Inglenook winery. 40 or so years ago it was a producer of high quality, expensive, in-demand wine, in the early days of the US wine scene. Now, it makes cheap jug wine in the Carlo Rossi category (although I prefer Carlo Rossi).
The Francis Ford Coppola wines are a step below Carlo Rossi. Blech.
Regarding the wines, yes, this happens in the food and beverage market.
Years ago, there was a prestige brand here in NE (SS Pierce). It supplied fine restaurants, clubs, etc.
At the end, it was a cheap, low end brand.
I wonder if some Chinese entrepreneur will buy the SAAB name-and slap it on some cheap sh*tbox, and sell them for short money.
Rollei - used to be quite a respected name amongst photographers for their medium format film cameras, then after a series of splits, mergers and buyouts, released a range of digital cameras that were… well, I was going to say ‘utterly pedestrian’, but they weren’t that good.
[snipped]
That was a strategic move on the part of both IBM and Lenovo - IBM wanted out of the lower-margin end-user market, and Lenovo wanted a bigger role in that party. IBM continues to issue (Lenovo-manufactured) ThinkPads to its personnel, and Lenovo continues to rely on IBM for guidance in several areas. IBM has redirected its energies toward emerging technologies and service-oriented work (consulting, staff augmentation, etc). There’s simply a higher profit ceiling in those areas. Lenovo got to become a “big boy” by absorbing the lower-margin production options (while sitting in a huge market).
People will always think of the ThinkPad as an “IBM product,” even though IBM doesn’t make it anymore (after all, IBM’s slogan is “THINK”). So they actually get derivative benefits in the form of brand familiarity. It doesn’t hurt that they also own a large chunk of Lenovo stock.
Here’s the initial press release from 2005.
I remember loving Starter jackets as a teen! (mid 90’s)
SS Pierce was a grocery store. They didn’t make their own wines.
SAABs were rebadged GM shitboxes for the last 15 years. That’s why they went under in the first place.
This is what I came in to say…pick up any recently-manufactured Craftsman power or lawn tool, and it feels like cheap junk. Home Depot or Lowe’s store brands are better quality.
Craftsman stuff is cheap, though…yeah, I’d love a Stihl chainsaw…but I could afford a Craftsman.
Um…
Everyone in my company has a company-issued laptop - all Thinkpads.
Everyone in my immediate office has had substantial hardware issues with them. Everyone in the office has had their laptop monitor go bad at least once (necessitating an emergency “body transplant”). They shut down at random times due to “overheating” or just because they feel like it.
If this is better than the competition, yoiks!!!
In fairness, my machine is 4 years old and spends a lot of time being transported from home to office, and sees a lot of use at both locations. Nonetheless, I don’t know that I’d buy one myself.
I disagree. The beginning of the end was in 1935 with the Packard 120.
KitchenAid has come out with the popular Artisan line of mixers in recent years, which have plastic gears and can’t cope with serious abuse. But they still make robust mixers with metal components, and they market them as their Professional line. So the example of KitchenAid is really one of a company “augmenting” its great reputation with cheap crap.