Sears Silvertone, Warwick Electronics?

[Steve D.]

Also found this VK post on Warwick.

"Sears Roebuck bought 50% of Warwick in January 1958. Whirlpool wound up owning 57% or Warwick in 1966.

In December 1976 Whirlpool sold the Warwick TV business, along with its Sears contract, to Sanyo. At the time Warwick planned to continue production of electric organs. Sanyo improved the Forrest City, Arks. factory and added 1000 workers to the 300 or so still employed at the time of the Warwick sale.

In short, Sanyo's purchase of Warwick was about the only good story amongst slews of sell-offs and factory closings in the 70's & 80's."

-Steve D.

[Findm-Keepm]

Originally Posted by Steve D.

Also found this VK post on Warwick.

"Sears Roebuck bought 50% of Warwick in January 1958. Whirlpool wound up owning 57% or Warwick in 1966.

In December 1976 Whirlpool sold the Warwick TV business, along with its Sears contract, to Sanyo. At the time Warwick planned to continue production of electric organs. Sanyo improved the Forrest City, Arks. factory and added 1000 workers to the 300 or so still employed at the time of the Warwick sale.

In short, Sanyo's purchase of Warwick was about the only good story amongst slews of sell-offs and factory closings in the 70's & 80's."

-Steve D.

So Panasonic now owns the remnants of Warwick? (Panasonic owns all things Sanyo....)

[1oldgoat]

I can answer your questions about Warwick having worked at the Zion Illinois TV plant as an repair man from 1960 until 1965. There were 2 plants in the Chicago area. The plant in Niles,Illinois made Silvertone radios and record changers. The plant in Zion made Silvertone TVs. We were told that Sears owned 90% of Warwick, I do not know who had the rest. Warwick employees were even given a 10% discount card good at Sears stores.They moved to Forest City, Ark. about 1967, mostly as a union busting ploy. Management could move to the new plant, but union members could not. I went through 2 strikes while I worked there.

[truetone36]

The old Warwick plant (later Sanyo) in Forrest City, AR. is now closed and sitting abandoned. I was near it a couple weeks ago.

[davet753]

Thomas electronic organs was a part of that company. Their organs suffered from some quality issues, but the main problem was their circuit designs. In order to reduce costs, they cut back on the number of independent oscillator circuits (tone generators) and used divider circuits and other tricks to save money. Thomas also focused their efforts mostly on the low-end of the business, which pigeon holed their reputation as a cheap product.

Thomas had an exclusive contract with Lawrence Welk, which provided advertising to the demographic the home organ was marketed to. That helped, but the writing was already on the wall for manufacturers of home organs once the 1970's progressed. If much larger companies such as Conn, Baldwin, Hammond, and Kimball were having a hard time operating in the reality of the new market, a smaller builder like Thomas was doomed.

[Olorin67]

Ive always wondered about the record changers. Originally Sears got them from VM, then switched to Crescent, but Crescent doesnt seem to have been around after the late 50s. Once source said the 60 s changers were made by Alliance (the Tenna-rotor company) the late 50s to early 60s changers seem to be a continuation of the Crescent design, but may have been made by Warwick. About 1964 the changers changed a bit, with lever controls instead of knobs, more plastic parts in the mechanism, and the size sensor changed from a drop lever like BSR, to a rotating semaphore like Many Garrards of that period. Does anyone know if the later changers were still made by Warwick, or did they switch to Alliance or someone else later on?
Then there are the weird late 50s silvetone 'manumatic" changers that only changed 7" records. Anyone know who actually made those?

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by drh4683

So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas?

For a short time in the 1960's, there also was a Warwick Plant east of US-51 in West Tennessee, between Covington and Dyersburg. That would be Old US-51, which is now called 209 & 210. I remember passing it on my trips north from Memphis. I think it was a little north of Halls, but I cannot remember.

There was a small white wooden sign with a red border and red letters saying "Warwick Plant" that pointed East to a well graded two-lane gravel road, in low rent farming country. At the time, someone said that they made cabinets.

James

[JDenenberg]

I also worked at Warwick as an intern while studying Electrical Engineering at their Product Engineering site in Niles Illinois:

As an undergraduate at Northwestern University I worked there for two 3-month periods (mid 1960's) on their tvs evaluating production issues (Horizontal hold stability problems on their B&W models) and some issues in the 25 KV supply in their Color TVs.

While working towards my MS in EE I spent two summers (1969 and 1970) at Warwick in their small research department where I developed and patented the PLL FM stereo demodulator integrated circuit that has been used in every FM stereo radio made since 1971.

Warwick was an independent deveoper and manufacturer of TVs and radios that allowed themselves to be dominated by a single large customer, Sears. When sears had Warwick over committed supplying their Silvertone TVs, they cut them off and as Warwick neared going out of business, Sears took them over and after a period of having them supply TVs at a loss, sold the company to Whirlpool (the supplier of Kenmore appliances to Sears). As happened to all of the US TV manufacturers, Warwick had trouble with the change in technology, from vacuum tubes to transistors to ICs and as mentioned by others was then taken over by Sanyo.

[Tim Tress]

I worked as a Sears bench tech between 1976 and 1979. Warwick did have some squirrelly engineering, probably in an attempt to keep the Sears management happy. The worst TV sets that they made were the series-heater color sets of the 1960s and early 1970s; their tube color sets with a power transformer were a near copy of the RCA CTC16, modified for a rectangular CRT. They weren't too bad. By the 1970s, they were making the solid state Medalist and Ultra chassis. The Ultra was troublesome; it had a lot of flyback transformer failures. Sears bled them dry, and dumped them.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Tim Tress

I worked as a Sears bench tech between 1976 and 1979. Warwick did have some squirrelly engineering, probably in an attempt to keep the Sears management happy. The worst TV sets that they made were the series-heater color sets of the 1960s and early 1970s; their tube color sets with a power transformer were a near copy of the RCA CTC16, modified for a rectangular CRT. They weren't too bad. By the 1970s, they were making the solid state Medalist and Ultra chassis. The Ultra was troublesome; it had a lot of flyback transformer failures. Sears bled them dry, and dumped them.

A tech was telling that the set was built by Wells Gardner.
W-G never built anything for Sears. The management discovered that Sears was too cut-throat and stayed away. Evidently the other retailers weren't that bad, because they stayed with them for years.

[zenithfan1]

Believe they had a plant in Zion, Illinois too, my dad worked there many years ago. Told me about the picture tubes going down the line and how they put sets together, that had to had been mid 60s. I sure wish he were still here to ask about it.

[Drod]

My dad was a plant manager for Warwick for over 20 years. They main plant was in the Niles, Illinois area and had 20 some assembly lines. They designed and manufactured most of the Silvertone electronics sold by Sears, from transistor radios to huge entertainment centers. Back then you had one plant for wood cabinetry and one for electronics and final assembly. They had separate plants in Mexico City for that closed market. In the early 60s dad came home with a bunch of books on Japanese. I asked him why. He said that's probably the future. The American electronics industry was hemorrhaging badly from cheaper, better products. Warwick's first move was to build a plant where there was cheaper labor down on the Indiana, Kentucky border. But they quickly moved everything, ironically, to Tijuana Mexico for even cheaper labor. RCA and the others did the same - and quickly as the only profitable plants were those in Mexico exporting back into the US. Dad, headed the move. He went down their and immediately bought up all their largest buildings - the bowling alleys - and gutted them. I think he gave every woman down there a job - smaller hands was a big plus. My favorite memory was seeing the Vox Super Beatle amplifiers.