Kleenmaid in difficulties

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gizmo

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I heard on the radio this morning that Kleenmaid had gone into receivership.
Kleenmaid is an Australian company, based in Queensland, which imports a range of washing machines, dryers, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, fridges/freezers and stoves/ovens/rangehoods.

Their top loader washers and matching dryers are sourced from Speed Queen USA; their front load washers are either the big Speed Queen US machines or smaller FLs and smaller dryers are from Gorenje. Most kitchen appliances are sourced from Brandt in Europe, and their large refrigerators are from GE in the USA. I'm not sure who makes their vacuuum cleaners.
They have always aimed at a premium price, quality focused market.

They are an integrated importer/retailer, with only 20 stores around the country. (plus I believe some independent agents in smaller country towns.) The Geelong store, the nearest to me, has recently closed down. I don't know when, I only noticed last week it was closed.

"Receivership" in Australia is like entering into bankruptcy protection in USA - the company has debts it can no longer service, probably due to declining sales, so an external administrator has been appointed to administer the business, and analyze whether the business can restructure and survive, or whether it will be closed down.

Chris
 
Vacuum cleaners....

...are made by Sebo in Germany.

The upright gets particularly good reviews by Which magazine in the UK and Choice also gave it the thumbs up....

I do object to seeing Gorenje machines sold here for upwards of $2000 when they should retail for around $1200 including a generous mark up. They sell for around GBP300-400...

The larger front loaders used to be Speed Queens, now they are retailing a rebadged Bosch which is no longer sold by Bosch in Oz.
 
Kleenmaid

Yes Chris it seems that the repairman who did the repairs on our G.E. fridge some time ago,(Kleenmaid is the sole distributor of G.E. fridges here in Oz.),was quite correct, he advised me that they were in some trouble and that I was wise not to accept their offer of a further 5 years warranty on our fridge for a cost of about $700.00.
I heard on Radio 2GB this morning one fellow who actually purchased a franchise of them back in November and not too long afterwards the troubles began, with orders not being supplied or being delayed for customers,this guy actually put $250,000.00 into ths venture and now on Tuesday will need to find a real estate agent to sell his house to pay the debt.
This type of corporate behaviour is absolutely disgraceful,they would have known long before this that they were in some trouble and really someone needs to be jailed for it.
Interestingly enough I do recall the salesman telling me when I bought the fridge,that Kleenamid was actually owned by the Seventh-Day Adventist church,hence why their stores do not trade on Sunday, if this is the case, then surely the Church has someting to answer for as well.
Cheers.
 
Well, I guess I can kiss the warranty on my two-year-old Speed Queen washer goodbye. Good thing I didn't take up purchasing an extended warranty, which would have cost almost $300.
 
1. They are in receivership, not closed down yet. They may still survive. that warranty may stll have value...

2. I doubt it would be the Seventh Day Adventists, they wouldn't trade on a Saturday as their holy day of the week is Saturday, the seventh day of the week. Sunday is the first day of the week.

Chris.
 
The guy who owns Kleenmaid is a Seventh Day Adventist, rather than the church owning it. Michael did a lot of work with them setting up the IT systems in the late 90's, and found them cheap and very difficult to deal with. At that time they offered him a "Discount" on a SS microwave which brought it down to $1400, he went shopping for a price comparison and found an identical LG minus the Kleenmaid badges for $500.

The local paper on the Sunshine Coast had plenty to say. Staff havent been paid on time since Christmas, $27Mil worth of customer deposits lost, Deloitte will keep 15 staff out of 150 on whilst they go through administration. They've been trying to find finance/equity partner for the last 3 months according to the local paper, unsuccessfully. The local paper also states that they've had trouble delivering product to customers as they've had supply issues due to non payment of their bills.

They've done well to stick on for 25 years, but other than the Speed Queen Washers, everything else they've always sold has been highly marked up italian made Junk.
 
Kleenmaid part 2

Nathan,
interesting you say they offered Michael an alleged "discount" on your microwave, yet when I bought the fridge in 2004,the salesman Mark advised me that Kleenmaid do not do price discounting unless the item you are after happens to be on special, due to the fact that if you are interested in Kleenmaid then you want top quality,hhmm stupid me I guess, now I am not too sure on what to do, maybe I will just keep the fridge and see how it goes,and hope thaere are no more problems with it,although a close friend has mentioned to me I should consider selling it on ebay, or some such thing and just replace it.,but I think I will just see how things go.
Cheers.
Steve.
 
Hi Steve,

Michael was working for them as a vendor, they were seeking a discount on consulting and offered discounts in kind. A business transaction rather than a retail one.

The Fridges are American, but I know three people with them and all have needed repair or have had issues with condensation forming. My Aunt had two top freezer models that are less than 3 years old and recently sold them in the paper and bought an F&P to replace them. One had had faulty seals, cracked defrost pan and rusted at the bottom front of the cabinet. The other had continuous condensation issues where the outside of the cabinet would weep and drip water on the floor. After 3 unsuccessful repairs, she gave up.

When they were selling St George cooking appliances, they sold very little of the expensive Aussie stuff only the free standing ranges, and put huge markups on the Italian manufactured built in stuff that St George now only sell as as Builder Grade.

The previous series of 5kg FL washers, I know two people who had them and both were rebuilt numerous times under the 5 year warranty, including the cabinet that rusted away.

Michaels unit had a Kleenmaid Dishwasher when he bought it. In its first 3 years, it was repaired 4 times and whilst it has worked successfully since, it lives at Michaels Mothers now and is a good performer, other than the severe rust in the racks that'll be the reason it gets dumped this year at only 7 years old.

The SQ Washers and dryers have been good for 10-15 years, but I'm yet to see anything else they've sold, last that long.

If you're happy with the performance of your fridge then thats all that matters, Kleenmaid made the fridges an exotic and attractive option compared to what was available in Australia at that time. I badgered Mum about getting one for years as a Teenager, but she refused to spend that much money on a Fridge.

Cheers

Nathan
 
'everything else they've always sold has been highly

Yeah, that was always my sentiment. Not that it was all Italian, there was a bit of French and German thrown in. Though, 'overpriced and pretentious' sums it up. All their cooking, refrigeration, dishwashing appliances etc. weren't any different to what is sold at 'Bing Lee, The Good Guys, Retravision et al.' Today's appliance shoppping experience is devoid of aesthetic excitement. It's all bland, minimalistic bombast wrapped in disposable plastic and stainless steel.
 
fridge

Thanks Nathan,
the only 2 problems with the fridge were to do with the automatic icemaker,i.e.the inlet hose snapping,nobig deal really and then the water valve packing it in, I guess really if it is just the icemaker and water functions playing up, they are easily enough turned off and I can just buy a couple of ice cube trays and just use it like a standard fridge, as the actual fridge and freezer sections do work okay,mind you I do have my eye on a really nice looking Kelvinator 610 litre S.B.S.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,or one could look on ebay,and or classifieds for a nice recon job,now I really miss my old Philips Max-E top freezer, after all one can never have too many appliances can one?,l.o.l. l.o.l. l.o.l..
Cheers to all.
Steve.
 
Interesting thread

When I was over last in '96 I went and saw the St George ovens at some Upmarket Showroom in South Sydney. (Being an appliance nut I couldn't admit to being a tourist on vacation so I told him I was working in the City!! Oh the shame.) I really liked the design of the swing door model it was all SS. He told me they were Made in Oz, now was that true back then?

Then when I was up in Brisbane I caught wind of the Kleenmaid brand and wanted to peek inside their washers desperately!
But when I found out you had to make an appointment at one of their stores to take a gander I lost complete interest. As a tourist too much effort and time involved. I thought that was a bit of a klunky business model. Over here we have Miele Showrooms where you get to play with but don't get sold too. You can't buy an appliance at a Miele Showroom but after playing they will refer you to a local dealer for a sale. So looking has no pressure involved.
Sounds like they had a greedy complex business model as their major mistake. To rebadge second tier appliances as TOL is a real booboo!
Speed Queen makes some awesome washers that last and last. I installed in my unit the SQ Horizon front loader for almost 10 years now and it humms along, with only the nylon body pins wearing out at a whopping $7.60 for the pair! And my tenants are AA's = ApplianceAbusers!

Too bad to have built a brand up with all those service people only to be made of fluff. I think to really understand the appliance business you've got to actually make stuff not buy it second hand and rebadge it. We are seeing too much of that over here these days.
 
Their smaller front loaders were made by Gorenje in Slovenia. They were always a cheap machine when sold with other badges (they were sold here as Pacific, Simpson, Frigidaire and Gorenje brands) but Kleenmaid charged premium prices for them. However they seem to have been pretty good little machines - near me, two business owners have them for their B&Bs, one has the 800 rpm spin model, the other is the 1500 rpm model. Both machines are over 10 years old now, both have had one repair each, both still look like new and still work well despite having been used almost daily in that time. These are the older KFL800 and KFL 1500 models, I don't know about their more recent Gorenje sourced models.

One thing I didn't like about the Kleenmaid sales model was that their stores stocked the opposition brands machines, not for sale but only for criticism. I remembered a salesman at the Dandenong store demostrating the "sloppy, hopeless, weak" tub suspension of the Fisher and Paykel machine, compared to the firmer suspension of the Speed Queen sourced Kleenmaid. The truth is that F&P uses top mount suspension, and soft springing, to absorb the high frequency vibration that is a characteristic of their much faster spin speed than the Speed Queen. If you made a SQ Kleenmaid spin as fast as a F&P, it would dance around the room.
That said, the same salesman was quite friendly with me. I told him I was (at the time) moving to a house with solar power, and would need to find a machine which used very little power. He was convinced that the SQ would be very efficient and allowed me to bring in a power-use meter to measure several machines, both theirs and the opposition they had on display. the SQ Kleenmaid TL and Gorenje Kleenmaid FL both used heaps of electricity, the F&P used way less but the surprise was the Kleenmaid TL tumble washer, sourced from Brandt in France, which used only a tiny amount of power - from memory less than 100 watts when washing, about 200 watts when spinning, including the pump. It was a great little machine and was the top performer in Choice magazine at the time, but typical for Kleenmaid, was hopelessly overpriced at over $1800. Bendix sold a similar machine, not as efficient or as good, for about $950.

Chris
 
Hi Jon,

Thats the good St George Stuff. I'm eying that very oven off for when the rest of my Kitchen changes occur later in the year. It has a 90L capacity compared to the average of 50-65L within the same footprint.

St George also have a line of almost generic ovens and cooktops that come from Italy and which they position and sell as a cheap product to give them coverage accross all price points.

Nathan

 
made in Sydney

so does St George survive the collapse of Kleenmaid? Are St George stoves sold anywhere else except through Kleenmaid stores?

It would be sad to see that proud old quality brand finally disappear altogether.

I must admit I didn't know that St George stoves were still made here, I thought that they had become just a badge stuck onto imported product years ago.

Chris.
 
Kleenmaid / Speed Queen Washers

I wonder what's going to happen to the Speed Queen branded top loading washers if Kleenmaid do indeed go under?

Hopefully, somebody else will import and sell them.....hopefully at a much less price than the ridiculous prices that Kleenmaid were charging for them...AU$2500.00! when, if you have an ABN, you can buy the same Speed Queen branded machine from Commercial Laundry Appliances for around AU$1500.00...much more reasonable.

Leon
 
From what I understand, St George and Kleenmaid parted ways some time ago. I think you can buy St George at Winning Appliances.

I remember that little Kleenmaid top load front load, it was a sweet little machine. I am actually surprised that no one else has offered such a machine after Bendix when kaput and Kleenmaid stopped offering one. If Miele or Bosch had a model available I am sure that it would satisfy a section in the community that wanted one and then other brands would get into it too.
 

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