of course that's a ridiculous plan, you can't do that. The only people to not fire are the ones whose hands literally build the vacuums. Why suddenly sell off a company that has stability and proven products? Because it's been managed so badly for so long that the only way to make a good Kirby Company would be to fire every last person in the sales and administration parts of the business, from the CEO to the head-office janitor to the distributors to the sales people, and start again (with a structure and a business plan that are completely unrelated to the old one). Yes the designs are old, but they've been old for a long time, so that's not something they just suddenly realized.
The company has not apparently gone through any major changes recently, the products are solid, and yet they sold it. It never cared about how much the customer liked it Kirby made its money from selling to distributors. Why would you change the product if you’re just selling massive volume anyway? They’ve made the same machine for the last 30 years. The product itself had absolutely nothing to do with it. So the idea of volume over quality, and vans, and being a shyster became a popular thing. You do it in crap neighborhoods where the customers won’t make the payments and will raise hell about how difficult the product is to use - they’re easier houses to get into and honestly a lot easier to sell. How do you get 4 salespeople in a house 3 times a day each out of one vehicle? You don’t do it in nice neighborhoods where the people will pay for the product and have few issues with it. When distributors starting grouping all their sales people together and slinging them to the field in droves with 8 machines in the back of the van the quality of their business dropped. But one thing ruined Kirby faster than anyone thought possible.
#MARK LANE KIRBY S HOW TO#
I could write a book about the Kirby Company called: How To Turn A 100 Year Old American Made Company Into A Failure In Under 10 Years The downfall of Kirby was how they were sold.
He was a Kirby distributor for 20+ years. Just talking to an old friend about this.
Or we'll just see Chinese made cordless stick vacs being sold on Amazon with a big "KIRBY" logo slapped on top. Alternatively, I can imagine something like a mix between an AirWay upright and a Miele H1 that retains the Kirby's ability to switch between multiple configurations while also letting the user swap between a motorized and straight suction head.
#MARK LANE KIRBY S SERIES#
My hope would be that they drop the TechDrive and try to make the machine lighter, more in the vein of a Royal or a 500 series Kirby. I'm not really sure what the future looks like for Kirby now, though I'd be happy to see them abandon the D2D distribution.
Of course, I think most people who buy a Kirby didn't start their day planning to buy a new vacuum and instead got conned into dropping $1000+ on a wildly outdated machine. The way I see it, there's no good reason to buy a brand new Kirby when you can find one on Craigslist for $50. Most importantly, their door-to-door sales tactics and pricing have earned them a lot of criticism. People often get rid of these vacuums for a fraction of the price they paid just because of how awkward and bulky they are to use, which kinda leads into my next point. Even so, we're at the point where you can easily find a plastic machine that'll hold up to years of heavy use that'll be both significantly lighter and cheaper than a Kirby (SEBO being the first example that springs to mind). While people often praise the durability of their aluminum construction, I've seen a couple machines develop cracks in the metal before. Most homes don't have wall-to-wall carpeting anymore, and a Kirby's not gonna do any better (probably worse, actually) than a cheap canister on hard floors. The whole Kirby design always felt like a compromise to put an attachment hose on a direct-air machine, which just meant that it became outdated once on-board hoses started appearing on the market (SEBO 350 - 1978, Regina Housekeeper - 1986, etc.). Considering that Kirby hasn't significantly updated their design since the Generation 3 30 years ago, I'm not too surprised to see their parent company selling them off.