This one liner works for me:
In [1]: groupdgrouped.sortlevel(["Manufacturer","Product Launch Date"], sort_remaining=False)
Sales
Manufacturer Product Name Product Launch Date
Apple iPod 2001-10-23 34
iPad 2010-04-03 30
Samsung Galaxy 2009-04-27 24
Galaxy Tab 2010-09-02 22
Note this works too:
groups.sortlevel([0,2], sort_remaining=False)
This wouldn't have worked when you originally posted over two years ago, because sortlevel by default sorted on ALL indices which mucked up your company hierarchy. sort_remaining which disables that behavior was added last year. Here's the commit link for reference: https://github.com/pydata/pandas/commit/3ad64b11e8e4bef47e3767f1d31cc26e39593277