And Sears, like Walmart now, was big enough that they could go to manufacturers and get special versions of products to makeup the "Kenmore" brand. I remember looking at fridges back in the day and the Kenmore version had just minor differences that made it slightly better than the 'same' model from the actual manufacturer.

The difference between Walmart and Sears through is that Walmart pushes manufacturers to build the cheapest possible product so their versions are worse rather than better then the manufacturer's own branded products.