness and sanitation, it's got a unique bag coupling system that allows you to eliminate the danger of debris going back into the atmosphere. In Europe, we have several brands for floor care. We have VAX, we have DIRT DEVIL. These brands will all follow the same strategic direction of cordless robots and commercial. This is a picture of some of the new generation cordless products we launched in Europe. We do not make projections about our floor care business based on the first half this year.
We have exited appliance categories and OEM categories that weren't contributing strategically, we are going to grow like crazy the parts of the floor care market that have the best gross margin and long-term promise. The last part of this is commercial. We have a technology we've developed in Hoover Commercial called HushTone, which means these commercial vacs, which you would use in a building like this, they're so quiet you can conduct a meeting while the sanitation team and janitors are cleaning up the building. We have this HushTone technology not only in corded but also in cordless. We will share more of this story with you as time goes on. This is a very big marketplace that we think our technology will be successful in.
I can tell you in the last six months, what you don't see when you look at, frankly, results that we announced is we've established a new global floor care headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. The headquarters is a very exciting, dynamic product development environment consistent with what we've done with RYOBI in Milwaukee. We have significantly upgraded our floor care teams, both in North America and in Europe. We have a much stronger, and I would say we have a floor care team that's aligned much more closely with TTI's core competence of high-speed product development and really obsessing over what the customer really wants and then finding ways to solve those questions better than our competitors. I think that you will see as time goes on, that floor care will be a contributor to the company's financial progress.
Now I turn it back over to our Chairman, Horst Pudwill. Horst?
To your question over there, why can't the competition do it? TTI's history is cordless, and small and compact, Leo. I know. It's cordless, and it's a puzzle. You have to have the battery technology, you have the electronics, and you have the brushless. To make it all work, I think we are years ahead of our competition. Now, how does our future look? I think fantastic. It will take many years for the competition to catch up. Going back to our floor care business, we have a plan in place where we'll improve substantially. Can you improve it 10%-20%? I don't think we are far off. However, when you really look in details what happened with our floor care, if you look four, five, six years ago, TTI had essentially an OEM business.
We have, in power tools, we have fantastic brands like Milwaukee, RYOBI, AEG and so on. The OEM business went nearly down to zero. We did have or do have some OEM business. Our floor care business, we call it appliances. For example, we had major customers with our name in it. The shredder business. The shredder business is gone. That business went down 90%. We refocused on our business and say, future, what can we do with our fantastic brands? We have HOOVER, we have ORECK, we have DIRT DEVIL, we have in the U.K., we have VAX, and so on. I must say, I'm very excited about our floor care business in the next months and years to come. You will see an improvement, I think, if we meet here next year in March, and we have a presentation.
You will ask: "Wow, how come you turned it around so fast?" We are capable of doing it in floor care as we did in our power tools, and I must say, we are the envy of our industry, how fast we've come to market, the development process and so on. We have an idea today. Next year, we are on the market, right, Leo?
Sure.
I like to assure you not to worry, and I assure you that we have an exciting pipeline of new products. I'm very confident in our second half of 2016, and of course, for 2017. We will execute. That's a promise.
That's a promise.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Looking forward to seeing you all at our next presentation six or seven months from now. Thank you.
Thank you.