Will Somebody Please Explain This One?

All right.  First, let me just remind you that I spend WAY TOO MUCH TIME trolling about on Craigslist and eBay keeping track of the wood and coal cookstoves that are for sale.  Truly, I'm kind of embarrassed by this habit, but I learn a lot this way, too.  Not only do I get to see some really interesting vintage ranges, but I also am fascinated by the occasional glimpse at the way other people have incorporated a woodburning cookstove into their kitchen design.

However, I ran across something this week that has me scratching my head.  You all saw the picture of the Hayes-Custer stove that I acquired a few weeks ago:






Now check out this stove near Iron River, Wisconsin, near Eau Claire, that I found at this link:

https://eauclaire.craigslist.org/atq/d/antique-wood-stove/6536706027.html





The text with the ad says that this is a Marshall-Wells stove, but you can clearly see that the design is exactly the same as the Hayes-Custer.  This one is equipped with the warming oven, and instead of a large blank plate to the right of the firebox, this cooktop has four additional lids, but these were usually features that buyers could opt for if they wished to spend a little more money.

So what happened here?

At the Rochelle Gridley website entitled "100 Years Ago in the Pantagraph," where I found some of my information for my last post, the following sentence appears:

"After the 1929 fire the Association of Commerce gave some aid to help the company get on its feet again, but in 1936 the Hayes Custer Company accepted a contract with a mail order company that turned out to be a very bad deal for Hayes Custer and the contract was abrogated by a court, ending the company's operations outside the bankruptcy court."

Was Marshall-Wells that mail order company?

Another guess is that once Hayes-Custer went out of business, they sold their design specs to Marshall-Wells in Duluth.  But that is just a guess.  (The plans for the "Qualified Range" went through several foundries like that, the last one that I know of being the Hitzer Company in Indiana.)  Marshall-Wells sold woodburning cookstoves for a number of years after this one, manufacturing some really nice-looking white cabinet style models later on.  However, it could also be that Hayes-Custer built cookstoves for Marshall-Wells who simply put its name on the product.  Once Hayes-Custer went out of business, Marshall-Wells could have switched foundries.

Can anyone clear this up for me?  I'm really curious now.