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Let's make quality the norm again

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Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#471

Post by dghlsakjg »

Xirdus wrote: post #366
dghlsakjg wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they're describing is that TVs had consumable items in the circuitry. It isn't possible to have had a TV without tubes. Tubes were basically really fancy lightbulbs and had a finite life. No amount of quality could make consumables not necessary. TVs needed maintenance and manual back then. They sucked. It's like saying that buying a higher quality car means you don't need to buy tires. The broader point is that…

I wasn't saying things were better then than now. I was saying exactly what you're saying - cheap shit and expensive stuff was available, see furniture, see furniture, see furniture. Except no, it's like that anymore. It's literally impossible - and I mean literally literally - to find any mass-produced brand (as in not needing to be custom made) of furniture that consistently, across all its products, will last more…

Where do you live and what is "not cheap" to you? In the US there is Flexsteel, Stickley, Herman Miller, Hooker, Bradington Young and many more. Even La-z-boy makes decent quality.

Expect a lower end sofa from these companies to be $3,000 on sale, and a really nice one to be $10k+. Quality furniture is typically made to order since people paying that much are going to want to choose a finish and fabrics. I don't know if that means custom made by your definition, but that is how furniture has always been sold.

There are still plenty of brands in almost any product category that maintain consistent quality. They are not household names in many cases, but they certainly exist.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#472

Post by gamessucknow »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #91
Gigachad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition partially causes this though. When you have 100 brands selling the same thing it became a race to the lowest price.

My experience is competition invokes two races happening at the same time, one for lowest price and one for highest quality. You can get a cheap car or really high quality car. Same goes for clothes, restaurants, basically anything where there is lots of market choices and competition.

> You can get a cheap car or really high quality car.

That’s the problem, I want something in-between.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#473

Post by ninalanyon »

mitxela wrote: post #417
_moof wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart used to be (and maybe still is?) known for doing this. They would get companies to produce lower-quality versions of products under the same name as the standard versions available elsewhere. They could sell them for cheaper and consumers were none the wiser - or so the theory went, anyway. Obviously people caught on.

I've noticed this at Aldi too. Boxes of muesli that look 30% cheaper than at other supermarkets... but when you look closer, the box is 3/4 the size and it's only 3/4 full. I don't regularly shop at Aldi.

Don't you look at the unit price? Price per kg or litre.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#474

Post by dghlsakjg »

VorpalWay wrote: post #380
dghlsakjg wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something to be said for places like Costco that has an absurdly generous return policy (are they the only major retailer left that does this? REI used to, but they got rid of it). I believe Costco requires their vendors to eat the return if they want to remain a vendor. Doesn't meant that Costco is immune to bad products, but it severely punishes vendors that sell garbage and protects customers.

I'm not sure that is such a strong signal. The minimum return policy by law in EU is 14 days. IKEA has a one year open box return policy. I would not argue that modern IKEA is high quality. I'm also sure I have seen other stores with a 1 year return policy, though I can't remember which ones off the top of my head. (That is "return undamaged working product" return policy, not warranty policy. Exceptions apply to per…

I would argue that Ikea sells a spectrum of quality. Much of their cheap stuff is priced according to quality. Much of their expensive stuff is too.

I have some of their more expensive solid wood furniture and it is really quite nice. I have some of their particle board college student grade stuff and it is pretty lightly built, but an incredible value when compared to other vendors at the same price point.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#475

Post by ninalanyon »

sholladay wrote: post #109

One big problem is that prices are easy to compare, while quality is not. I recently bought a tub that was advertised as stainless steel on Amazon. I was suspicious but decided to take a chance. Turns out it is galvanized, not stainless. I’m not sure the average person knows the difference. To be charitable, perhaps that’s even why the listing advertised it that way. But the difference matters significantly in terms…

> Turns out it is galvanized, not stainless.

So the seller committed a fraud. Did you get your money back?

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#476

Post by ninalanyon »

mitxela wrote: post #432
MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they should be responsible for accurate listings, swift refunds, taking down misleading products, and banning repeat offenders. I somehow think making Amazon "responsible for what they sell" goes far beyond that in ways that are not reasonable. Only those that make products should be responsible for them.

Amazon should somehow be known as the company that sells crap then, they need a reputation like AliExpress and other stores can take the quality reputation sector.

> Amazon should somehow be known as the company that sells crap then,

I thought they already did. That's certainly my impression of them.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#477

Post by cestith »

huurtehoog wrote: post #410
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the MBA mindset. I think about it in simplified way that in the past a lot of businesses weren't run mainly for profit. So a plumber focused on plumbing first and set prices to have enough profit to live. Once the MBA/PE mindset comes in, they think about maximum profit first and plumbing is just a secondary thing. I have seen that with dentists, vets and many contractors.

It's a common trope but I think it is a 2020 The Atlantic article being half remembered https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckins... History shows profit maximizing behavior in letters dating to 1900 BCE Egypt and 1800 BCE Anatolia by Assyrian merchant houses. I appreciate the analysis you're making, again, but it is low resolution. There's a lot more nuance to what you're saying and it definitely…

The cultural shift happened largely because investment banking, venture capital, and leveraged buyout raiders didn't really exist before in any meaningful way compared to today. People should be careful by the way, especially here, trashing "private equity" altogether when they mean the leveraged buyout folks. Venture capital is a type of private equity, too.

The Chicago school hadn't yet convinced everyone that fiduciary responsibility to shareholders was the prime concern of the C-suite and the board either. Those were economists, not MBAs. Deregulating the market also played a part.

Leveraged buyouts used to boom when another industry went bust. Companies would save some assets of a company that might otherwise be liquidated altogether, and sometimes rebuilt the company into a healthy one. Think junk bonds, the S&L crisis, the dotcom bust, and such. PE also used to take over lots of family-run businesses with succession issues so the companies could continue.

With relaxation of laws and regulations and more examples set by financiers, more of the acquisitions landscape shifted toward the corporate raider type of LBO.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#478

Post by Starman_Jones »

WalterBright wrote: post #287
Xirdus wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both historical socialism and current-stage capitalism suffer from the exact same problem - lack of competition and limited access to information. They arrived there in vastly different ways but in both cases it's very hard both to know how to obtain higher quality goods, and to actually obtain them once you know how. Compare to 1960s USA where it was quite easy to know which car/drill/grill/TV/pants/table/etc. is gu…

I lived through the 60s and know what the goods were. TVs, for example. They had tubes then, and crummy B+W pictures. They were constantly going on the fritz, to the point that drugstores had tube testing stations. You'd bring in the tubes from the TV and test them in this device that looked like an arcade game, and buy replacements. Cars then required a lot more maintenance then. And I mean a lot. I've owned and rep…

American automakers in the 1960s are the prototypical example of the problem being described, and its risks [0]. I’ll grant you that the semiconductor has greatly improved the quality of electronics, but those two examples are exceptions, not the norm. In the intervening decades, almost all products have followed the path of cars in the 60s.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#479

Post by jolt42 »

iamnothere wrote: post #299
jerf wrote: post #169

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…

I wish more brands would follow the Newman’s Own charity model. All profits go to charity, so there isn’t an incentive to hollow out the brand, and the products are a reliable quality at a decent price. Apparently they set up an organization to help other people do this: https://100forpurpose.org/

When Newman and his friend A.E. Hotchner launched the company in 1982, it started entirely as a joke. They were mixing salad dressing in a barn using a canoe paddle, bottling it in old wine jars to give to friends for Christmas. Once they decided to sell it, Newman felt it would be "tacky" to profit off his own face and celebrity status. Instead, he decided to lean into what he called "shameless exploitation for the common good"

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#480

Post by tonymet »

criddell wrote: post #272
tonymet wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s one of the tradeoffs. And an undervalued one.

Absolutely. And it’s a trade off that doesn’t necessarily go against Ikea. Frankly, I think it’s one of the top reasons people choose Ikea furniture. One of the genius things Ikea did was have little staged rooms in their store. They do a great job of these and lots of them look like rooms I’d want to spend time in. You see how that various pieces can be combined into something very inviting.

The subject was “you should buy quality items with longevity”. My point is that’s not a reasonable demand on consumers, or even producers, until the restrictions on creating accessible , quality items have been resolved.
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