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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

I didn't realize that GE appliances was a separate company with separate ownership (Haier & KKR). Its amazing how many of the old prestige brand names are now just licensing or separate companies.

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Which should alarm people more than it does. The signalling value of a brand is greatly diminished when it's just a label that can be moved around, created or hollowed out at will.

It's a kind of obfuscation in many cases. How many people know that P&G or Unilever are behind a huge number of supermarket goods?

Westinghouse. RCA. Magnavox. Once they were great American companies. They're now just shells that do licensing of the name.

I learned years ago to avoid anything from Magnavox, after getting some real junk with that name attached. It was really obvious that the name was being abused to get trust for products that didn't deserve it.

Not sure why the cases you cite are alarming. I actually think there are two levels of signalling in these cases 1. what the brand promises - and the corporate owner will usually want to protect that and 2. The reputation of a P&G or Unilever.

I think problems often happen when the big corporate owners sell to private equity who are more often interested in boosting short term earnings.

1) Multiple brands for one producer: something bad happens, we cut the brand loose, move the staff who caused the problem elsewhere, or replace them, nobody knows. If it's really bad the mother co has enough money to place everything on the brand, with PR. The financial news will know it's P&G or Nestle or whatever, people on the street will see "Something Crunch is unhealthy and is discontinued".

2) Unknown holding company: yes, people can have general knowledge and to a degree it's their own fault for not knowing. But it also isn't, nobody has time to read about what thousands of brands are out there.

> I think problems often happen when the big corporate owners sell to private equity who are more often interested in boosting short term earnings.

Absolutely. I remember going to Ed's Diner here in the UK. They made a great burger in SoHo before I left the country for a few years. When I came back, they'd expanded across the country, which was a bit surprising to me, but I went in to eat there because of my previous experience. I took one bite, it was terrible, and I immediately told my wife "this tastes like private equity". I go on google, guess what, it was indeed bought by PE and they'd totally changed the burger. This is a form of lying to people that should not be tolerated but of course is a grey zone because it not easy to define when you've changed the burger so much that you can't call it the same thing.

I remember Ed's Diner in Soho going downhill! One of the great malaises of the UK high street is that almost every mid range restaurant chain is owned by PE. They buy an upcoming chain, expand massively using debt, try to sell at the top and if not when recession comes they cut costs to make the experience awful and then go bust.

I think we probably mostly agree on the whole brands thing. My point was really that P&G / Unilever are probably better than most in practice at being decent stewards of the brands they own.

> 1) Multiple brands for one producer

Was literally in a conversation just a couple months ago where I was expressing that I had finished deleting facebook for privacy-related reasons.

They chimed in with, "I know right! That's why I only use Instagram..."

I think the me of a few years ago would have discounted point 1). Today, I think it's a fairly salient point, with regards to actual market effects. Albeit, I'm not advocating for any action(s) to be taken with regards to it.

Saab turned into a Chinese car company then a defence contractor bought it then it kinda just died on the shelf.

Packard Bell. Lenovo. Magnavox. Crosley. Gold Bond. Radio Shack (It's a little messy). Circuit City. And a hundred more you see on late night TV commercials.

Sometimes when a company goes bankrupt, the most valuable asset sold is the brand name and the goodwill that goes with it.

As for GE Appliances, I had them in every apartment I lived in for about ten years. Never thought much about it until I moved to a place that had Maytag appliances. They were ten years old, but still better than the new GE ones in my previous place.

Now my apartment is all KitchenAid in the kitchen and Maytag elsewhere. It's was like stepping into time capsule to the future.

Appliances is kind-of an incestuous industry. All of the high-end brands are owned by "low-end" bigger brands.

Example: KitchenAid is a subsidiary of Whirlpool, a huge competitor against Haier/GE Appliances.

Viking, who makes perceivably high-end ranges and refrigerators, is owned by Amana, who makes all of the cheap appliances you see at Costco.

See here for more: http://www.appliance411.com/purchase/make.shtml

As for me: I absolutely love my GE appliances. Have their washer and dryer set as well as one of their newer french door refrigerators; love them all.

It's the same model as automotive. A luxury brand where they try out new tech, then spread it to the cheaper models once they've amortized the R&D far enough.

Or you have the manufacturing ladder, where you start out making low end goods until you've built up QA and engineering practices that let you go up-market. Sony was once cheap electronics only, and eventually LG took over that crown before rebranding and moving to high end too.

Kia seems to have taken the latter approach, introducing the Genisis name for luxury goods only recently.

Consumer reports had a page explaining that they rated most fridges in the low 6 because they all had high compressor failure rate. Turns out that every major manufacturer was using the same subsidiary for their compressor and consequently everyone was stuck with low-quality parts.

So even across the "big" brands it's mostly the same thing.

There are lots of interesting issues with how designs and production concepts are handled. MagicChef introduced electric ignition stoves and ovens and did quite well with that at first, but the more mature brands like Maytag knew how to sell and eventually squeezed MagicChef and bought them out. The remains of the company then got passed around. As a result most stove and oven designs are extremely similar to each other and to the later MagicChef designs which were superior in efficiency of construction, use, and maintenance but not so much in marketing and sales.

When we built our house in 2000, my wife worked for a company that was doing a cross promotion with GE so we got a good discount on their appliances and fitted the whole house with them. Every single one has been nothing but trouble, and we've replaced the majority of them. The washer and dryer were the first to go.

Whirlpool still makes good shit. GE appliances will still be very good for a while. I remember using Amana microwaves in restaurants. I literally tried to destroy them and they survived and thrived through very harsh treatment...amazing machines. Hobart...meh.

Amana is owned by Whirlpool. Viking is owned by Middleby.

Maytag is just a brand of Whirlpool now. And the appliances are not as good.

Sad to hear. The ones i had were from 1996. Even though it was 2017, they still ran very well. Was that before the Whirlpool acquisition?

Yes. I now have a post-Maytag Maytag washer and dryer, and I've had to replace the washer once, because the seal at the base of the tub sprung a leak. This is such a common problem that there are multiple Youtube videos and repair kits for it. But it's a huge pain; you have to take the machine somewhere you can turn it upside down and disassemble it from the bottom.

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