A nearly 150-year-old Bay Area appliance company known for its iconic sign and jingle is closing down this year.
In an emotional post on its website, San Jose-based Western Appliance said that both family health problems and larger changes to the appliance retail industry have made the business “untenable.”
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“As much as it has been our pleasure helping with your appliance needs, the current environment in this business has necessitated we close operations,” the post reads. “In short, we can no longer offer the level of service you are accustomed to, you expect from us and that we take pride in providing.”
Jacob Niederauer opened the first store in Bakersfield in 1873 — then selling furniture and household goods — Western Appliance expanded into Santa Clara County in the 1930s. At one point, the family-owned chain boasted 10 stores in the region. The San Jose store on West San Carlos Street, however, became the sole survivor after the Santa Cruz store closed in March 2014.
In 1962, the first iteration of its beloved sign was born, consisting of three lit-up prongs bearing the company name. Probably the most iconic neon sign in Santa Clara County, a photo of it at dusk graced the cover of the San Jose Signs Project’s guide to the South Bay’s neon gems.
The jingle, meanwhile — “Western Appliance, making life much easier for you” — played to Bay Area customers on television for decades. Western Appliance played a big part in the communities where its stores were, too. Their logo was at Municipal Stadium in San Jose, and the company were big boosters for San Jose State.
Ken McDonald, a former associate athletic director with San Jose State, remembers when he first met CEO Dennis Moir and owner David Niederauer at a golf fundraiser and he couldn’t help but immediately break out in the jingle. They handed him a $5 bill, as they told him it was a store tradition whenever someone did that on a first meeting.
The company’s offerings range from kitchen appliances like refrigerators, stoves and dishwashers to washers and dryers. But it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up with big-box stores, the post said.
Over the next few months, Western Appliance will liquidate the store, starting with a farewell sale that kicked off with the start of the new year.
Longtime customers from the San Jose area greeted the news with sadness on social media, remembering countless washing machines, dryers and dishwashers purchased there to furnish new homes.
San Jose resident Ric Bretschneider bought a dishwasher there last year and called the retailer a “godsend” for being able to find a unit that would fit their home’s irregular plumbing set up. It was far from his first experience with Western Appliance, too.
“I remember back in the ’60s when my dad would go there (and of course, all the family with him) after church as the new house was always needing something,” he wrote on Facebook.
The store’s farewell post reminded readers that with its more than a century of operation, Western Appliance isn’t “just another retailer that’s closing its doors.”
“We were together from when San Jose teemed with orchards and agriculture and we were delivering propane to farmers, to its place today as the tech capital of the world,” the post read. “We have been doing business here for this long because we have been blessed with incredible customers.”
And typical of the Western Appliance way, the farewell note closes with a call to action to shop at some of its soon-to-be-former local competitors like University Electric, Meyer Appliance and Airport Appliance. “They are great businesses,” the note reads, “and our communities are better off with these retailers as alternative choices to the Big Box stores.”
