|
General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc. |
|
Thread Tools |
27th May 2017, 8:55 pm | #1 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,995
|
"House" brands.
I've always been fascinated by these [by which I mean brands sold uniquely through various larger organisations] and their associated social significance.
The Co-Op used "Defiant" as their brand: the co-op "Divvy" being seen as a discount so many mainstream suppliers refused to sell their branded radios/radiograms/televisions to the Co-Op [remember this was back in the barbarous days of Resale Price Maintenance] and having their own in-house brand was a way for the Co-Op to stick two fingers up to the BREMA cartel. Currys had "Westminster" as their in-house brand: they seemingly signed-up a range of second-stream manufacturers to produce the kit and slapped Westminster labels on the front. Radio Rentals had "Baird" as their TV-brand; if you visited someone's house and saw a Baird TV you knew they rented rather than owned. In the era when domestic TV was an unreliable and wobbly technology this kind-of made sense, but from the 1960s onwards rental was seen as a somewhat downmarket option. Come colour and the 1970s: Rental made a kind-of comeback because the technology was again fragile. Granada's "Finlandia" TVs gained a foothold because - if it failed - the cost of replacing the tube in a colour-TV you owned could be several weeks wages. Plenty of people were happy to pay through the nose for weekly rental to avoid the hassle. Same applied to the first-generation video recorders. "Catalog" companies, where you bought through a local 'pay weekly' agent, had similar in-house brands I remember Littlewoods had "Spinney" as their brand for transistor-radios.record-players/tape-recorders, which was kinda appropriate [a Spinney is a Little Wood]. In later times the "in-house" store branding adopted a Japanese flavour: In 1982 Dixons introduced Saisho own-brand products presenting an upmarket high technology image spanning audio, TV and video products. "Saisho" was the Japanese for First - despite which much of the Saisho-branded stuff was made in countries other than Japan! I recall also "Matsui" - this was a similarly Japanese-sounding Curry's house-brand. Prinzsound? I vaguely recall this being associated with Boots/Timothy Whites, but I may be wrong. Can anuone recall any other of these house-brands? I've always been amused and intrigued by the social significance of these "house brands" - in the 1960s/1970s you mahy have been living in a [mortgaged] 3-bed semi on a Wimpey-built housing-estate, and the Ford Corsair on the drive was being paid-for on hire-purchase, but somehow you still looked-down on people who rented their telly. |
27th May 2017, 9:05 pm | #2 |
Moderator
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Exeter, Devon and Poole, Dorset UK.
Posts: 6,857
|
Re: "House" brands.
Pretty sure I bought my Prinzsoumd 8DL from Currys in the early 1970's
Might have been Dixons ............. Cheers Mike t
__________________
Invisible airwaves crackle with life or at least they used to Mike T BVWS member. www.cossor.co.uk Last edited by Cobaltblue; 27th May 2017 at 9:06 pm. Reason: Added Dixons |
27th May 2017, 9:15 pm | #3 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Wigan, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 9,431
|
Re: "House" brands.
I think you have most of them, certainly more than I could remember. The Defiant range was very often built by Plessey and from what I recall were the same sort of quality as the big makes. Had good points and not so good but so did the competition.
The Catolog companies tended to produce less expensive items, I am thinking of radiograms, record players but the selling price was not that cheap. Was it shilling in the pound paid weekly to an agent, cost of the loan built into the cost of the item. The agents job being to make sure something else was purchased before the first had come to term. Continuing credit, Tally man seems to come to mind. Frank |
27th May 2017, 9:23 pm | #4 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: London, UK.
Posts: 3,687
|
Re: "House" brands.
There was Realistic of course in the 1980's as well, the Tandy in house brand for the lowest price junk they managed to get from Taiwan.
|
27th May 2017, 9:24 pm | #5 |
Octode
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 1,719
|
Re: "House" brands.
Sorry guys, Prinzsound came from Dixons. I still have several of their flashguns. Dixon's version of the Weltron "space helmet" 8 track player is badged Prinzsound.
Peter |
27th May 2017, 9:25 pm | #6 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Brentwood, Essex, UK.
Posts: 5,337
|
Re: "House" brands.
Before my time at Plessey, but the old hands said that they used to make Defiant stuff for the Co-op, as well as the electronics for some RGD radiograms. Prinz was a brand used by Dixons for their photographic stuff, and possibly for their electronics as well.
In the 1970's KJ enterprises sold own-brand stuff under "Audiomaster" label, but in the catalogues I have it was only used for speakers and audio tapes. A bit OT, but regarding customers' liking for Japanese-sounding names, I remember that for a brief time in (AFAIR) the 1970's , there was an ad run by Philips UK on UK commercial radio where a customer came into a shop and asked for something Japanese and the assistant offered him a "Phirrips". The ad was pulled when Philips HQ heard about it. Last edited by emeritus; 27th May 2017 at 9:30 pm. |
27th May 2017, 9:31 pm | #7 |
Moderator
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 27,927
|
Re: "House" brands.
Yes, Prinzsound was definitely the Dixons house brand before Saisho. It dates from the 70s when people thought that Germanic names indicated quality. They switched to Saisho with the rise of the big Japanese quality brands like Sony.
|
27th May 2017, 9:38 pm | #8 |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Warsaw, Poland and Cambridge, UK
Posts: 2,676
|
Re: "House" brands.
Where does the 'Waltham' brand fit in to this, if anywhere? I had an uncle and aunt whose house seemed to be full of Waltham products but I never saw them anywhere else. I guess it was a catalogue brand.
Chris
__________________
What's going on in the workshop? http://martin-jones.com/ |
27th May 2017, 9:41 pm | #9 |
Moderator
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Exeter, Devon and Poole, Dorset UK.
Posts: 6,857
|
Re: "House" brands.
Wasn't Waltham Woolworths?
Cheers Mike T
__________________
Invisible airwaves crackle with life or at least they used to Mike T BVWS member. www.cossor.co.uk |
27th May 2017, 9:43 pm | #10 |
Moderator
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 27,927
|
Re: "House" brands.
I don't think Waltham was a house brand. Waltham stuff was sold in Woolworths and by some independents, like Benkson.
Woolworths used Vesta as an electronics house brand for a while. I actually own a Vesta V70 radio, cheap'n'cheerful but decent enough. |
27th May 2017, 9:52 pm | #11 |
Moderator
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Exeter, Devon and Poole, Dorset UK.
Posts: 6,857
|
Re: "House" brands.
I repaired several of the Waltam grams back in the late 70's and early 80's I always thought them great value engineering.
ISTR they were built in the Irish Republic As for the Prinzsound stuff it was amazing good value. My 8DL had the EMI 13 by 8's with 2 tweeters on a bracket an SP25 Mk3 and a pretty decent 8W per channel using proper power transistors. Cheers Mike T
__________________
Invisible airwaves crackle with life or at least they used to Mike T BVWS member. www.cossor.co.uk |
27th May 2017, 10:06 pm | #12 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Oxford, UK.
Posts: 17,838
|
Re: "House" brands.
Quote:
|
|
27th May 2017, 10:09 pm | #13 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,995
|
Re: "House" brands.
Quote:
Upthread, someone mentioned Realistic: that was the Tandy/Radio-Shack 'Generic' brand, It wasn't always bad - I had a pair of "Minimus 10" bookshelf-speakers back in the 1980s which worked remarkably well considering how small they were. Tandy/RS also used "Clarinette" for some of their stuff, along with "Concertape" for their linear-recordable-media-of-questionable-quality. A lot of their bubble-packaged electronic components were badged "Archer". I've got an Archer 'LT44' type audio driver-transformer somewhere here, still in its bubble-pack. . . Last edited by G6Tanuki; 27th May 2017 at 10:28 pm. |
|
27th May 2017, 10:25 pm | #14 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,995
|
Re: "House" brands.
Quote:
They also ran a big football-pools business and so in working-class neighbourhoods having the Littlewoods agent calling on friday-night to collect your coupon was not seen as anything unusual. Truth is, everyone had loads of stuff 'on tick' with Littlewoods and the pools-agent collected for that too, but that was 'under the radar' and didn't accrue the sort of social-opprobrium associated with people who had to buy stuff "On the Provvy" [ "Provident" being a really-high-interest doorstep-lender in the 60s/70s] |
|
27th May 2017, 10:42 pm | #15 |
Moderator
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 27,927
|
Re: "House" brands.
Realistic branded stuff was by no means all junk, though certainly some of it was. Many of the radios and scanners were made by Sangean, and the hifi stuff was generally OEMd by respectable Japanese companies.
|
27th May 2017, 11:14 pm | #16 |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Hexham, Northumberland, UK.
Posts: 2,234
|
Re: "House" brands.
I would agree, Paul. Realistic products are still battling on in my house after all these years. I think the name just seems a bit odd, that's all. There was Radio Shack as well, another Tandy name. I seem to remember some of their scanners were possibly made by Uniden, a very respectable name in that field.
|
28th May 2017, 12:14 am | #17 |
Moderator
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 27,927
|
Re: "House" brands.
The Tandy stores always had a vaguely downmarket feel to them, which didn't help the image of the products, especially in the hifi market.
At one stage they bought rights to the Memorex name and used that rather than Realistic in the UK, presumably because of the image problem. They continued to use the Realistic badge in the US. |
28th May 2017, 12:53 am | #18 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Oxfordshire, UK.
Posts: 4,934
|
Re: "House" brands.
Quote:
B
__________________
Saturn V had 6 million pounds of fuel. It would take thirty thousand strong men to lift it an inch. |
|
28th May 2017, 12:56 am | #19 |
Nonode
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 2,102
|
Re: "House" brands.
More recently, Lidl uses the brand 'Tevion', Aldi has 'Maxtek' and 'Medion', Asda has used the brand 'Polaroid' for in-house products. Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys market electronics under their own names, though Asda seem to have withdrawn from marketing electronics recently.
|
28th May 2017, 1:25 am | #20 |
Moderator
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 27,927
|
Re: "House" brands.
Medion aren't a house brand, they're a German subsidiary of Lenovo. I've only seen their stuff in Aldi in the UK though. Tevion is an Aldi house brand. Lidl don't seem to use house brands for electronics (though they don't sell a lot of it anyway).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medion |