PYE, but not as we know it.

[Yorkie]

It's a phenomenon known as 'brand-stretch' - I guess there's an assumption that the Pye brand still has value and customer appeal, though I think it has a much brighter past than a future. In the latter part of it's life, Pye was probably better known for its telecoms arm than domestic products, and like most UK consumer electronics firms was eclipsed by the 'Land of the Rising Sun'.

I don't think Pye would be seen as a strong brand in the UK for domestic appliances, up against Siemens, Mielle, or even Beko, et al, but at least they're stretching the brand into other aspects of consumer electronics and 'white goods'. There are lots of bizarre examples of brand extensions into utterly irrelevant products - if I say 'Bic' most people think of ballpoint pens. What did Bic go off on a folic and launch? Pantyhose! Unsurprisingly, it flopped. But often brand extensions into other areas succeed - Yamaha electronic pianos are very successful because they're excellent, so people don't care that Yamaha are best known for making motorbikes.

Virgin managed a successful transition from records to planes and trains, but extensions into other areas flopped – Virgin Cola, Virgin Vodka, Virgin jeans. Quite how it expected to succeed up against powerful brands such as Levis and Diesel is a mystery. Success in one product or service is no guarantee of success in another.

In the end, all brands - however powerful they seem in their heyday, tend to lose sight of what made them famous, become complacent, fall asleep at the wheel and ultimately fail. (Woolworths, Pan-Am airlines, Atari, to name but a few. ICI employed around 29,000 people and had a turnover of just over £4.8 billion in 2006. In 2008 it was swallowed up by Akzo Nobel and the ICI brand is no more).

Remember Habitat? Eclipsed by Ikea from the 1970s onwards. They should have seen it coming.

Then there’s Kodak. During most of the 20th century Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film, and in 1976 had a 90% market share of photographic film sales in the United States. Kodak began to struggle financially in the late-1990s as a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in transitioning to digital photography, despite having invented the core technology used in current digital cameras in 1975. In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and obtained a $950 million, 18-month credit facility to enable it to continue trading. In February 2012, Kodak announced that it would cease making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames. As the market has innovated and evolved, digital camera sales are in decline - many people no longer bother with a camera - they use a camera-phone.