The Kenmore name

[man114]

Eddie Lampert has spun off a few of the brands into Sears Brand Management LLC. What'll happen is he'll keep the retails section open long enough, through store closing that he can totally remove these assets from the retail operation. This if/when Sears closes these brands will be an independent entity that can be sold, license the name like Emerson Radio Corp. etc.

That's how Sears delivering has become "innovel" even though it still is technically owned by SHLD.

Kenmore will survive in some fashion.

 

[iowabear]

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Launderess,

 

You made a good point about Kenmore appliances being functionally different and/or better.  Which is different from some of the Sears brands for non-appliances I was thinking of, which were more or less just re-brands.

 

I wonder how this actually happened inside Sears.  Did they have a special group of buyers that worked with Whirlpool engineers directly?  Or did Whirlpool just create additional features/designs in advance knowing that Sears would demand something to differentiate the Kenmore versions?  Hard to imagine Sears employing appliance design engineers themselves, but times were different then (corporations didn't outsource everything) and Kenmore was a huge brand.

 

Would be interesting to know how this worked, both in their heyday and today.

 

[johnb300m]

Iowabear, I applied to a few Sears Engineering jobs several years ago. And got good advice not to pursue them.
Sears did have something of an internal engineering and design dept that handled the tools and appliances etc.
I don’t think it was as deep as WP designing the whole product, but if I remember the job descriptions, they were on par with regular engineering jobs that required CAD and mechanical, technical experience while integrating with electrical components. As with my current job and suppliers, it was probably similar with lots of engineering integration between Sears and whirlpool or other suppliers, such as different mechanisms and buttons and layouts and displays and metallurgical treatments and surface finishes etc. many things that were integral to the customer facing experience of the products at least, I would surmise. With the rest of the product engineering heavily donated from the supplier.

 

[iowabear]

John,

 

Thank you for your reply.  Fascinating.  It must have taken a lot of coordination with Whirlpool, and must have been very time consuming, especially before design software and Internet communication.

 

So to Launderess's other point, they really were their own product and manufactured accordingly.

 

It's just hard to imagine a corporation justifying all that extra expense today, but it obviously served Sears well for a long time.   Will be interesting to watch what the next owner of "Kenmore" does.