Argh. Why do people keep repeating this? Mares didn't kill off Dacor. It was already dead. Dacor had ceased production of the few items it actually made, stiffed its suppliers who made most of the stuff sold under the Dacor name and was preparing for bankruptcy liquidation proceedings when Head offered to buy out whatever was left and fold it into Mares.
Yes, what they were primarily interested in was the dealer network. There were no true Dacor products still being manufactured to supply that network, but there was a full line of Mares' gear they could offer instead. For those dealers that still wanted to sell Dacor branded products, Head simply slapped the Dacor name on existing Mares products. This wasn't very effective and Mares eventually shut down the Dacor branded gear line entirely.
Mares did get whatever spare parts were left in the Dacor warehouse and they continued to distribute them until they were gone.
An obligation to produce new spare parts to honor Dacor's Lifetime Guaranty program was not part of the sale. Dacor could have tried to insist on it as part of the sale, but it likely would have killed the deal entirely as uneconomical. Mares did try to partially compensate Dacor reg owners for the loss of their warranty by offering to replace Dacor regs with heavily discounted Mares regs for a few years after the acquisition.
Yeah, it was a terrible thing when Mares killed DACOR. They bought it just for the dealer network and then killed it. Terrible
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