81–90 of 213 posts
The best purchases(the ones I am quite grateful for) I have made, ever, are the following brands/products: 1. LLBean. Running aparell, shoes, bedcovers. 2. Apple. I still have 2012 mac books that work well after a few repairs. M1s are good. 3. Peugot pepper mill. 4. American Apparel T Shirts. 5. FoamByMail top line Luxe maximum firmness foam mattress(Queen) costing a few hundred $ (after trial and errors and $$$$ dow…
My feeling throughout reading the article is best summed up as "Y U mad bro?" He harps on an "anti-woke" razor company that tries to market themselves as an alternative to Gillette and Harry's — the big point is "they spend 800k/month on marketing, so it drives up the cost of the razors". Does he know how much Gillette spends (saved you a search: 600M/year)? How do they fund that I wonder? He cites a study that says…
> Does he know how much Gillette spends (saved you a search: 600M/year)? How do they fund that I wonder? Jeremy’s volume is probably a Gillette’s rounding error. A better question is what is their CAC and CLV - and Gillette’s are probably much better.
Before jeremy's there were other similar businesses with the same business model that weren't anti woke but advertised heavily online - dollar shave club, harry's, etc. They both have the same business model as Jeremy's. Dollar shave club was acquired by Unilever for $1 Billion and Harry's was acquired by Schick for $1.37 Billion. After being acquired both companies seem to have stopped advertising online anywhere near as heavily as they did before. I think Harry's started as a sort of charity buy one give one sort of company so it also had a social aspect to its promotion.
It's clearly a space where there's room for competition and the possibility of getting acquired by a giant company who doesn't want to compete with you. If you have a built in audience of "anti woke" who will buy whatever dailywire sells them, you short circuit a lot of your risk and can focus on growth. The targeted ads at people more likely to be interested is just that, looking for growth. It doesn't mean its a bad business.
I've got three kids. We have so much crap all around the house. We buy the junk that is constantly advertised to us. We purchase from Walmart which mostly sells crap too. If we stopped for a minute and got off the social media train of consumption, and bought only high quality things, but a lot less of them, we would have a much better life and no clutter. But we don't.
Impulse purchases? As someone who is as immune to advertising as one gets, I find your post intriguing, and I feel like asking what is probably a naive question: can’t you just not buy the stuff? Where does that break down?
Shopping addiction. There's a lot of info about that. Happens both in general, people that buys tons of assorted junk, and in niche hobbies like wristwatches, garments, shoes, perfumes, cars or car models.
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Impulse purchases? As someone who is as immune to advertising as one gets, I find your post intriguing, and I feel like asking what is probably a naive question: can’t you just not buy the stuff? Where does that break down?
Because kids. It's easy enough to say "don't buy it", but the family members buy the juke, the kid comes home bawling his eyes out because everyone else has product X, and it's only $Y, so you get it, because it's been a long week, and it's really only Wednesday and you can't really deal with something valued at only $19.95 right now and just maybe it will buy you 20 minutes of peace so you can cook dinner.
Not that I can't understand, but that's terrible neglect. Saying no is difficult but it's the parents' duty, same as many other difficult things.
Once you buy one piece of crap from an ad, don't you learn not to do it again? Are there enough new suckers every day to keep this going forever?
This is why Meta stock has been such a great investment since 2012 iPO and will continue to be, same for Alphabet. Multiply this by thousands of companies. Insane earnings, and very high profit margins. Very consistent too. No shortage of brands, advertisers. CPCs (cost per clicks) are super-expensive and increase with inflation too, and especially for mobile US users, which is the most desired demographic. You cannot think of a better company when it comes to printing money.
I consider this phenomenon part of what I like to call the "Amazon syndrome", even though Amazon is far from being the only culprit. As China started flooding the rest of the world with cheap but decent products mass-produced in a random factory in Shenzhen, people turned away from brands they used to trust and towards no-name options from the likes of "Kxbnheb" or "Ypknwoj" in order to save a buck. Eventually the bi…
There's also the opposite strategy. Making a cheaper product of lower quality at lower costs. The better quality product loses sales and advantages of mass adoption, and often can go out of business. The lower quality product is now the dominant one in the market. The resellers can freely raise prices now, to match the better products price and greatly increase profits. The public is now stuck with a lower quality pr…
Likewise with toilets. Low flow toilets are mostly terrible and do a terrible job at flushing. Literally the only thing they're designed to do. If you have to flush 2-3 times with a low flow and maybe even involve a plunger, are we really ahead?
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Impulse purchases? As someone who is as immune to advertising as one gets, I find your post intriguing, and I feel like asking what is probably a naive question: can’t you just not buy the stuff? Where does that break down?
Because kids. It's easy enough to say "don't buy it", but the family members buy the juke, the kid comes home bawling his eyes out because everyone else has product X, and it's only $Y, so you get it, because it's been a long week, and it's really only Wednesday and you can't really deal with something valued at only $19.95 right now and just maybe it will buy you 20 minutes of peace so you can cook dinner.
1 Four Seasons Hotels
2 Terra Kaffe - had to google them, $1300 Espresso Machine
3 iPhone case, according to ad reviewed by Wirecutter and MacWorld
4 Monos Carry-On Suitcase that looked like any other suitcase
5 ClubMed
6 Philips Sonicare toothbrush
7 Volvo XC90 Hybrid
8 WSJ subscription
9 LaunchDarkly - feature flags SaaS
10 Sotheby's Finest Scotch auctions
I guess 3 and 4 could be an overhyped junk, but not everything.
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This. People like slapping laws on issues when the outcome is usually higher costs in the form of never shrinking burocrazys, little to no actual enforcement (unless you are rich or connected) and the red tape involved in compliance will likely make it worse. The answer is by adopting different behavior on our end. Add blockers avoiding services litterer in ads (its why i no longer use Instagram, google search, etc)
> The answer is by adopting different behavior on our end. This tactic has not succeeded even once since written records began. Did snake oil salesmen disappear because we ran out of gullible people? Give me one example when this approach succeeded, without any corresponding legislation
I think he's describing when the market dethrones an entrenched player without legislation. This happens quite often. Cable companies come to mind. Kodak, Novell, Sun Microsystems, etc.
Like he said, regulation today serves the wealthiest companies, because startups, the ones that do the dethroning, have extra costs that are more difficult to afford. I believe it fits in the Barrier to Entry category.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/barrierstoentry.asp
If you want real regulation, you need to look to the anti-trust laws, but our current politicians don't have the stomach for that. Today's regulation really tends to serve the already entrenched, because the entrenched usually write the regulation.