dysonman1
I like you message, sir. In the UK there are no franchises selling electrical goods in stores, what we have are chains of supermarkets and DIY stores, plus a huge chain store known as Argos who sell just about everything for the home. In addition to these, we have chain and independent department stores, though the latter is a rarity at as the chains such as House of Fraser have bought most of them up. We did of course have for many years a good deal of chain electrical stores, but in the last twenty years they have one by one gone out of business, leaving only Currys chain stores and whatever independent electrical stores are left.
However, in the UK, the problem for Oreck has been that their product has a niche market. Sold only through TV shopping channels and mail order via advertisements in magazines, their lightweight cleaning ensemble was targeted really at an aging consumer. That same aging consumer like myself is unlikely wax lyrical about appliances of yore and lust after a soft-bag upright in the same way my mother may have, and then again I know my mother was so happy to dispense with her large soft-bag Hoover cleaner, having aspired to a (then) modern streamlined hard-bag Electrolux; to revert to a soft-bag could well have seen like a step-down of epic dimensions.
No matter what changes Oreck has made to the cleaner over the years, for as long as I can recall it has been as basic as basic could be, and looked incredibly dated. The style was old-fashioned and unappealing, long before the futuristic looking bagless cleaners were ever on sale. I note with interest the comments that Oreck is widely used in hotels in the US; this is very much not the case in the UK. Like I say, they their market was the elderly and the home-shoppers.
I think Oreck got lazy and failed to realise they were supplying a finite market. This is where Vax were very business-savvy; we can say what we like about the appalling quality of the cheap and not-so-cheap-at-all cleaners they make, the fact remains that Vax started out as a company making above-average quality 3-in-1 canister vacuum cleaners who's selling point was the fact it could be used to wash carpets. Until the early 1990's, Vax only sold one model at a time, extending to two canister models around 1990, two uprights from 1993, and two more canisters (total of four) from 1994. Of course Dyson went on sale from 1992 and orders for these cleaners were fulfilled from 1993. Vax sales were declining anyway, and Dyson didn't help matters. Vax as we knew it in the UK has of course been taken over by TTI but whoever is in charge has clearly seen the need to diversify to meet the needs of the consumer. Had they continued to make 3-in-1 canister cleaners and nothing else, the name Vax wouldn't have made it into the 21st century.