I had forgotten about those once-great hifi firms: HH Scott, Fisher, AR, KLH, etc. all of these names now reside on low-end audio equipment-what a shame.
As I say, this practice makes you wonder-why pay $$ for a name-you might not get anything but a mdiocre product.
Another case of a bankrupt firms name being sold off. Today’s Schwinn shares only the name with bikes make famous by the old Chicago firm.
That said, few of the Chicago Schwinns were really high end bikes…they were tough and durable for sure, but light weight counts for a lot in a bike, and only the very top of the Schwinn line was anything but portly.
Stroh’s beer. Used to be a local favorite, but now it’s just a non-local afterthought.
If I ever see Red Wing shoes at Wal-Mart, I’ll know to stop buying them.
Bose does not make the head units in cars. Every Bose system comes with its own separate amplifier that controls the sound quality to the speakers. Still the head units are the weak link in the chain.
I see more Stroh’s Ice Cream now than I do beer since they were sold to the Pabst Brewing Company . Can’t recall the last time I saw someone order a Stroths in a metro Detroit bar.
I haven’t seen one of these Bose systems first hand. Is there actually a different brand head unit on these things or is it just someone making a head unit for them and slapping the Bose name on it?
Jaguar.
Many are just a bunch of Ford Contours.
The car manufactuer picks the headunit supplier and inposes its use to all levels of audio systems (premium, mid and base levels). This is typical of all types systems that go into a car, rarely does one manufactuer supply all of the componets. The car manufactuer also can place the logos where they will have the best marketing impact, for audio systems that place is on the headunit. For brakes it might be on the calipers themselves (think Brembos).
Well Sears has them and and they own K-Mart (or is the other way around?). 
Not any more from what I can see on their website. I think they stopped making that model, which never sold well for obvious reasons.
Kmart went bankrupt and was taken over by its creditors. The completely new company was for a while called “Kmart Holding.” They then bought Sears, in a deal structured in a way so that it might also be called a merger. The company then changed its name to “Sears Holding,” probably for PR reasons.
So, Sears’ good name is not being driven into the ground by the people who drove Kmart into the ground. It’s being driven into the ground by the people who set things up for Kmart to fail so that they could take over that company on the cheap, and then leverage the Kmart real estate properties to take over Sears. And they really wanted Sears’ real estate rather than the other parts. So it’s not about sales, products and such. It’s about making money on transactions.
And people wonder why I’m not selling my gold yet . . . what with these types of yahoos controling the economy :smack:
IMAX has sold out its name to multiplex chains hyping cheap, fake “IMAX” screens only slightly bigger than normal screens.
I have also noticed that brand names seem to get slapped on unrelated merchandise-like the case of Polaroid and Kodak on batteries.
One interesting issue-now that Land Rover nd Volvo are owned by Indian and Chinese firms (respectively)-will the new owners cheapen the image? I can imagine a Vovo car, built with cheap, chinese-made components-that would piss off a lot of buyers!
I’d imagine that being made in a low-cost country gives opportunity to make a higher-quality product (if it’s sold for the same price). Chinese products, even the cheap ones, are better than products of the same price made elsewhere. American cars are bad, in large part, because the unions extract so much of the sticker price. Then, over-paid executives extract some more.
Man, I just tried to eat a Hershey bar-bad, bad this chocolate tastes awful. Are they even making their own chocolate anymore? They used to be pretty good-now terrible.
They are not as good as they used to be.
Beyond Schwinn, a number of once iconic bicycle brands were bought up by an Asian outfit… Pacific Cycles IIRC. Ones that spring to mind:
Mercier
Motobecane
Windsor
Some of these can still be nice bikes, but they have nothing but the name related to the companies who made those names valuable.
Yes, but in this case they bought not just the name but the technology. Lenovo ThinkPads remain just as highly regarded as their IBM ThinkPad predecessors.
Even before this zombie was awakened Kodak was licensing their name to a Chinese maker of low-end 35mm zoom lenses.
And given their current situation, doing more of it may be the only way they stay in the camera business.