No records exist today indicating exactly how many “Morse” sewing machines were sold before this ruling came down. The company had also used marketing language that claimed Morse had manufactured the sewing machines. The product Morse sold did not display its country of origin. The ruling noted that Morse and Mercury had violated the Federal Trade Commission Act. Well, making false claims about a product is still a big deal today! The Federal Trade Commission caught wind of this and issued a ruling against Morse in 1955. You may find yourself scratching your head, wondering why this is a big deal.
Then Morse proceeded to use advertisements that claimed Morse sewing machines were American-made! According to the charges, it seems that Mercury and Morse removed any identifying features that marked the models as “made in Japan.” Instead, he used Mercury, the importing company, to obfuscate the fact that the machines had come from overseas. On top of that, you can trace a paperwork trail to find out exactly what Japanese company sold the model to the American company, at least most of the time.
#Singer 301a serial numbers serial numbers#
Most of them have serial numbers that begin with the letters “JA” to indicate that the machine was made in Japan. That said, these machines offered clear provenance. The American companies re-branded or “badged” the Japanese sewing machine with an American logo.īig-name brands like White and Kenmore used lots of Japanese models. At the time, though, many of these companies did not have any brand recognition yet.įor this reason, lots of them sold sewing machines to American companies. This period launched successful companies like Janome. In the post-WWII era, the Japanese sewing machine industry exploded. By itself, selling Japanese-made machines was nothing new.
Mercury imported the machines, and Morse marketed and sold them. The small family-run company achieved temporary success selling Japanese-made sewing machines. They used a company called Mercury, also founded by Philip Morse, to import these items. Morse brought the products to the States and then passed them on to several other American companies. At first, The Morse company seems to have served as a distributor of various Japanese products. In 1948, an American named Philip Sidney Morse founded a company with himself as the president and his wife as the treasurer.
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