Chambers Looks to Kill Linksys Branding
July 31st, 2007 by Benjamin KuoLinksys has been one of Southern California’s big success stories — bootstrapped by Victor Tsao, it was purchased by Cisco for $500M in 2003. Until now, the brand has continued as a separate product line over at Cisco, but there’s been some debate over whether or not to kill the brand name and just go with Cisco. Link to the Slashdot article, plus Om Malik has more over at GigaOm on the ongoing debate.
If Linksys does disappear, the brand will go the way of many other, Southern California businesses which were purchased and disappeared (for example, Overture Services, which is now Yahoo’s advertising unit). Personally, as a consumer (and former product manager) I’d keep the brand name, which has a lot more brand equity than Cisco does in the consumer market; in the consumer hardware business, where margins can be razor thin and consumers gravitate towards brands they have used and trust, it’s probably worth more to be a Linksys than a Cisco.
Interestingly enough, the technology industry hasn’t yet sided with the consumer goods industry, where branding and brand management is a huge deal and no one dares to kill a trusted brand (some examples: Best Foods and Hellman’s; Edy’s/Dreyer’s Ice Cream).
