Brands got worse on purpose • Hacker News Board

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#31

Post by ghaff » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

vharuck wrote: post #24

I (or really, my parents) were burned by something like this recently. They bought my kid an FAO Schwarz marble run tower for Christmas. It's made of terrible plastic, with rough seams, and every play session ends when a marble gets stuck somewhere nearly impossible to reach. It requires partial disassembly, bending, and a screwdriver to pry things out. I was shocked that an FAO Schwarz toy sucked so much. I looked a…

FAO's used to be a prestige NYC brand. Of course, they carried many other branded products but those were mostly top-shelf (and expensive) as well. A LOT of formerly pretty high quality brands have ended up getting sold off to brand management companies and the like. I just got a few pairs of shoes from AllBirds because while the name will live on I have no doubt the quality will become pretty generic now that it's no longer a Silicon Valley must-have thing.

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#32

Post by trjordan » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

> Wait for a beloved brand to hit financial trouble. Buy the intellectual property out of bankruptcy: the name, the logo, the trademarks.

The alternative is to shut down. That's how this whole system works: the brand can be sold, because the alternative is to cease existing.

I hate that the brand is worthwhile on its own. But: that's the point! The company invested in making the brand worth something by having it represent a promise. That promise isn't worth anything when the brand can be sold separately from the process of making the thing. The brand continues to be worth something, though.

This mechanism is a core feature of capitalism. Companies can be sold for parts, and those parts can lie to consumers. There's almost certainly a regulatory answer, but the behavior of the roll-up firms isn't unique to any particular firm. It's exactly the kind of value extraction the system is designed to support.

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#33

Post by habosa » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

vharuck wrote: post #24

I (or really, my parents) were burned by something like this recently. They bought my kid an FAO Schwarz marble run tower for Christmas. It's made of terrible plastic, with rough seams, and every play session ends when a marble gets stuck somewhere nearly impossible to reach. It requires partial disassembly, bending, and a screwdriver to pry things out. I was shocked that an FAO Schwarz toy sucked so much. I looked a…

I bought a teddy bear from them in 2014 and another in 2025. It's night and day. The earlier one is really high quality, the newer one feels like I won it from a claw machine.

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#34

Post by ghaff » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

rsingel wrote: post #25

Love Pendleton but they have moved some production to Mexico and other spots. Check before you buy For example, Pendleton Ganado Matelassé Blanket | Belk https://share.google/0QaaEXgLnNu0EKClr

I had to buy a new "Hudson Bay" blanket after a fire. There's apparently still a good mill in Minnesota that produces a look-alike and the product seems really nice. But a lot of the traditional brands are pretty mediocre at this point.

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#35

Post by cleandreams » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

logotype wrote: post #10

Support brands with values and local manufacturing. For example: American Giant, Origin, Crye Precision, Randolph Engineering, American Optical, and many more.

Shout out to American Giant. I have like 15 t-shirts from them, some are ten years old and they look new. Buying good stuff saves money in the long run!

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#36

Post by habosa » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

When people talk about AI replacing jobs, this is what it will look like. Companies that care about quality will use AI to make humans more productive and enhance their overall offering. Companies that only care about profit (read: most) will fire people, add in AI, and ship garbage. Other CEOs will see the results (read: profits) and copy this. We'll end up with shittier products and services than before and not much else.

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#37

Post by cratermoon » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #27

Get this: the byline, Keyana Sapp? A Palantir employee in AI strategy. https://www.linkedin.com/in/keyanasapp/ They're iterating AI-written consumer populist blog posts and using us as guinea pigs, until we stop noticing they're AI. Their last one was "Your Backpack Got Worse On Purpose", which we did great on. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777209 , flagged off main page) Don't let them get away with this,…

Weirdly, the author has his mediocre GRE scores on his LinkedIn page.

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#38

Post by cratermoon » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

somewhatgoated wrote: post #14

shmeeed wrote: post #12

I hate to be the guy to say it, but this is just capitalism working as intended.

Not really - it’s __one form__ of capitalism working as intended but capitalism (like most -isms) can take many vastly different forms. There can be a much better form of capitalism also in the US - since this whole thread and discussion is pretty US-centric.

No True Scotsman eh?

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#39

Post by AlexB138 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

Funny baader-meinhof moment for me reading this. My wife recently bought me some Brooks Brothers polo shirts that essentially dissolved the first time they were washed. I had never seen a shirt that was such poor quality. We were both flabbergasted, and the employees apparently gave her a bit of a hard time when she tried to return them.

I suppose I now know why.

What this company is doing is taking advantage of, and really creating, adverse selection. They buy a brand for its reputation, destroy everything that made it worthwhile and abuse the information asymmetry of the public still believing they're buying the now non-existent brand. It could be seen very easily as a form of fraud.

Re: Brands got worse on purpose

#40

Post by lamasery » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

rsingel wrote: post #25

Love Pendleton but they have moved some production to Mexico and other spots. Check before you buy For example, Pendleton Ganado Matelassé Blanket | Belk https://share.google/0QaaEXgLnNu0EKClr

I've been seeing fabric from their US mill, but manufacturing elsewhere (like the DR) for years.

So far I've done OK assuming anything they make that's not 100% wool is cheap trash they're using to cash in on the name (they sell cotton shirts, and linen-cotton blends, and some synthetic blends—all extremely suspect, I avoid these at any price) but the 100% wool stuff is OK even if the construction's not in the US. That's served me well so far, but I reckon it's only a matter of time before they fully enshittify. Luckily their heavier shirts last years and years with occasional mending of e.g. tears (if you wear them as actual work and outdoors-activities shirts, you're gonna tear them sometimes).