Kiraco Welt Radio.

[PJ.]

Hello,
I'm somehow interested in this company, maybe somebody can tell me some more about them? I have two radios - Stradivari DW5422 and Amati DW5420 and it's seems strange that company with such good quality radios could just go bankrupt and disappear.
Except enigmatic information on radiomuseum.org, flyer "Grosse Radio-Eintausch-Aktion" with Stradivari on sale and model list there's not too much information.

You can write in German if you prefer, I'm still learning

Best regards
Piotr

[Binser]

Dear Piotr,

there's quite a good book about the history of KIRACO, RIWECO and AJA, written bei Wolfgang Kull. This is book title No. 9 from the "GFGF Schriftenreihe" from the publishing house Rüdiger Walz. I'm not sure if this book is still available there but you might find it second hand.

http://www.booklooker.de/B%C3%BCcher/Wo ... AM36E01ZZh

Kind regards,

Jörg

[röhrenradiofreak]

As far as I know, Kiraco didn't go bankrupt. Heinz Kisters, who founded the company after WW2, realized that a small radio manufacture could not be profitbale in the long run. So he decided to purchase the next "Kiraco" models Universum II and Stradivari from other companies (Rieble and Jentsch). By the end of 1954, he stopped the activities of "Kiraco Welt Radio GmbH" (sounds like a big company, but in fact is wasn't) and became the sales manager of Tefi. The Kiraco company was dissolved in the early 1960s.

Kisters established a number of sales agencys instead of selling the Kiraco radios by retail. Furthermore, he engaged a stage actor who ballyhooed his products over a loudspeaker mounted on a car - quite a strange method of selling radios...

Lutz

[PJ.]

Thank you for your answers,
that's very interesting info!
I always thought that Tefi somehow bought and then used Kiraco manufacture as a base for its later models - looking at my Tefifon M540 chassis is almost like the one in Kiraco radios.
So it looks like it - Heinz Kisters started with selling radio kits in the first years of his small manufacture, then there was mysterious model Universum, then after two models bought from other companies he started small series in two seasons (1952-54) but he didn't see a possibility of keeping up with the 'big' competitors, so he joined Tefi. I hope am I right?
I would never guess that it was such small company, those radios looked quite good and definitely not amateurish.

Regards
Piotr