Doug Major recalls the RCA Whirlpool salesman who visited his family's business when he was young and the wall-hanging TV he predicted. He traces how RCA, despite its technology, market and iconic Victor branding, was overtaken by Panasonic and its own Japanese cousin JVC. His argument: companies like RCA and Maytag didn't die from competition but from abandoning the quality, innovation and identity that made them great.
Travelling salespeople fascinated me as a young man. One of them told me about a television that would hang on the wall and never need replacing. Today, 2026, I’m still waiting to see that TV from RCA. Someone else built it, and the story of why is a lesson in how great companies drift.
Who was the RCA Whirlpool salesman?
I was at the family business every chance I got, and one of the highlights was listening in as the salesmen talked shop. We’d get them in bunches — when business was slow in the city, they’d drift out to our neck of the woods.
To Dad they were an interruption he was too polite to ignore. To me, they were the bearers of the news behind the news. So I eavesdropped every chance I got.
One of my favourites was the RCA Whirlpool salesman. Radio and television were cutting-edge then. I remember him saying, “We have the technology to build a TV that would hang on the wall, never need to be replaced — it would just be expensive.”
Now, this was before solid-state electronics. TVs were built into cabinets and were as much furniture as they were television. A wall-mounted TV seemed fantastical, to be sure.
What happened to RCA?
What I did see was Panasonic arrive. They started with a 75% solid-state TV. Then 90%. Then 100%. They flew past RCA like RCA was standing still.
RCA had partnered with Whirlpool — RCA Whirlpool — and the idea was to fill our homes with both brown goods and white goods. Let me back up and give you some old insider stereotypes. Brown goods were TVs, radios and stereos. White goods were appliances. Made sense at the time — who would ever build a harvest-gold fridge, or a stereo that wasn’t in a huge cabinet?
Whirlpool grew from the partnership. They outgrew RCA, which was dying like a week-old cut rose.
How in the world did that happen? RCA had the technology. They had the market. They had the factories.
For those who aren’t boomers: RCA was the Radio Corporation of America. They acquired the Victor Talking Machine Company — leaders in sound at the time — and built one of the most iconic images ever used. “His Master’s Voice” ring any bells? If you ever saw Nipper staring into an ancient record player, you know the image I’m talking about.
They also built a serious publicly traded corporation. RCA helped bring radio, recorded music and television to the world. Their branding was so iconic that long after RCA dropped the Victor moniker, people were still buying “RCA Victor” — not RCA, not RCA Whirlpool.
That tells you something. If you want to live off brand image, you have a window. Not decades anymore, but there is wiggle room. Our memories are a funny thing. You build a great brand, and you — or more likely your successors — get some wiggle room. Enough that there are brand names that still evoke so much nostalgia that companies are buying them, even though they haven’t produced a screw, let alone a whole appliance, in decades.
How did JVC eat RCA’s lunch?
Here’s a twist. Did you know JVC and RCA Victor come from the same root? Japan Victor Company was split off during the rebuilding of Japan. And unlike their brother on the vine, JVC became laser-focused on quality. They firmly embraced emerging technologies. And they ate RCA’s lunch.
Yes, really. The TV RCA never built? JVC built it. And while it doesn’t last a lifetime, it’s nowhere near as expensive as that grand old salesman forecast.
How much JVC worked with people like W. Edwards Deming or Joseph Juran — Americans who went to Japan to teach quality control, process management and continuous improvement — I don’t know. What I do know is that Japan, as a manufacturing culture, wholeheartedly embraced what those leaders brought. RCA ignored them.
So JVC products are everywhere. And RCA? When was the last time you saw one? If you’re not retired, you might say never.
The more I research, the more I wonder: how did we get here?
Can a company abandon its core values and survive?
If you’re an MBA, how many companies can you name that abandoned core values like innovation and quality control to chase the balance sheet — and survived? I wonder, because I can’t find them.
Oh, sure, it doesn’t happen overnight. And for a short while, the shareholders love it. Right up until the share value plummets and the board cries cheap foreign labour, or taxes, or government regulation — all problems if you’ve abandoned your core values.
I once heard an athlete say, “You can’t win by being afraid of losing.” I thought: cliché. It is, of course. But the word cliché denigrates the fact that the phrase is based on truth.
Why did Whirlpool win?
In the appliance and electronics world, we’ve watched giants rise, drift and disappear. Not because they couldn’t compete, but because they abandoned the very things that made them great. Companies like RCA and Maytag didn’t die from competition. They died trying to become something they never were.
Whirlpool didn’t win by being the best. Whirlpool won by being consistent. They never pretended to be Apple, Sub-Zero or Bang & Olufsen. They sold price, scale and availability — and they stayed in that lane.
The companies that died weren’t beaten by Whirlpool. They beat themselves trying to imitate Whirlpool. They walked away from the quality, innovation and identity that made them great.
And here’s the twist: the premium customer never went away. Apple, Sub-Zero, Bang & Olufsen — they’re thriving. There was room for RCA. There was room for Maytag.
They didn’t fail because the market changed. They failed because they changed.
Staying true to your identity isn’t just branding. It’s survival.