With Companies Re-Badging Their Brands, Quality Goes Down

I just found out from my Sears repairman that Kenmore isn't necessarily Kenmore like my trusty 12-year-old dishwasher. My fridge with the Kenmore badge is actually a "cheap" LG, which my repairman says will give me nothing but problems.

It seems it's not just radios that are on the decline in this age of re-badging.

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Comments

[Bill Bush]

In my reading during research on vintage radios, I learned that Detroit and Chicago were full of radio manufacturers that made store brand radios and mom-and-pop store radios, too. The radios were simple things, with the cabinetry often being the cost determiner. A 5-tube AM radio was pretty much a 5-tube AM radio in moderate cost models. Some radios are unbranded, but collectors can tell which factory they came from by their internals -- brackets, wire, layout, etc. It is similar today, but products are more complex, so even minor changes can have major impacts on quality/durability. Remember the US toymakers who shipped lead-free red paint to China for manufacturing their products to meet US requirements? The manufacturer sold it, bought cheaper leaded red paint, and pocketed the difference. So even the best-laid plans can be blocked by mechanical interference, manufacturing adjustments or greedy subterfuge. Far-flung manufacturers producing under somebody's else's name have little incentive to be overly concerned with quality control if they think a low bid is the only reason anyone will ever use their services. Relationships and reliability and responsibility and recognition do matter. (Sorry for the alliterative overkill.)

[Lloyd D]

Tecsun 660 under 100 bucks on amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Tecsun-PL-660-Portable-Shortwave-Single/dp/B004H9C4JK/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1385689693&sr=8-10&keywords=shortwave

[Paul]

Legendary Akihabara Radio Store closing its doors after six decades

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/25/national/legendary-akihabara-radio-store-closing-its-doors-after-six-decades/

I'm glad I was able to see this shopping center a few years ago in Tokyo.

[twitter.com/karldotcom]

If my 18 year old Sears fridge dies, I am just going to get a refurbished one from here.

http://www.savonappliance.com/

[Tom Welch]

I know this to be a fact, manufacturers will often build a product for say Walmart, Sears or what have you, at lower costs by outsourcing to the cheapest labor Asian region, using less expensive materials and in the case of electronics providing fewer features. I see this happening a lot when buying a name brand knife in Walmart only to find the knife is not the quality others on various forums raved about and who purchased their knife at local gun shop. In short, people don't understand how highly targeted products are today.

[Tom Welch]

Rebadging is just another way manufacturers recoup engineering costs and generate additional revenue on a product design.

[Bob1942]

It's all to do with cost cutting to maintain a profit
Hardly any UK electrical goods are made here anymore, far east or assembled in Eastern Europe.My Samsung TV is made in Slovakia,a Samsung PVRs Indonesia

[Angelo]

Tom: The ironic thing is that if for example, Sony builds a television for Walmart, but cuts corners to bring it in at a lower price, it could be a bad thing for...SONY. If it's simply a matter of fewer features, I normally don't care----as I barely use any of the "extra features" of any of my television
sets. However, if it's a quality issue and I end up with a lemon, I'm not blaming Walmart, I'm blaming Sony. And so are most others. In fact, I've found that Walmart is excellent when it comes to taking products back for refund or exchange---often bailing me out when things were junky or gifts were unwanted.