Bush Radio company The company was founded in 1932 as Bush Radio from the remains of the Graham Amplion company, which had made
horn loudspeakers as a subsidiary of the
Gaumont British Picture Corporation. The brand name comes from Gaumont's
Shepherd's Bush studios. Bush Radio Ltd expanded rapidly moving to a new factory at Power Road,
Chiswick in 1936. radio, successor of the hugely popular DAC90 Bush became part of the
Rank empire in 1945 when it was acquired by
Cinema-Television, a subsidiary of Gaumont-British. A brand new factory was opened at
Ernesettle,
Plymouth in 1949. designed by Frank Middleditch, featured in the
V&A exhibition
Britain Can Make It. The original model in black became very popular and was succeeded by the DAC90A in other colours, and export models with dials in different languages. In 1950 the DAC10 radios were launched, along with the distinctive TV22 television. portable radio from 1959 was a design icon of the early transistor radios. Pictured here is a reproduction model released in the 2000s. The Bush TR82 transistor radio, designed by
Ogle Design, and launched in 1959, is regarded as an icon of early radio design. Although the first radio to use the Ogle cabinet design was actually the MB60, a battery/mains valve set from 1957 to 1959. The original Bush Radio company merged with
Murphy Radio on 4 June 1962, and a new company was formed called Rank Bush Murphy Ltd. In 1978, Rank Bush Murphy was sold to British conglomerate
Great Universal Stores. Rank formed a joint venture with
Toshiba in 1978 called Rank Toshiba, and manufactured Toshiba designed televisions in
Ernesettle,
Plymouth, England. In 1980 Rank terminated its agreement with Toshiba and the joint company was wound up. Toshiba took over the UK factory and continued to manufacture television sets alone.
Brand since the 1980s (
DAB) by Bush, released in 2003 In 1981, two young entrepreneurs, Mark Flutter and Richard Schlagman, purchased the Bush brand name trademark from Rank for £600,000. They refreshed the brand on the high street with imported products including radio alarms, cassette recorders and hi-fi systems. It successfully revitalised the brand and led to it being floated as Bush Radio plc in 1984. In March 1986, Prestwich Holdings agreed to acquire Bush Radio for £15 million. Under the Alba Group, Bush products once again became common, being used primarily on imported electronic goods. In November 2008, the Bush brand name, along with Alba, was purchased by
Home Retail Group, the parent company of
Homebase and
Argos, for £15.25 million. As a result, the former Alba Group reverted to its original name of Harvard International. Harvard International still owns the Bush brand in Oceania. In September 2016, the British
supermarket chain
Sainsbury's completed its acquisition of Home Retail Group, bringing Argos, along with the Alba and Bush brands, under its ownership. In 2022 the Bush brand replaced the Alba brand, enabling Sainsbury's to have one main own brand electronics brand.
Logo history File:Bush Radio logo 1930s.png|Bush Radio logo circa 1935. File:Bush Radio tree.png|A variant of the Bush Radio
tree symbol circa 1960s File:Bush 1962.png|Bush logo in the 1960s. The tree icon was removed around 1970 but restored in 1981. File:Bush electronics red.png|Bush logo until 2015 and the most recent featuring a tree icon. File:Bush ID Logo.jpg|Bush iD, a former branding used until 2008 for certain products. ==Product range==