I’d receive the emails every few weeks. “Do you want to check out this new riding gear?” The friendly PR person was reaching out on behalf of Dainese. That gear in question relates to leathers and armor for riding motorcycles. I don’t ride and I’m not getting my license anytime soon. Still, I was always curious about the fancy motorcycles wares being offered up for review purposes, but I’d never raise my hand to take such things with no intent to use them. During a moment of curiosity, I ventured to the Dainese website and discovered that they make gear for mountain biking too.
If the stuff can protect motorcyclists, surely Dainese knows how to protect me when I’m out on the trails sans engine. So I reached back out to the friendly PR person and inquired about the mountain bike gear. It’s related to the motorcycle stuff, but weighted properly for MTB action instead of balls-out sixth-gear rips around a race track. I’ve got a back protector, knee pads, and elbow guards. I’ve also picked up a set of pants for when the weather is a bit colder out.
The gear feels great. It’s all well made. And I know it’s more than up to the task since Dainese is a name typically associated with sport bike speeds. Oh, and they make the occasional bit of gear for astronauts too.
What are other examples that you’ve found where a company is known for one thing but you found them working in other arenas?
Hooniverse Asks: What company have you been surprised to learn makes products for other markets?
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65 responses to “Hooniverse Asks: What company have you been surprised to learn makes products for other markets?”
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I’ve always been intrigued by the range of products Yamaha makes.
Means of conveyance, home electronics, various musical instrument… I don’t remember what else they get involved in-
Ooh good answer
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“Husqvarna promise to out-perform Yamaha in vital Motorbike, Snowmobile, Chainsaw and Sewing Machine markets…”
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Meanwhile competitor Bombardier is suffering from overproduction of snowmobiles, trains, jet and propeller airliners, as well as whatever “industrial and mining signalling” means.
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Don’t forget the beer:
http://doctorale.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bombardier-new-designs.png
…”probably the best Canadian-aircraft-manufacturer-themed beer in the world”.
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As a former employee of a now defunct US subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric, all of the related, but not related various Mitsubishi companies. Cars, TVs, HVAC, escalators, Nikon Cameras, banking, various industrial concerns, etc. A whole lot more than Zeros and Evos.
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Nikon belonging to Mitsubishi, didn’t know that. I guess Canon is not Volkswagen, despite of the Eos, right?
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Not really belonging to, more a part of. It is complicated… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi#Mitsubishi_companies
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At 7bUSD revenue (if i got the zeros right) Nikon is not among the top 13 Mitsubishi houses, wow…
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EOS Rebel, so AMC.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8390/8569040788_e1a97d08cf_b.jpg
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(Sorry if I’ve told everyone this story before…)
15 years ago at a party in London I was talking to a woman who mentioned that she worked for Mitsubishi. I thought I might impress if I could guess which of the lesser known parts of the group she worked for;
“So, would that be the banking arm, elevators or perhaps air conditioning units?”
“No. I work for the branch of Mitsubishi that controls the import of fresh tuna fish into the European market.”
“oh…”-
Mrs. Lokki worked for the Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation until retiring.
http://www.flythemrj.com
She would continually have to tell people that her company had nothing to do with the Mitsubishi car company…. she viewed them as a sort of idiot cousin, giving the rest of the family a bad name.
NB: She could, however, get a 10% discount on a Mitsubishi vehicle… so I pushed her for a while to get me a deal on an Evo back around 2006. I figured if I could get on for 10% off list, I could drive it for a year and sell it for what I’d paid. However, she just wasn’t having one in our garage, Evo or no.
Dammit.-
But could she get some parts for a Zero restoration?
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I just asked and she said there is Zero parts availability.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/28/world/restored-japanese-zero-fighter-plane-flies-over-japan/ -
There is actually only one still flying with the original engine. The rest have had the engines replaced with American radials with more parts availability.
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I was teasing… it’s really lower-case Zed as in “zero = none” parts availability. The fun thing is that she took the question seriously……
“Those are very old; Mitsubishi makes jets now” -
I know, I was referring to your link on the restored one in Japan. All the flying Zeros have the equivalent of a Iron Duke 4 cylinder in a Ford Model A. It looks right from the outside and flys just as good as the original, but it isn’t original.
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A friend of mine used to work for Goodrich Aerostructures (making airplane parts), and always had to explain that it wasn’t part of BF Goodrich anymore.
Stories about the Goodyear Inflatoplane never really helped matters… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane https://i.imgur.com/juwKHWU.jpg
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I used to work for a company called Zenith, It sadly had nothing to do with electronics and more to do with making Bathroom vanities and medicine cabinets
I worked for the US cell phone division. We worked closely and shared designs with the French cell phone division. They shut down the US operation on September 13, 2001. They delayed it a couple of days due to 9/11.
I used to get canned fruit and canned tuna with the Mitsubishi 3 diamond logo, from Mitsubishi Trading.
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The fruit doesn’t surprise me … Mitsubishi knows a thing or two about tin cans and lemons.
What is more amazing is what companies did during war time, especially WWII. GM made a bunch of guns. The M-1 Carbine was made by two different divisions of General Motors, Rock-Ola (the jukebox people), IBM, Underwood typewriters, National Postal Meter, Winchester, and a few others.
Then if you get into the many divisions of some of the giant companies. Back in the 1990s GM owned Hughes. I remember reading that due to all the adult pay per view content on Hughes TV satellites, GM made more money than anyone off pornography.
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Ford had an aircraft factory at Willow Run .
ACME Can Make Everything.
It’s not the same company as the old Crosley that made radios and cars and refrigerators, etc., but I was surprised to find there is a market for newly-manufactured Crosley portable AM/FM cassette players.
http://www.crosleyradio.com/radios/product-details?productkey=CT200A&model=CT200A-SI
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2019/2193/products/cdct200a-si__1000_grande.jpg
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Singer also made 500 1911 .45 automatic pistols in WWII.
https://www.fieldandstream.com/sites/fieldandstream.com/files/styles/1000_1x_/public/images/2017/11/singer-1911-closeup-handgun.jpg?itok=xp02G_Iw&fc=50,50
Serial number 1 is coming up for auction, the estimate is $55,000 to $95,000.
https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/51/1954/singer-1911a1-pistol-price-80500
I was surprised when I learned a couple of years ago that Continental, the tire people, are a major tier 1 supplier for a wide variety of automotive components, including electronics.
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Bosch is hugely diverse too, auto components and tech to power tools and household appliances.
Peugeot also make pepper grinders as well as the bicycles that predated the cars.-
Peugeot pepper grinder are the best by far. All the others are junk compared to them.
My Bosch front load washing machine was a giant piece of crap. -
Tangentially-related Bosch story: at my workplace we had an oxygen meter designed for measuring the oxygen content of a given gas. It had a lab/benchtop-style connection and readout box, but the sensing element itself turned out to be Bosch lambda sensor. Just out of curiosity I searched the internet for that Bosch part number, and apparently our gas analyzer uses an Audi wideband O2 sensor. Wonder if we can get replacement parts cheaper through Napa than the lab equipment supplier…?
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Ah yes but will it be correctly certified, or…?
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The “Fuji Heavy Industries” sticker under the hood of my Subaru always makes me contemplate the nature of the consequential industrial accidents.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e01b9035e0405ffee296808f025213acfc8e27fa6a1932c77120c61e025d863b.png
American Machine & Foundry (AMF)
Cigarette rolling machines, bowling equipment, Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, model airplanes, gardening equipment, bicycles, nuclear reactors, pretzel benders, monorails, ICBM silos…
And yet, somehow, they forgot how to make money.
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…golf carts, sporting goods… Ironically, they took their eye off the ball.
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Don’t forget bombs, the Harley Davidson plant in York Pennsyslvania was originally an AMF bomb casing factory. Reminds of Olin, makers of industrial explosives and skis
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They referred to themselves as Americas Manufacturer of Fun at one point .
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Was that for the nuclear reactors or the ICBM silos?
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Yes !
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I used to have a Youth bowling league shirt that said AMF Always Means Fun
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It was the Pretzel Benders that did them in.
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Having had a look at one of them, I think you might be right…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/83047abb96a79f8e53ec6810ff054175a93042fea182fc51b4b09730a1fb7944.jpg
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I have an AMF era Harley, reliability isn’t exactly a strong point
Being a fan of the Blue Oval I was surprised when I saw this . https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2bd6f84c397c1eab57de0649f3fff0f988ad4fe9c1712996850d7cba455c3fce.jpg
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Slightly off topic in a turned around way.
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In the US Honda “Blue” is for cars. Honda “Red” is everything else.
https://powerequipment.honda.com/Content/images/Models/Features/Honda-HRC216-Lawn-Mower-side-right.jpg
https://jetskitips.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2011-honda-aquatrax-f-15x-6-e1522596205896-1024×349.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71j2Ien-FWL._SX425_.jpg
The well-known Continental Motors company that has been operating since 1905 briefly built a car in 1933-1934, logically called the Continental. The company took over the failed DeVaux company who had used Continental engines, but had no greater success on their own and the car was dropped after two years.
https://libwww.freelibrary.org/assets/digital/items/arcd03020/images/large.jpg
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Still making air cooled aircraft engines, right?
Did you know that Fuji Film has a line of cosmetics?
https://www.astalift.co.id/aboutus
When the market for camera film started to disappear, they realized that a lot of their research and technology for making color pigments for film was transferable to makeup pigments.
General Electric. They’ve been reducing their footprint for the last few years. GE Capital involvement in the production of mortgage-backed securities created a few headwinds for the corporation (to say it lightly).
I was surprised the first time I saw a Subaru small engine.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VhOyGb-QzqA/maxresdefault.jpg
A bit tangential to the actual question, but I found it interesting that Chemed Corporation is a conglomerate with two subsidiaries, a palliative care health service and Roto-Rooter.
Alvis haven’t made cars since 1967 (OK, I’m ignoring the ‘Continuation Series’)…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Alvis_cabriolet_reg_jan_1967_2993_cc.JPG/420px-Alvis_cabriolet_reg_jan_1967_2993_cc.JPG
…but they did continue making armored cars and other military vehicles long after that (pictured is a British Army ‘Stolly’)…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Alvis_Stalwart_W%26P2011.JPG/450px-Alvis_Stalwart_W%26P2011.JPG
…and due to their expertise in welding aluminium where part of the joint venture company responsible for the aluminium-bronze cladding to Portcullis House — the office building for the UK Parliament.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Portcullis.house.bigben.arp.jpg/330px-Portcullis.house.bigben.arp.jpg
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Panhard similarly went from luxury automobiles to military vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panhard
Mountain bikes and motorcycles had a lot of crossover. Motocross gear and downhill MTB gear are very similar so in addition to Dainese, Answer Products had both Answer branded protective gear and Manitou suspension. Marzocchi also did motorcycle and bicycle parts and 661 and THE also cross over.
Speaking of motorcycles, BMW made aluminum cookware after WWI to keep going and OSSA started out making movie projectors before dirt bikes.
Speaking of astronauts, the Apollo space suits were made by Playtex.
Wanderer of Auto Union fame is still making bicycles today.
Wolseley is still a large plumbing supplier – although the car business was spun off very early in the company’s life.
were you aware the makers of the Mercury space program full pressure space environment suits were designed and manufactured by the same company that brought us the bane of all mankind, the bra? Yes, the same company that brought the silver suit used by the likes of Wally and John also crafted most of the bras sold in the USA. International Latex Corp of Dover MA, also purveyors of our common foe, the bra.
Bridgestone made motorcycles as well as tires, supposedly they had to stop or the other bike manufacturers would stop using their tires.
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