GE Tries To Unload Appliance Business

[tomturbomatic]

From WSJ 7-17-14:

GE executives have stepped up efforts to find a buyer for its appliance business, one of GE's final ties to American consumers.

Analysts have suggested a handfull of possible suitors including China's Haier Electronics Group, GE's Mexican partner Controladora Mabe SA and Sweden's Electrolux.

Other competitors that could be interested are South Korea's LG Electronics, and Samsung.

Mexico's Mabe is a longtime partner in a joint venture with GE, for whom the Mexican company began making stoves and other appliances in 1987. The company's San Luis Potosi stove plant, built to make GE appliances, is the largest factory of its type in the world, according to Mabe's website.

When GE tried to jettison appliances in 2008, the company had to pull back when it could not find potential buyers and plans for a spinoff stalled because of the recession.

After it scrapped plans for the sale, GE plowed more than $1 billion into the businesses to refresh its entire line of appliances and has added about 3,000 jobs at its Kentucky apppliance factory since 2010.
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What a revoltin' development this is.

 

[danemodsandy]

If They Do This....

I will never buy a non-vintage GE product or use a GE service again.

Ever.

 

[turquoisedude]

Oh, geez.... And I thought GE was serious about getting back into North American production.  I bought a GE dishwasher for a rental property in 2012 for the sole reason that it was actually built in Appliance Park in Kentucky...  

 

Mabe has been producing pretty much all the GE appliances here in Canada for a few years now.  Camco seems to have gotten the rug pulled out from under them and since then, Mabe has phased out some of the Canadian brands (McClary and Moffat);  the only brands left are GE, Hotpoint, and the store brand Beaumark.  

 

I'm with Sandy - never another non-vintage GE appliance if they go through with this!!

 

[philcoford]

GO selloffs

As one who had to endure being bought by The evil General, having them rundown and almost kill us off, then sell us off (Plastics)(thankfully) I have not bought anything with their logo on it in over 15 years. Sadly, a lot of my retirement savings are in their stock which is no longer worth half what I paid. They don't care about people at all.

 

[cleanteamofny]

If anything, they should drop the laundry line for they exceed in their Stoves, Microwaves and Fridge!

 

[kqkenmore]

G.E. Stock

Well I wonder about the stock because my parents still have some that they got years ago. when my father worked for them. He used to repair small appliances on Madison ave in Memphis TN. It was neat at the time because  we were ab;e to get radios and stuff if it had been returned. I still have a Red White and Blue transistor Radio and one that looks like a gator.

 

[jetcone]

This is the problem with

the thinking today. Nowadays if the profit margin isn't huge then a company the size of GE scoffs it off.

That is not good business in the long run.  Any business that writes off profit is not really doing business and it will bite them in the end. The bigger the profit the less customers you have and if a customer has 30% of your business then that is not  a healthy model- even if the profits are huge.

 

You don't turn your back on 100 million customers. Appliances is how GE got started. Its been too long between the founders and these new CEO's who are so divorced from the bottom line its not funny. Peter F. Drucker must be rolling in his grave.

 

<span style="font-size: 10pt;">Let others now speak for Drucker, who died peacefully in his sleep at home on Nov. 11 at age 95, eight days shy of his 96th birthday:</span>

<span style="font-size: 10pt;">"The world knows he was the greatest management thinker of the last century," Jack Welch, former chairman of General Electric Co. (), said after Drucker's death." 2005 November</span>

 

<span style="font-size: 10pt;">"He was the creator and inventor of modern management," said management guru Tom Peters. "In the early 1950s, nobody had a tool kit to manage these incredibly complex organizations that had gone out of control. Drucker was the first person to give us a handbook for that."</span>

<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Adds Intel Corp. () co-founder Andrew S. Grove: "Like many philosophers, he spoke in plain language that resonated with ordinary managers. Consequently, simple statements from him have influenced untold numbers of daily actions; they did mine over decades."</span>[COLOR=#000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold] [/COLOR]</span>

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-11-27/the-man-who-invented-management

 

[tomturbomatic]

Funny how the tributes speak of his management skills and not of the things his company made where "Progress is out most important product."

One of the most brilliant management decisions GE made was to buy Hotpoint to get the Calrod heating element that Hotpoint invented. It revolutionized electric range manufacturing in this country. GE & Hotpoint were offering the sealed rod heating elements in surface units while other manufactureres were coming up with modified versions of the flat disc technology in use in Europe. I have a 1938, I think, Westinghouse use and care manual that has recipes where the whole dish is put together and brought up to a boil in a covered pan on the large element then the heat is turned off and the meal cooks for an hour undisturbed on the stored heat. That is not a fast, responsive unit. Frigidaire's first units were thick rings that, after being heated up to boil water for coffee, could fry bacon and then eggs on the stored heat, according to the owner's manual.

 

[joe_in_philly]

Here is a very old movie about Calrod.

http://https//archive.org/details/con_000012

 

[tomturbomatic]

Silent film

It needed piano accompaniment, but was a great 1920s sales tool. Thanks, Joe.

I have not seen or heard the term "bake oven" since my father used to use it to describe a place being hot as a bake oven.

 

[philr]

Did Hotpoint ever make electric kettles in the US?

I have one just like this one: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/used-vintage...LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item56669ea016&_uhb=1

I have one that's made in Canada featured in this thread: http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?50735_1

And I also have a very similar GE kettle (the main difference between the Hotpoint and the GE is the Location of the screws for the handle) and the location of the reset button under it. Strangely, the Hotpoint is made by RCA Victor and doesn't mention GE anywhere on it.

I have also seen a Hotpoint kettle on eBay that was from foreign markets (England or South Africa if I remember well) and it looked like a flying saucer!

 

[mikael3]

Absolutely fascinating.  I'm amazed at the extent of manual effort that went into those rods--especially the whirling vats of molten iron!  One of the featured employees was a woman, which was a bit of a surprise.  Then there were the clothes, the hats, the hair, the fantastic enamel kitchen sink, the beautiful pot being filled with hot water, the restaurant kitchen, the bakery--just a wonderful insight into so many little details of 1928.

 

[whirlcool]

I guess the new factory with the $11.00 per hour employees with no benefits wasn't good enough for GE. They didn't know when they had a good thing going. I remember on a show last year some GE bigshot said that "GE goes to where it's customers are, and right now they are not in the United States". So this move fits in with that statement quite nicely.

Nowadays if the profit margin isn't huge then a company the size of GE scoffs it off.

I think you hit the nail on the head with this one.

 

[tomturbomatic]

GE Electric Kettles

PhilR: I have a mid-50s GE electric tea kettle that was made in the US. It has a Bakelite handle and base with a detachable cord. I think the body is stainless steel and the top is copper. Everything I have seen after that was made in Canada. When I worked in Housewares, we used to have people from the UK and Canada newly arrived at the CDC or one of the univeristies in Atlanta come in looking for electric kettles. We reported the lost sales and, eventually, we started stocking the GE kettles from Canada. I don't know if, by the 70s, there was only one model made, but it was round and did not have the switch for either Constant Full Boil or Boil then hold at a simmer like an earlier, oval one I found in a thrift store and bought. It, too, was made in Canada.

 

[hydralique]

So Sad . . .

This seems very short-sighted. Look at the work LG and Samsung have put into the American appliance market, these are smart companies and they’ve chosen to invest here and become competitive. Both are also putting emphasis on mid-range products rather than becoming known for BOL products because the mid-range is where the money is, and I don’t believe for a minute that these guys are doing it for fun: they are making profits.

 

[maytagbear]

Dreaming here......

wouldn't it be something if we were all "more than well-off," and could form a group to buy GE appliances and........!

I'd love to rescue the small appliance line, too, and ...........

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[joe_in_philly]

I am all for us all being more than well off! 

 

Based on the cordial discourse and the ease at which we AW members frequently reach a harmonious agreement, I am sure GE appliances would run smoothly under our collective direction.

 

 

 

[norgeway]

Im all for

New appliances....IF we could get NEW 1950s and 60s appliances, until then, I will use vintage...lets face it, nothing made in the last 40 years is the quality of the earlier stuff.pushing to turn stove knobs, no chrome, and no flourescent light, no outlet on a range...no pushbuttons, no analog clock with a second hand..etc just tell me one thing...I DONT WANT IT!!!

 

[tolivac]

I like vintage too,BUT if appliance companies were to build washers,stoves,fridges,to "vintage" standards can you imagine how much the machine would cost?Beleive if they were built to those standards--no one could afford them.So--you buy vintage machines from swap shops,EBay,Craiglist,yard sales, and so on.