At the time of writing we had recently reported on the Whirlpool and Beko team up and then hot on the heels of that rumours that Bosch might buy Whirlpool which, whilst politically interesting in the industry gave rise to looking again into who’s who and who owns what.

A lot of buyers, for various reasons, try to avoid buying Chinese products or from Chinese companies, and we’re afraid that this is becoming increasingly difficult.

Way back in 2003, we produced an article called “What’s In A Name?” At the time, we saw a great deal of convergence, with larger brands gobbling up smaller ones, and some surprised us due to their scale. Now, this has become just insane.

Though much of the info in that article is still valid and in in it we sought to inform people just who they were buying from, not just what badge was on the box.

From that point we still have Electrolux Group that is largely unchanged, Bosch (unless they buy Whirlpool), Glen Dimplex but they are really only a UK thing and aside that nothing seems to be the same. Largely due to Chinese producers buying up European or world brands.

Haier

Some years ago we were all a bit taken aback by the rise of Haier, a Chinese company that bought General Electric but since then, Haier has grown, bought a bunch of stuff and is now reportedly the largest appliance producer in the world churning over £48 billion in revenue.

Haier now owns the Candy Group, Fisher & Paykel/Delonghi and more, a list is:

• Haier
• Candy
• Hoover
• Rosieres
• Iberna
• Otsein
• Fisher & Paykel
• Delonghi
• Zerowatt
• GE Appliances
• Aqua
• Casarte
• Leader

That’s quite the portfolio of brands, many well known in the UK and, we probably missed some!

Hisense

Hot on the heels of Haier came Hisense, another Chinese company that started out making refrigeration that we all thought was not very good. How times change.

Hisense is now a serious global producer of appliances and through buying up some brands has grown very rapidly in a short space of time, most recently by buying the Gorenje Group.

Hisense now own the following:

• Fridgemaster
• Gorenje
• Asko
• Atag
• Pelgrim
• Etna

And that’s just the start, ignoring air conditioning, consumer electronics and more, Hisense is a huge company. And, they do produce for other companies as well so, you see branded stuff as well.

Whirlpool – Beko

Our take on this tie up is that Whirlpool wasn’t making enough from the European market.

It tried under the Whirlpool brand and never really got any traction then bought Bauknecht and Maytag and a smattering of smaller brands but really changed theme when it bought the Indesit Group in 2015.

They are exiting Europe (one way or another) and the tie in with Beko makes this what we’d regard as a supermassive group as it includes:

• Whirlpool
• Beko
• Bauknecht
• Hotpoint
• Ariston
• Indesit
• Creda
• CannonBlomberg
• Grundig
• Ignis

And, probably some we’ve forgotten along the way.

Why Is This Happening?

Simple really, at least in some ways, it’s all about scale. Oh, and consumers want “cheap”, not necessarily good products.

Making appliances isn’t cheap, setting up production facilities, research, support and whatnot all costs a lot of capital and that is why there are very few, if any, new start ups. In the EU we can only think of Ebac in recent times, no others.

All the other brands that you see popping up here that and everywhere are rebranded products made by others. Badge engineering, essentially.

The simple fact is, these companies cannot afford to set up and produce appliances, it costs millions to even get started and when you look at the possible returns on that investment it could take over a decade to get a return, if you ever did. And, you need volume sales which means selling across multiple territories which for many just isn’t possible.

(See this artilcle and also this one about badge engineering)

It would appear, however that the old guard are finding it tough to compete with the Chinese businesses and they are starting to to pool their resources in order to try to compete, survive and have a future.

Relying on old historic brands will only get them so far.

So now we see the rise of these massive businesses operating on huge scales that are almost beyond comprehension.

Is It A Good Thing?

That depends on your point of view.

For end users it means lower prices or at least, prices that are not increasing as they should.

The flip side of that is that there is less and less choice even if you see more and more bnands in the stores. Because they are all produced by a handful of companies.

Ultimately whether it’s a good or bad thing and what we or customers think about it is irrelevant as this is what is happening and nothing is stopping it, we don’t know if anything can now or reverse the trend.

Chances are however that now any appliance you buy will be made in Turkey, former Soviet regions, Korea or China as very little sold in Europe is made elsewhere any more aside from a smattering of smaller producers.