231–240 of 506 posts
Easy solution if you like tariffs: all imported items over $100 must have a 10 year full warranty.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
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Quality was never the norm: cheap always beat quality with a hand tied behind his back! Western working class has spent decades complaining about cheap imports from China... while feeding that market with their own money. Western frequent fliers keep reminiscing about the grandiose pre-deregulation era or air travel, but cry a river when their low-cost carrier of choice actually enforces the limit on cabin baggage. E…
I personally see two effects that are very detrimental here: 1) "Quality brands", where you pay a premium to get high quality/durability products, are economically incentivized to "sell-out" (cash in the brand name by producing as cheaply as possible). This is because customers take some time to catch on, and short-term financials are too often more important than anything else. 2) Increasing trend towards no-name pr…
I see "quality brands" as a potential way to avoid knowing yourself stuff about what you buy. In itself, outsourcing one's expertise about a product might be the root cause of the detrimental effects you mention. As an example: I was once shopping with someone that had experience in fashion. While I don't remember all the details, with one look/touch the person could tell and explain if something was poor or high qua…
Checking stitch length, stitch type, fabric feel, fabric composition, any known supplier information about cotton staple and origin of production, construction complexity.
It's alot of work to keep on top of.
I read an article once about how levi slightly vary the fabric and button quality between cities and countries under the same name (and quality binning); optimising cost to consumer tolerance. And Levi is a brand marketing themselves for quality and legacy pride.
I personally see two effects that are very detrimental here: 1) "Quality brands", where you pay a premium to get high quality/durability products, are economically incentivized to "sell-out" (cash in the brand name by producing as cheaply as possible). This is because customers take some time to catch on, and short-term financials are too often more important than anything else. 2) Increasing trend towards no-name pr…
I see "quality brands" as a potential way to avoid knowing yourself stuff about what you buy. In itself, outsourcing one's expertise about a product might be the root cause of the detrimental effects you mention. As an example: I was once shopping with someone that had experience in fashion. While I don't remember all the details, with one look/touch the person could tell and explain if something was poor or high qua…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything has become a lemon market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons Even if a brand stays solid for 100 years, for all I know as I'm standing there in the store deciding whether to buy something, private equity bought them two quarters ago and hollowed them out. Harvard MBAs/private equity sees brand reputation as just another resource to be converted into money. If I were a billionaire my dream…
And yet it's socialism that has a reputation for shoddy products. How many people want to buy a Lada?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything has become a lemon market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons Even if a brand stays solid for 100 years, for all I know as I'm standing there in the store deciding whether to buy something, private equity bought them two quarters ago and hollowed them out. Harvard MBAs/private equity sees brand reputation as just another resource to be converted into money. If I were a billionaire my dream…
And yet it's socialism that has a reputation for shoddy products. How many people want to buy a Lada?
Enshittification is definitely real, but let's not look at the past with rose-colored glasses. A lot of things you can buy today are vastly superior to things available 50 years ago. It used to be remarkable to drive a car 100k miles without major repairs. Volvo dealerships in the 80's and 90's would give you a badge at 100k milestones to advertise how reliable their cars were compared to others. Anything tech relate…
I think that's part of it, but I also think it's largely an issue of information asymmetry. Brands used to be a proxy for quality, and price could also be a proxy for quality, but that is no longer the case. That means it takes significantly more effort to research a product category to find a good product and people don't want to expend that effort. I am one of those weird people that enjoys that research, so I'm often the one people in my friend group ask for product recommendations because they are more than happy to spend the money, just not the time.
It's a discovery problem at the end of the day. When all the existing indicators become unreliable and advertising is inundated with scams and frauds, there's no way for good products to connect to good customers, so /everyone/ suffers.
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> Major known brands are guilty of this too, often regardless of price. I think this is part of the problem. Everyone wants high-quality (for the most part), but no-one wants to pay more than necessary. If known brand is no longer an indicator of quality, how do you determine that you want to spend say 2-5x the price on something? Reading reviews and such gets you part of the way, but they often focus on new products…
I love this - super testable experiment. I have this exact desire too. - I can’t stand most cheaply made tshirts or things with crass branding - there are a few clothing brands that focus on high quality (and in this case english mfg fabric mills). - it is not cheap. our whole society is warped around “physical goods are super cheap now [because we can manufacture in cn]”. it’s a race to the bottom and we’ve hit the…
I ordered one to see how it holds up. $100 for a t-shirt isn't even that high of a price, most t-shirts I own are merch shirts that cost $45-$70 anyway and are printed on the cheapest Hanes or similar shirt. If it's actually good at $100, I'm sure many people would want to buy it, they just don't know about it. I had never even heard of this company till I saw your comment, but regularly spend more than $100 on an article of clothing if I think it will actually last.