In a market as fiercely competitive as white goods, this was a sure recipe for trouble.
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The market for white goods remains largely regional, thanks to high transport costs and different tastes.
It also makes the white goods in the kitchen, the smartphone, the tablet, the computer and laptop.
From New York, Brandwise.com offers product reviews and price information about white goods and electrical appliances.
But he is also right in seeing that the old way of moving white goods was too labor-intensive to survive.
Industrial production has stopped contracting, in part thanks to a temporary cut in sales taxes on cars and white goods.
In a sense it has industrialized innovation, which means it can comfortably range across white goods, TVs, autos, mobile and computing devices.
Discretionary incomes went elsewhere: into mobile phones, televisions, white goods and motorcycles.
The pots can be for "food, entertainment, holidays, stationery, car maintenance, petrol, white goods", among other things, explains his wife Diana, a teacher.
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Tsuga is placing big hopes on the home building materials and white goods sales in the near term and auto industry sales further out.
In white goods, Merloni (now Indesit), which was set up 30 years ago, has become Europe's third-biggest supplier of fridges, cookers and washing machines.
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Copper imports into China increased 11 percent compared to the previous month due to increased demand from power infrastructure, white goods restocking and auto production.
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Much of the steel produced is shipped to Thailand, via Teesport, and is used mainly in the automotive sector, with some turned into white goods.
It follows a decision by Environment Minister Alex Attwood to limit the type of goods sold at the store to bulky items such as furniture or white goods.
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Haier in white goods, Legend in computers and Konka in television sets are all examples of Chinese firms with strategies based on their own brands or other intellectual property.
They could also make and sell consumer electronics, like localized versions of MIT Media Lab OLPC laptops and PCs, and white goods, like televisions, air-conditioners, fans, rice cookers and refrigerators.
But he is also right in seeing that the old way of moving white goods, in which a floorwalker had to explain every icemaker and vegetable drawer, was too labor-intensive to survive.
Given these priorities, Toshiba has assigned production of different lines to selected countries: refrigerators and other white goods in Thailand, televisions and other brown goods in Singapore, and information equipment in the Philippines.
This is true buying a PC in an electronics store, a washing machine in a white goods store and even was true buying an espresso maker being flogged off cheap in a supermarket.
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The two sectors that provide the most hope right now are the property related market, with housing sales getting better, and the ongoing dwindling stocks in the industrials, mainly machinery, autos and white goods.
That has allowed the company to master a fast-follow market approach, and it is moving towards technology leadership where it can, as it ranges across LTE networks, smartphones, computers, TVs, and white goods, and gradually content.
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Mr Merloni believes it would be fatal to be distracted from his firm's focus on white goods. (A family holding company oversees unrelated investments, notably in energy.) Fiat diversified way beyond cars, spanning tractors to financial services.
So effective was the tuangou movement that some retailers first sought to reject volume tuangou purchases of white goods and autos, but all eventually caved in, with some eventually setting up group purchasing departments to specially serve tuangou buyers.
These substantial Mittelstand companies include such famous names as Miele (white goods), Behr (air conditioners), Stihl (chainsaws) and Trumpf (laser-cutters), which each have a turnover of between euro1 billion and euro2 billion and employ between 5, 000 and 15, 000 people.
He points out that firms with 10% of Europe's market share in white goods have changed hands since 2000, yet Europe's top four producers have only a combined 60% share, compared with the 90% of their counterparts in America.
He started out after inheriting a small white-goods firm and buying the Ariston brand.
The subsidiaries of Haier, a white-goods maker, were also put out of reach of mainland bureaucrats early on.
Now, worryingly, something similar may threaten Haier, China's leading white-goods maker, which recently failed with a bid for Maytag, an American rival.
Or, what about the fabled Chinese white-goods manufacturer Haier, which is legendary for their ability to get closer to their domestic Chinese customers?
Guangdong Kelon, China's largest private white-goods maker, was the first private company to list in Hong Kong, with a share issue in 1996.
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