There once was a time when this headline would seem as unlikely as “Performance Yugo” or “Haute Cuisine Denny’s“. Nonetheless, the New York Times reports in GE finds sleek profit in luxury appliances that GE is tired of sour grapes and is aiming at the Viking and SubZero market.

GE recently inserted a 30-page promotional brochure in four big-market newspapers, featuring Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, Jay Leno and other well-known moneyed people posing in their Monogram-bedecked designer kitchens.

“We wanted to give the idea that people who can afford Hatteras yachts and Neguchi tables choose Monogram,” Klein said, adding that GE has sold more than a dozen of those $30,000 wine vaults.
…
“You’re going to have a billion middle class people in China and India by 2015.”

No more whining for GE now that it is in the wine vault and luxury appliance business! GE has seen that the appliance growth market isn’t just in the USA.