<HTML>List, When checking the Baldwin stock quotes for any latest news, there was the following story about Baldwin and other famous brands either going out of business or falling perilously close to it. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin BIZFEATURE-Some famous brands disappear as consumers change By Kesha Green   CHICAGO, June 21 (Reuters) - Grandmother may have washed clothes in Oxydol detergent. Father drove an Oldsmobile car. Mother shopped at Montgomery Ward. Brother rode a Schwinn bicycle and sister practiced scales on a Baldwin piano. What do all these consumer icons of the idyllic American family have in common? They are brands that have been discontinued, gone bankrupt or come perilously close to extinction, demonstrating how the most popular products of days gone by can bite the dust if they fail to change with the times. General Motors Corp <<A HREF="aol://4785:GM">GM.N</A>> is phasing out the century-old Oldsmobile brand of luxury cars. Montgomery Ward, the once proud retailer, has gone out of business. Baldwin Piano and Organ Co. <<A HREF="aol://4785:BPAO">BPAO.O</A>> has filed for bankruptcy protection. Procter & Gamble <<A HREF="aol://4785:PG">PG.N</A>> sold Oxydol, which once was the top-selling brand of laundry detergent. And Schwinn/GT Co. <<A HREF="aol://4785:GTBX">GTBX.O</A>>, the maker of the first bicycle of generations of kids, was rescued from bankruptcy and is up for sale again. The message to companies tempted to sit on their laurels: even old brands must learn new tricks, marketing experts said. "The challenge with retailing is that often times, typically, a retail brand is hot for a number of years and consumers like to move on to another format or another brand offering," said Gwen Morrison, managing director at Frankel Brand Environments, a brand marketing agency. BECOMING "NOTHING SPECIAL" If image was everything, Oldsmobile luxury cars projected just that for more than half a century until the 1980s. Young American families would buy a Chevrolet, then a Pontiac, an Oldsmobile, a Buick, and eventually a Cadillac in the 1920s, said Jim Gillette, an auto analyst.    "When you bought one (Oldsmobile) it was like an image that you had arrived," said Gillette.    And for baby boomers of the 1970s, the first new car often was an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, he said. But Japanese car imports hurt Oldsmobile sales in the 1980s. Then, GM started producing the Oldsmobile using the same platform as its other cars to help cut costs. "They ruined the ability of the consumer in the marketplace to differentiate one product from another," said Gillette. "Oldsmobile became nothing special." Oxydol laundry detergent dropped out of favor because it failed to move with the change from powdered laundry soap. Procter & Gamble Co.'s first detergent helped coin the term "soap opera" in the 1930s because of its advertisements during the popular "Ma Perkins" radio series. When the rest of the industry began producing liquid detergent instead of powder, P&G decided not to release a liquid version of Oxydol. By the 1990s, Oxydol had dropped off consumer radar and its powder detergent market share dropped to 0.3 percent compared to market-leading Tide at 39.4 percent. "P&G stopped marketing Oxydol in 1997. P&G decided Oxydol did not fit into its global corporate strategy," said a spokesperson for Redox Brands Inc, which bought the 75-year-old brand from P&G last June and is trying to test it at some Wal-Mart stores. ORDERING FROM CATALOGS In the case of Chicago-based Montgomery Ward, major strategic blunders and more focused competition contributed to the retailer's demise. First, Ward was slow to move from supplying customers who ordered from its catalogs, to opening retail stores. This allowed rival Sears, Roebuck and Co. to grab prime store locations. In the 1980s, the company couldn't decide between offering general or specialty merchandise, which allowed competitors such as Gap and Limited to attract young shoppers. Montgomery Ward, founded in 1872, attempted to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1997, then shut down operations in December, 2000. To add insult to injury, Sears purchased 18 of Ward's stores and 10 auto centers when it liquidated. Baldwin Piano, the No. 1 U.S. keyboard manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month amid slack consumer demand, competition from Japanese imports, and rising costs. Baldwin pianos have a reputation for quality, supplying the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1963, according to Mary Sauer, the orchestra's a principal keyboardist. But the 140-year-old company's fate came as no surprise to the industry as piano sales growth had been slow in recent years, according to Music Trades Magazine. Baldwin's stock fell 88 percent from $18.75 in October, 1997 to $2.15 when NASDAQ halted trading in May. THE BANKRUPTCY CHALLENGE A Chapter 11 bankrupt company has three options -- considerably revamp its business, hope for a buyout or liquidate. Filing for Chapter 11 is like going to a hospital emergency room because a cure is not guaranteed, said Michael Reilly, partner in the law firm Bingham Dana in New York and co-head of the firm's financial restructuring group. "Recently, even more large companies are liquidating because they no longer have a niche in the business," said Reilly. One company that survived Chapter 11 is bicycle maker Schwinn/GT Co. In 1992, Schwinn was a 97-year-old family business that had filed for bankruptcy protection amid rising debt and marketing mistakes. Investment firm Zell/Chilmark bought the family business in 1993 and introduced a new line of mountain and fitness bike models. Schwinn purchased GT Bicycles in 1998 and captured the largest market share in a growth market -- sales through specialty bicycle shops rather than mass merchants like Kmart and Wal-Mart. But Schwinn is not yet assured of success in its marathon race back to the head of the pack. Its current owner, Questor Partners Fund LP, put the company up for sale a few months ago. "Most brands brought back a second time never quite return to the stature that they had initially," said Kris Larsen, president of Interbrand, a brand consulting firm. 19:21 06-21-01 </HTML>