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Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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