Kenmore's Future
First off....Brian, as far as Tacony or Electrolux taking over vacuum production from Panasonic, neither would have happened. Why? Well, Sears Holdings would have been IDIOTS to go with Electrolux. Their quality since buying the Electrolux name from (now) Aerus has been horrible. Only since moving the plant to Hungary, in the last 5 years, have we seen ANY improvement whatsoever in their vacuums....and even that is very much debatable, especially when you talk to any competent vac shop that is honest & knows their stuff. And also, in my personal opinion, I do believe in recent years the relationship between Electrolux & Sears must have been getting testy, we have rarely seen any vacs that were designed & produced by Electrolux, seems anything not made by Panasonic in the last 5 to 7 years has been produced by Samsung, LG or TTI.
As for Tacony taking over production? Nope. Why would they? They are a small player currently in the vacuum marketplace, trying to compete with the likes of Sebo, Miele, Lindhaus, Aerus, Electrolux, Bosch & the other European canisters in the marketplace. Tacony has barely enough manufacturing space for their own products, let alone to take on Kenmore designs for Sears. Furthermore, considering Tacony's main product lines - Simplicity, Riccar, Fuller Brush & Carpet Pro - are sold in vac shops & authorized online retailers, & the new Kenmore's would obviously be new designs made by Tacony & presumably have design similarities to existing Simplicity/Riccar designs, Kenmore vacuums would be competing head to head with the Simplicity/Riccar machines, & since they would be cheaper & more readily available to the average consumer, that would destroy Tacony's existing brands being sold in vac shops. I highly doubt Tacony would take on, design & manufacture a brand that has the potential to wipe out their existing brands.
As for Panasonic dropping consumer goods altogether? I must admit, I am saddened & shocked by this. I have always preferred Panasonic's cordless phones to other brands, as well as their microwaves. Their TV's were decent quality too, not the best, but very comparable to other makes & decently priced & good value. And I personally think their microwaves are the best in the industry, they seem to last forever & you can always find them second hand quite easily. In fact, I have an old woodie 1984 Panasonic microwave in my kitchen right now.
Now, in regards to Cleva buying the Panasonic designs & shipping the tooling to China. I think this is a good thing! I think Panasonic had in recent years started to improve the quality of the Kenmore vacs, as well as their designs. We can only hope Cleva won't ditch the Kenmore designs entirely & will improve on them, as Morepowermate seems to be implying above. I can only hope, however, they will rethink selling ONLY the Kenmore name for vacuums in North America. If Cleva was smart, they should strongly consider entering into a licensing agreement with Matsushita to use the Panasonic name on a line of vac shop only canisters & uprights. The existing Panasonic designs are good designs, well engineered, & well respected by vac shop owners, & a solid mid-priced brand. So, hopefully they won't throw these perfectly good designs away & miss a out on a profitable market.
BUT, here comes the bad news....Any vacuum collector out there with a prized Kenmore or Panasonic canister that they want to keep running for a long time, & they will need spare parts, had better act FAST! Chances are pretty good I bet that Cleva will discontinue parts for EVERYTHING made before the year 2000. The Chinese won't care that the old vacuums should be saved & kept running, they will want them to die & we go & buy their new designs. So, any smart collector should be stockpiling & buying whatever parts they need Kenmore or Panasonic related while they still can. I actually went out & bought a new Kenmore Elite canister with the Ultra Plush powerhead when I heard of Panasonic discontinuing production, & am quite pleased with it, figured it would be best to not chance being able to get it in the future.
Well, let's hope for the best for Cleva, & at least there IS still a future for Kenmore/Panasonic designs out there instead of just disappearing entirely.
Rob