It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
calpaterson.com
It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
1–10 of 326 posts
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#2A lot of good thoughts in here. The one I personally want everyone to take away is that most plastics are not recycled.
Unless it’s glass, fibre, or aluminum, you are lying to yourself if it’s going into the blue bin.
Glass-contained milk delivery seems great. Someone needs to start a company. Sure it won’t be sexy or use AI but it’s useful.
I have a local co-op that delivers local produce. It’s amazing to see a pile of naked produce show up in a repurposed apple crate.
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#3Hehe - disposable razors (with the removable head) are also a kind of subscription.
Good piece. So many things are hidden subscriptions these days, even when they don’t have a need to be.
It’s so obviously a money grab.
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#4A lot of good thoughts in here. The one I personally want everyone to take away is that most plastics are not recycled. Unless it’s glass, fibre, or aluminum, you are lying to yourself if it’s going into the blue bin. Glass-contained milk delivery seems great. Someone needs to start a company. Sure it won’t be sexy or use AI but it’s useful. I have a local co-op that delivers local produce. It’s amazing to see a pile…
Staples-as-a-Service. I would totally buy that service vs overpriced meal boxes or on-demand grocery delivery. An app could be used to coordinate your order/inventory levels, and a reusable cooler could sit on your porch or lobby for exchange and temp storage. Pop a cheap tracker and lock in it if piracy is an issue. There are major efficiencies associated with route delivery vs on-demand ordering- pick&pack in batches, delivery in batches, consistent staffing needs, etc. somebody should pitch this for Winter 2022!
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#5Hehe - disposable razors (with the removable head) are also a kind of subscription. Good piece. So many things are hidden subscriptions these days, even when they don’t have a need to be. It’s so obviously a money grab.
Worth reading the whole article, I'm only referencing a couple of specifics. The very last sentence of the article is what it was all leading to, and excellently summed up into what is a modern recurring theme: good business practice is consumer-unfriendly practice.
I thought this was specifically called the "Gillette Business Model". Reading the relevant wikipedia page[0], which also mentions printers and ink, calls it the "razor and blade" model.
One must also familiarise oneself with the "Machine that goes ping" Monty Python skit (on YT, watch it, it's much better than just reading the relevant quote). It was my first introduction to the complexities of corporate finance:
"Ah, I see you have the machine that goes 'ping!'. This is my favourite. You see, we lease this back from the company we sold it to - that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account"[1]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_model
[1]: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_The_Meaning_o...
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#6A lot of good thoughts in here. The one I personally want everyone to take away is that most plastics are not recycled. Unless it’s glass, fibre, or aluminum, you are lying to yourself if it’s going into the blue bin. Glass-contained milk delivery seems great. Someone needs to start a company. Sure it won’t be sexy or use AI but it’s useful. I have a local co-op that delivers local produce. It’s amazing to see a pile…
I have found that no matter what sense you try to tell people, someone’s business model involves telling them the opposite in order to move product.
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#7Hehe - disposable razors (with the removable head) are also a kind of subscription. Good piece. So many things are hidden subscriptions these days, even when they don’t have a need to be. It’s so obviously a money grab.
Even the older double-edged safety razors were designed around such a model, but at least there is a 'standard' for those, with plenty of different companies producing interoperable consumables.
Would it be fair to say that any product with consumables that are proprietary to the vendor, is a subscription?
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#8A lot of good thoughts in here. The one I personally want everyone to take away is that most plastics are not recycled. Unless it’s glass, fibre, or aluminum, you are lying to yourself if it’s going into the blue bin. Glass-contained milk delivery seems great. Someone needs to start a company. Sure it won’t be sexy or use AI but it’s useful. I have a local co-op that delivers local produce. It’s amazing to see a pile…
Here in eastern Canada milk is often offered in bags.
I know bags use a great deal less plastic and probably are easier on the environment shipping wise but they are also not recyclable.
I have seen some examples on the internet where you can refill shampoo/cleaning liquid from a dispenser into your own container. I think it would be cool if that could be done for a number of products that are liquid into a standardized glass container. That way shipping would be more efficient and users could use whatever type of container they want.
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#9Other submission here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28037039. For some reason, algolia adds 10 hours to the submission time, this one that's 1 hour ago according to HN is marked as 11 hours ago, and the other that's 10 hours ago according to HN is marked as 20 hours ago.
Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription
#10Great article. One minor point of disagreement I have:
> For Adobe's subscribers, the lock-in is considerable as access to their existing bank of files and documents is contingent on continued payment.
Losing access to uploaded files isn't really a relevant factor in paying for an Adobe subscription. Their cloud storage is an afterthought, and they can all anyways be trivially exported. The lock-in comes from the software itself. We must have Photoshop, and there is no other way to get Photoshop than to pay Adobe every month till you die.