‘Assault & Battery - the decline of Ever Ready.’

[Red to black]

I like that saying and I will use it again if you don't mind "anti personnel department" . Same as it is ever was unfortunately.

[AC/HL]

Not only are management decisions outsourced now, but so is HR. We now see. The result is plain to see.
Not always bad though. In the last "proper" job I had, we had a merger and I got a TUPE rise of 5 grand. Got made redundant eventually, but it did my pension a world of good.

[philthespark]

Another one of the lost manufacturers was Kango, they made 'electric hammers', I won't go into too much detail but they had a long and interesting history, and a reputation for quality, sadly now long gone.
Kango made machines for breaking concrete, but a little known use for the early machine was during the war, the accoustic mine would detonate when it 'heard' a rythmic beat, usually indicating a passing ship, anything passing near one was likely to set it off, often sinking or at least severely damaging the ship. Someone came up with the idea of mounting a row of Kango's on each side of the hull internally, the random rattle of the machines confused the accoustic mines and many ships and lives were saved.
Later on Kango merged with Wolf, to become Kango-Wolf, they produced many decent power toos which I have no doubt some of you will still have, and possibly use today.
The firm was bought out initially by AEG, it then went to Atlas Copco, each time bits were dropped off or names sold, Finally the Kango name was sold to Milwaukee, and Kango's began to be produced once more, they were horrible, low powered and not a patch on the original ones, today they are seldom used they are so bad. I have a number of the old ones including one from the 1950's, I repair them and still use them on occasions, recently I was given a couple by a company who hadn't used them for years and having found a couple in their stores decided to scrap them! They came to me complete with a wide range of accessories, a quick service and they are good as new despite being almost 40 years old.
People can't believe I still use them, but they just have a feeling about them and wwhen they do go wrong it isn't expensive to repair usually, they have one common failing, the seals. It shows how popular they once were, anyone who had anything to do with building would have heard someone say "go get a Kango", often they'd come back with a Hilti, or some other make, but if you were breaking concrete it was still known as a Kango, regardless of the make.
And what, you may be wondering became of Wolf, the other half of that great partnership, well the last I heard the name had been sold to an Indian manufacturer and was producing all kinds of cheap rubbish, sad really.

Incidentally, on the original subject of Ever Ready, remember the advert in the 80's on tv, where the battery opened and steps came out and it did something? Well it was a mate of mine who made that advert, he was also responsible for that McCain chips ad, the one with the family dancing around the kitchen, he has a lot to answer for. lol

[Radio Wrangler]

It's all carefully calculated.

Some firms buy a reputable brand name having calculated the value of the name in pound notes or dollar bills. This is how much profit they can make on selling total tat marked with the high quality name before that name becomes synonymous with tat.

It's all very cynical and nasty. Some firms wind up with new regimes running them and it seems that one intent is to see how much cash they can make out of employee loyalty.

The good guys, the firms that don't do these things, deserve our support. You don't want the bad guys to take control of everything!

David

[m0cemdave]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

It's all carefully calculated.
Some firms buy a reputable brand name having calculated the value of the name in pound notes or dollar bills. This is how much profit they can make on selling total tat marked with the high quality name before that name becomes synonymous with tat.
David

It's a classic form of asset-stripping. The value of the brand name (which can be estimated by accountants and is known as "goodwill" in a company valuation) is gradually cashed in until it becomes worthless.

[Refugee]

Hotpoint have gone down hill too in recent years too.
I have no idea who owns the brand now.

[Cobaltblue]

I think its Whirlpool

Cheers

Mike T

[Craig Sawyers]

Who have a reputation slightly lower than a snake's undercarriage. There was the tumble drier fire scandal, and now they (under pressure by Which) have recalled over half a million washing machines because the door switch incinerates.

Craig

[Radio Wrangler]

It was seeing how hard they worked at delaying and fighting off responsibility that put them and all their subsidiary brands on my banned list. No product of theirs crosses my threshold. Ever.

David

[Junk Box Nick]

You are very correct in your post 84, David.

We can lament the passing of these brands but this is all part of the business cycle. Those of us who work in it are just pawns in a much larger game. He who expects a reward for loyalty is, for the most part, doomed to disappointment. As the Kenny Rogers song goes: 'you've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them' - this goes as much for employees (and purchasers of their products) as those who pull the strings. However, those pulling the strings always have the advantage of a less obscured view of the game.

The first duty of any business is to its shareholders. The object is to trade on whatever means at the business's disposal to make enough money for the shareholders before the race is run. I've seen inside a lot of businesses and those which have been the most 'successful' are those that latch on something lucrative, milk it for all it is worth and get out whilst the going is good.

Sadly, few companies will remain in business making things that last 40 years. It's no coincidence that the biggest companies in the world are in the IT sector where it's obsolete as soon as it's out of the box is the norm.

[David G4EBT]

Hotpoint, Indesit and Creda are all owned by the Whirlpool Group, and lots of other brands too, such as Maytag, KitchenAid, JennAir, Amana, Gladiator GarageWorks, Inglis, Estate, Brastemp, Bauknecht, Ignis, Indesit, and Consul. Their website also mentions Diqua, Affresh, Acros, and Yummly brands. KitchenAid food mixers are sold extensively in the UK.

Whirlpool has an annual revenue of approximately $21 billion, 92,000 employees, and more than 70 manufacturing & technology research centres around the world.

As to the Hotpoint tumble dryer fire risks that have arisen in the UK, on Friday 19 August 2016 a fire broke out on the 7th floor of an 18-storey Shepherds Court building in Shepherd's Bush Green resulting in hundreds of residents being evacuated, and mercifully there were no deaths or injuries.

20 fire engines and 120 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze at 3.44pm, The fire spread from the seventh floor via the outside of the building. The blaze quickly spread upwards to engulf 5 storeys damaging flats from the seventh to eleventh storeys. The occupants were at home when smoke started pouring out of the tumble dryer so were able to alert London Fire Brigade.

Although the appliance was the original source of ignition for the fire, the building's flammable external sheathing caused the conflagration. The curtain wall design of the multi-storey apartments used a metal sheet face over polystyrene foam over plywood was certified under a UK permit system that had no formal qualifications for the role of "fire risk assessor”. We know what’s tragically happened since then.

This wiki link about Whirlpool has chapter and verse about the UK Hotpoint tumble dryer fire risk saga and what’s happened since 2015 to the present day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlp...ummly%20brands.

[Craig Sawyers]

A Hotpoint (AKA Whirlpool) fridge freezer type FF175BP was traced to having been the source of ignition in the Grenfell Tower disaster.

[vidjoman]

Perhaps adding to the Whirlpool ownership of Indesit etc. The 'fire risk' tumble dryers were not manufactured by Whirlpool as they didn't own the company until 2014. They (Whirlpool) posted warnings in 2015 on the Indesit and Hotpoint websites. The machines had been produced over a period of about 10 years since 2004. It would seem that to place the blame on Whirlpool is a little unfair.
The often convoluted ownership of these companies makes it difficult to follow exactly who owns/runs which business and who makes the decisions.

[Craig Sawyers]

That is irrelevant. Whirlpool acquired Hotpoint, Indesit, Creda, Swan and Proline (the manufacturers of 127 models of fatally faulty tumble driers) as a going concern. As such, they clearly did not do adequate technical due diligence. They acquired not only the brand and the assets, but the consequences of flawed products, recalls and modification kits.

Craig

[turretslug]

Originally Posted by vidjoman

The often convoluted ownership of these companies makes it difficult to follow exactly who owns/runs which business and who makes the decisions.

Convolution of liability is a business art in itself! Look at the history of asbestos-consequence sufferers over the decades.

[AC/HL]

This thread long ago ceased to be about Ever Ready. Most, if not all the many other subjects have been covered at length in previous threads. Is there any more Ever Ready information to keep it going?

[Junk Box Nick]

Looks like it's run out of charge.

[turretslug]

There was a mid-'30s range of mains heater valves branded "Ever Ready"- was this a genuine attempt to diversify product range, or simply someone else's valves rebranded to raise public awareness? The Pye Empire was one set that featured them, but neither that range or Ever Ready generally seemed to feature for very long in the history of valves.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/pye_empire.html

[AC/HL]

They appear to be rebranded, it's unlikely that they manufactured a whole range themselves. Why they featured in other makers sets is a puzzle. They're unlikely to have influenced the company's demise though, which is well documented earlier in the thread.