[Closed] Brands who used to be good?......

Been about 15 years since Karrimore were any good, absolutely nowt to do with Sports Direct.

Muddy Fox
Intense (I'm sure they didn't all snap)

Saracen have done the yo-yo thing. They're now making great again. There was a time though.......

Findus? Not sure they were ever good, but there value has certainly managed to decline of late!

Raleigh

I've got a Karrimore fleece - about 4 years old. Nothing wrong with it at all!

Muddy Fox?

Karrimor Bike stuff, of old, used to be brilliant. Sad to see the Mike Ashley shell that the brand is now

Muddy fox is a good call...

perhaps if it wasnt for mr ashley there would no longer be a brand.. reads like the issues /blame lay elsewhere with sports direct/ lonsdale buying a name only after recivership in the hands of a.n. other.

Karrimor is a brand of outdoor and sports equipment and clothing. It was founded in 1946 by Charles and Mary Parsons with Grace Davies who hand-sewed cotton-duck cycle pannier bags from the upstairs of their Lancashire cycle shop.
Karrimor went on to build an international reputation for outdoor clothing, rucksacks and footwear.
The Clayton-le-Moors, Lancashire based company was bought in 1999 by South African leisure group Cullinan Holdings which immediately cut manufacturing with the loss of 80 jobs. It had previously been acquired by 21 Invest, part of the Italian Benetton empire, in 1996 for £7 million
The brand went into receivership in 2004. Within 24 hours it was bought out by Lonsdale Sports,[1] who broke up the company, selling the outlets and retaining only the rights to the name, which was licensed to such events as the Karrimor International Mountain Marathon.
Sports Direct, Lonsdale's parent company, now sell Karrimor branded products across all their UK stores.

Karrimor.. had a condor rucksac and was ace and a hot earth, but dropped them years ago sad really , don't rate rohan much these days either lot of branded footwear although the timberland shoes I have are still pretty good, berghaus stuff is a bit meh although I buy their fleeced from time to time.

Slazenger
Dunlop (sport)

Karrimore's demise has nothing to do with SD.

Lifetime Warranty (except we go bankrupt once a week)
It's been a shell and a badge for a decade at least.

Audi

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😆

Rapha.

CRC by recent accounts on here 😮

Berghaus.

Karrimore's demise has nothing to do with SD.

The demise of the business doesn't but the demise of the brand does. The point of a brand is promise of quality - this item is of the quality you expect from this brand.

If they buy the brand then apply it to goods that don't live up the the expectation then they have everything to do with that [i]brands[/i] demise.

Oh I wondered into a Sports Direct recently and saw a pair of Karrimore boots that looked OK so bought them. Will I die?

perhaps if it wasnt for mr ashley there would no longer be a brand

I'd rather that, than good names being bought in fire sales and slapped onto tat, not that it really matters.

I bought a Karrimor 15l running daysack thing for SD a couple of months ago, mainly because it was very cheap, but I am more and more impressed by it.

Ok, it might need a bit of modification to be spot on what I need, but it's a light, comfortable, useful running bag and well worth the 15 quid I paid for it.

I'll admit that this is a sample size of one, and that a lot of their other stuff is tat, but a minority/some of their stuff is pretty amazing for the price.

Its Karrimor there is no e.

Oh I wondered into a Sports Direct recently and saw a pair of Karrimore boots that looked OK so bought them. Will I die

they're made of horse leather

The last karrimore pack I bought was in about 04 a year in zipps knackeded I took it back. The shop still advertising a lifetime warranty said sorry we went bust in between not valid. I believe they repeated that for the years since. If they were any good they would be profitable.

Oh I wondered into a Sports Direct recently and saw a pair of Karrimore boots that looked OK so bought them. Will I die

Have you worn them yet? I'm surprised you're not pushing up the daisies already.

There's nowt up with Karrimor Boots, other than being sold alongside football shirts, on some frightful retail park, that probably has a Macdonalds and a KFC on it. So therefore they can't be accessorised with the Audi.

And the 'Brand' perception means you can't pull off the impression that you're about to climb K2, when in reality you'll be walking between the car park and the tearoom in Keswick 😉

The North Face

There's nowt up with Karrimor Boots, other than being sold alongside football shirts, on some frightful retail park, that probably has a Macdonalds and a KFC on it. So therefore they [s]can't[/s] [b]probably will be[/b] accessorised with the Audi.

FTFY.

Good call on Berghaus, it was the choice attire of smack-heeds when I was at college.

Another one is Burberry

In terms of brand cachet, not the same as quality of product, but:

Burberry

EDIT: Beaten to it while typing..

North Face all got a bit high street for a while but back on track now.

Sony

They used to be the high end electronic brands now I wouldn't touch them for anything but gaming now. Samsung for Apple now in most cases...

I would have to disagree with Burberry - it was really only in the UK it because the chav brand, in the rest of the world it was still exclusive. And now I think it has regained it position in the UK as quality highend - its just the middle class still remember the good old chavvy days!

joolsburger - Member

North Face all got a bit high street for a while but back on track now.

USSR.
Gone right down the pan since Gorbachev.
Awaiting another Sports Direct acquisition sometime soon.

BMW. They used to make some quite interesting cars, that were good to drive but now they make dull eco wagons with horrible four pot engines. They also used to be quite good looking too (the E46 and E39 are still some of the best proportioned cars that they ever made).

Marzocchi used to be good and affordable now the only good forks they make are eye wateringly expensive.

Oakley have a bit of a dodgy image these days, although the product is still pretty good.

Nokia

IMO Muddy Fox were never a 'great' brand, but they were one of the first to get in there and produce mountain bikes.

Karrimor and TNF both became a bit high street. This diluted the brands outdoor heritage as percieved by us. This is the point, percieved! In moving to be more available in the high street (or SD) they likely sold more and made more money but in doing that lost some credibility with the people who use the kit on mountains.

Berghaus sort of started to go the same way but less so I think.

Do people think that other big credible brands will go the same way with stores like Go Outdoors? Prana? Rab?

TImberland.
Used to offer a lifetime warranty on shoes and boots. Advertising phrase was something like 'someday you might need to replace the laces'

Nokia is a quite a remarkable example they went from being the biggest selling mobile manufacturer in the world to not even being the best seller in Finland..... in just one year. Just by missing the boat on flippy/foldy phones a few years back.

second page and still not one of you has had the decency to say it....

Brands THAT used to be good.....

Helly Hansen

Sony

NHS

My local pub!

No fear.

When I was at school in the 90s they were really exclusive and only the rich kids wore No Fear. I remember the slogans seemed really inspirational, to a teenage lad anyway.

Nowadays they are the epitome of chavtastic.

I used to like Firetrap stuff but since they were bought by the Ashley empire the quality had gone downhill.
I also now avoid USC as this starts to look more like Sports Direct everytime I pass it. I do wonder how long the likes of Diesel will continue to supply USC now Ashley owns them?

North Face

North Face all got a bit high street for a while but back on track now.

Same with Berghaus as well. They went very dog walker/chavvy at one point producing baggy not well thought out kit. That is still there in some forms sadly, but the top end Xtrem kit is absolutely bloomin brilliant! Am very much toying with buying a Kanchenjunga to replace my current mountain jacket, and have tried on a Velum and the fit was just as good if not better than the 'big' names (Rab, ME, Haglofs, etc).

Some might see it as cynical marketing, but the sponsorship of Leo Houlding etc does seem to have bought some focus to them. Leading the way on things like waterproof(ish) down jackets and other technologies as well. Sorted!

Onza
Salmon Racing
Kodak
No Fear
Mistral/ F2/ Sailboard
Rucanoor