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Old 30th May 2017, 9:54 pm   #61
AndiiT
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Default Re: "House" brands.

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Hi Andrew,

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The "Westminster" Brand was used by Currys probably well into the late 1960's/early 70's with many of the products being re-badged Fidelity models...
I wonder whether with both these you're thinking of Perdio rather than Fidelity.
I didn't know about the Perdio transistor radio shown in your link, but have at the least seen a Fidelity TR5/6 "Playmaster" tape recorder and one of their HF35 record players too with the Westminster badge on, my parents first tape recorder was purchased from Currys but it was a "proper" Fidelity model and not badged

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Old 30th May 2017, 11:56 pm   #62
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Default Re: "House" brands.

Boots photo stuff was often decent quality, for example one of their cine projectors was a rebadged Bolex.
I have a Woolworth's Vesta radio from the mid 70's, not too shabby actually. Someone mentioned another of their brands which was named after Frank Winfield Woolworth himself.

My washer came from the electricity board, it's badged Electra and was made by GDA. (Hotpoint-Creda). Another Comet brand was Proline. Curry's had Carlton for its washers.
I have a Tandy Memorex receiver/amplifier, it's pretty decent.

Here I have a full set of Which? magazines starting in 1964 and finishing in 1969, and the electrical appliances with house names are given their respective OEM, or at least it's intimated; ('the spinney and alba units are identical so we include them as joint best buy')...sort of thing.
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Old 31st May 2017, 12:29 am   #63
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Default Re: "House" brands.

One in house name that seems to have been missed in these threads is Triumph
( not the motor bikes) this brand name was used by currys b4 the merger with dixions. The large screen ctv were made by toshiba very good picture also very reliable. I seem to remember that small dealers did like the news getting round that good tv being in matsui names.There was also a 14 ctv carring the trumph name this one was made by fidelity.
In the days after the dixions currys merger matsui was the main house name for currys , with saisho being dixions , the same unit just a different badge. As commented in posting the Logic name was used by both dix& cur The 1st sets using this name had Ferguson tx90 or tx100 the Tx 100 being my favourite set of all time. As the years rolled by other manufactures chassis where used in all house name , like decca grundig, orion , a range of sets made in the far east and turkey . Some of them very good sets lke the Matsi 2180 apart from the str gonig S/c taking out other parts, but some like 209 should neaver seen the light of day.Most of the vcr's were made by orion with the exception of the 950 &955 Iam not certain who made the but of the parts could be interchanged with sharp one.regards Derrick l:
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Old 31st May 2017, 8:14 am   #64
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Default Re: "House" brands.

I seem to remember Elpico as the label on a number of car radio elliptical speakers I fitted in the late sixties, and then only later I saw a few of their radios. The radios seemed a bit better than the rock bottom "Shira" ones.

Boots audio and photo stuff always seemed to have been well chosen. They didn't put their moniker on tat.

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Old 31st May 2017, 10:53 am   #65
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Default Re: "House" brands.

I seem to remember a Boots cassette recorder that looked like it was was a repackaged Philips EL3302. I think the case was blue.
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Old 31st May 2017, 1:47 pm   #66
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Default Re: "House" brands.

Makro, I seem to remember had the name Tokyo on a lot of portable televisions.


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Old 31st May 2017, 4:08 pm   #67
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Default Re: "House" brands.

We had a Goodmans VHS video recorder which was obviously a rebadged Philips.
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Old 31st May 2017, 4:13 pm   #68
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Default Re: "House" brands.

An earlier brand of Dixons was Prinz, they used it on a large variety of their goods.

I think their cameras were called Chinon.
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Old 31st May 2017, 5:16 pm   #69
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Default Re: "House" brands.

Chinon were a Japanese camera company, not a house brand. Dixons used the Prinz brand on some of their cameras, with Prinzsound used on the audio stuff..
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Old 31st May 2017, 5:25 pm   #70
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Default Re: "House" brands.

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We had a Goodmans VHS video recorder which was obviously a rebadged Philips.
Were the Philips VCR's actually made by them or rebadged Panasonics?
Philips took over the Magnavox, Philco and Sylvania product line in the US.
Almost all of them were made by Panasonic until the early 90's, then they switched to having them built by Funai. Very trouble prone!
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Old 31st May 2017, 5:53 pm   #71
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Default Re: "House" brands.

Goodmans name became a flag of convenience and got slapped on all sorts of stuff from all sorts of places. It was almost like ritual destruction of their reputation. Did someone go and salt the hallowed place in Wembley just to be sure?

They were a great firm, and the well documented tales of how they helped owners of their speakers is proof.

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Old 31st May 2017, 6:56 pm   #72
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Default Re: "House" brands.

Likewise, 'Wharfedale' now appears as a brand name on things-other-than-speakers, in circumstances which don't do the brand legacy a whole lot of good.

I had a friend working at Goodmans as a speaker FEA engineer right up to the end - somewhere on the south coast, I think - I guess it must have finished a bit less than 15 years ago?
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Old 31st May 2017, 7:20 pm   #73
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Default Re: "House" brands.

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We had a Goodmans VHS video recorder which was obviously a rebadged Philips.
Were the Philips VCR's actually made by them or rebadged Panasonics...
The Goodmans/Philips VCR's that I worked on at Comet in the mid 90's were definitely made by Philips. From memory I think one of the Philips clones had the model number VN6000 and I have seen them crop up occasionally on eBay.

There was another VCR in the Goodmans VN series which was a rebranded Daewoo model very similar (if not the same) as some of the earlier Goldstar VCR's.

Regards

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Old 31st May 2017, 7:23 pm   #74
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Default Re: "House" brands.

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Chinon were a Japanese camera company, not a house brand. Dixons used the Prinz brand on some of their cameras, with Prinzsound used on the audio stuff..
I have my parents' Prinz slide projector - it dates from 1972 and is in its original box - and it looks suspiciously like a budget-end Hanimex item. ISTR there is/was a pretty hefty bulb in it. (Must check if the projector still works!)
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Old 31st May 2017, 7:36 pm   #75
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Default Re: "House" brands.

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Goodmans name became a flag of convenience and got slapped on all sorts of stuff from all sorts of places.
In the early 90s I had Goodmans branded radio/double cassette small ghetto blaster style thing - it was a very poor item in every respect and soon ended up as a shed radio.

In the early days of terrestrial digital TV I got a set-top box for my parents. They were on offer a wholesaler's and, though now wary of the Goodmans name, I took a punt. It turned out to be a reasonable item.
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Old 31st May 2017, 8:39 pm   #76
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Default Re: "House" brands.

Aldi use "Workzone" for their range of tools if I remember correctly.
Sirius, thinking about it Tandy seemed to have quite a range of house names. I still have a multimeter made from a kit in the eighties produced by Tandy and I'm pretty sure that is a Micronta. I had to build it as part of my apprenticeship. I definitely remember buying bubble packed Archer components from the Tandy shop in the Central Arcade on Newgate Street. (only when Aitken Bros in High Bridge didn't have them!) when I was a teenager.
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Old 31st May 2017, 8:53 pm   #77
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Default Re: "House" brands.

The Goodmans brand was used for a while in the 90s for low end hifi gear which was certainly cheap'n'cheerful but not too bad. I have a Goodmans branded tuner from this period which was probably originally part of a midi system with separate components, and it's not bad at all - the sound quality is as good as any other entry level tuner, it has lots of presets, and it even has a rotary tuning knob which emulates the operation of an analogue tuner very nicely. And it's got a clock The only obvious presence of shoddy costcutting is indicated by the lack of mains failure backup, so if you unplug it you have to redo all the presets and reset the clock (no RDS).

Subsequent to this the brand was either sold on or used for random downmarket stuff like Vestel LCD TVs. I vaguely remember that the brand is now owned by Argos/Sainsburys, though I may be thinking of something else.
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Old 31st May 2017, 9:10 pm   #78
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Default Re: "House" brands.

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I vaguely remember that the brand is now owned by Argos/Sainsburys, though I may be thinking of something else.
Sainsburys (who now own Argos) certainly own the Alba and Bush brand names. Of course, the original Bush and Alba companies went out of business over three decades ago.
Argos (then the Home Retail Group), bought the Alba and Bush brands from Alba plc (fairly recently, when it was in difficulties). Alba plc then renamed itself Harvard International (on 1st April 2009) and they still own the Goodmans brand.

Last edited by dazzlevision; 31st May 2017 at 9:24 pm.
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Old 31st May 2017, 9:47 pm   #79
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Default Re: "House" brands.

Another Argos 'house' brand : Mikomi , used for TVs, MP3 players and other consumer electronics.

Tandy / Radio Shack had over 100 registered trade marks in the USA. Some of the ones I remember : Realistic (audio and video), Archer (components), Micronta (test equipment), Science Fair (electronic kits), Enercell (batteries), Concertape (magnetic tape), Optimus (speakers), Portavision, Pocketvision, Genexxa (TV sets), Flavoradio (pocket radios in brightly coloured plastic cases, named after different fruits like blueberry, strawberry, orange etc.)

Supermarkets have introduced their own brand names too.

Asda had Pacific, Onn, Durabrand
Tesco - Winthrop, winthronics, Dansai, Technika
Safeway (before they were taken over by Morrisons) had Naiko
Sainsburys had cello, I think

Dixons had Prinz, Prinzsound, Prinzvision and Prinztronic (I have a Prinztronic pocket calculator with green fluorescent display, made by Toshiba), then Saisho and Matsui (shared with Currys since both Dixons and Currys were part of the same group.) Currys also had Triumph and Logik. I think Dixons used Miranda for their budget cameras after the Prinz brand waned.

Comet had Solavox.

I'm sure there are more names to add to this list.
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Old 31st May 2017, 9:52 pm   #80
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Default Re: "House" brands.

In recent years, Sainsburys had "Red" as a brand for their radios, Freeview boxes etc
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