Sears (Coldspot y Kenmore) 🇺🇸

To understand Coldspot and Kenmore one must explain what Sears, Roebuck and Co. was: the great catalog department store of the United States. Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck published their first watch catalog in 1888, in 1893 expanded to general merchandise, and by 1895 the “wish book” already exceeded 500 pages and reached every farm in the country. In the sixties and seventies Sears was the largest retailer in the world, and like any big department store it sold products under its own brands: Kenmore (born in 1913 as a sewing machine, expanded to washing machines in 1927 and vacuum cleaners in 1932) and Coldspot, the cold brand that existed from 1928 to 1976. Sears did not manufacture anything: it commissioned the appliances from third parties and put its name on them, something similar to what private‑label brands do today.

Coldspot became famous for the refrigerator that Raymond Loewy redesigned in 1934, “a single smooth and gleaming unit of functional simplicity” according to Time, which doubled sales in two years. Many of those refrigerators were manufactured by Seeger Refrigeration, which passed to Sunbeam and in 1955 to Whirlpool. And there lies the key to Sears air conditioning: Whirlpool, a partner of Sears since 1916 when it began supplying it with Upton washing machines, ended up being the factory for almost all of its window units. Models with the prefix “106” in the serial number are Whirlpool, coming from the old Seeger plant in Evansville (Indiana), the former International Harvester factory known as “the refrigerator”.

Before Whirlpool there were other suppliers. The Coldspot models from 1955-57 were made by Mitchell Manufacturing —which in 1955 introduced the expandable side panels “Expando-Mount”— and Birtman Electric of Chicago, creator of the small 1957 window portable with a 3/4 HP Tecumseh compressor and 4,200 BTU/h, more powerful than the portables the competition would release in 1958. From 1961 the bulk of the range was signed by Whirlpool, with some small models from Gibson (Greenville, Michigan); in 1963 rotary compressors from Seeger appeared, in 1967 the “Total Comfort” series with independent dehumidification, and in 1972 the low‑profile “Viewsaver”.

1976 was the last year of the Coldspot brand: in 1977 Sears began labeling its window units as Kenmore, also manufactured by Whirlpool and Gibson. Whirlpool moved air‑conditioning production from Evansville to Tennessee in 1986 and continued serving Kenmore throughout the nineties. The century‑long Sears‑Whirlpool relationship ended in 2017; Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 on October 15, 2018 and today Kenmore belongs to Transformco, which sells it on Amazon, Lowe’s or Costco with units from LG, Electrolux or Samsung. For the collector, a Coldspot is a Whirlpool with a different front: same chassis, same mechanics and a logo that smells of a summer catalog.

Pending verification

Which manufacturers supplied the pre‑1955 Coldspot window units and whether Fedders ever manufactured directly for Sears (it is confirmed that it produced for Whirlpool‑Seeger in 1955).

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us.