“Sears sold its Craftsman brand of tools to Stanley Black & Decker. It is looking to sell Kenmore appliances and Diehard auto parts.”
Those are abstractions, aren’t they? Sears has never designed or manufactured anything.
I’m not criticizing Sears’s strategy of putting their brand on certain things, but they can’t depend on an abstraction to survive in the long run.
Kenmore was Whirlpool, but Sears put the label on South Korean appliances starting about 2008. And these appliances weren’t up to American standards. So Kenmore is no longer worth anything unless Sears sells the brand name to someone who will take the time to rebuild the brand from scratch.
The Sears association with Craftsman and Kenmore was a symbiotic relationship between a good manufacturer and a good distributor, which is really what Sears was.
But not any more.
You are correct, however Sears would go to the top manufacturer and say we want you to take your best product, make these tweaks/additions/reductions and come up with a better product the we will brand it and sell it as “Sears Best”. Then consumers knew it was the best and could buy with confidence.