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Comments (345)

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  MostlyStable
  While I personally find this kind of thing extremely annoying, to me, the main problem is the _difficulty_ of determining quality. The Donut media guys did a (relatively unscientific) video comparing a whole bunch of products from the 50s to modern day across several price points. What they found was that the things that "looked" the same now were simultaneously worse and also much cheaper. They also found that, if inflation adjusted, you get could, in most categories, the same or better quality for the same price. It was just that the brands and names that used to be quality were now usually not as much.So it is often the case that today, you can get something for cheaper than you ever could in the past (albeit not at a great quality), and if you are willing to pay higher prices (but often about the same as you would have paid in the past), you can still get good or even better quality.The main issue is that _determining_ which products actually are quality has also gotten harder in many cases.edit: found the video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4C62HC1HSo
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  34679
  If you're looking for a backpack, I can't recommend Osprey enough. They are still a independent US company with a lifetime warranty they actually stand by. I had to call their customer service just last week after I ordered the wrong size bag. I was connected to an actual human immediately, and he sent me a prepaid return label, even though it was my fault and I was fully expecting to pay for return shipping myself. I own several of their bags and have never had a single issue with any of them.
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  furyofantares
  > I'll be writing about those next.I doubt it, you didn't write about this! You prompted it and signed your name to it.
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  emtel
  I bought a north face backpack for college in 1998. It cost $60. It was an extravagant expense for me at the time and I felt horrible about it for weeks.That backpack is currently at college with my son, who used it all through high school as well. It is by far the oldest and most durable daily-use object I’ve ever owned.
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  ghighi7878
  > A $35 JanSport that dies in eighteen months: $23 per year. Add the shipping cost when you try the warranty. Add the replacement cost when the claim gets denied. Add your time.> A $200 bag that lasts ten years: $20 per year. Already cheaper. At fifteen years, which the well-built ones consistently do, you're at $13 per year.This ignores the money you would earn by not giving money upfront. A 23$ expense every year is cheaper than 200$ upfront over 10 years, because you will earn 15 euros over that 170 Euro first year if you put it in S&P500. And then 12 nect year and and 10 in third year and you are already ahead of the 200 Eurro bag. And you just dont spend time in warranty. Just throw it away dn buy next one for 35 Euros.
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  cortesoft
  As much as the result for consumers sucks, is this just a result of the quality backpack business not being a very profitable business to be in anymore?The reason they were able to buy all those backpack brands is because each of those brands were not making much money running a backpack company selling quality at a reasonable price. The purchaser makes some money leeching value out of the brand reputation, but then that brand value falls because of the crappy product, and they sell the brand because they leeched all the value out of it.This is only possible because you can’t make much money selling quality for a good price. Consumers will pick lower quality for the cheapest price every time.
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  elwebmaster
  We always see consumers blamed for choosing price over quality. How about retailers taking the blame for dumbing down or removing product specs? If two items look identical but one costs more than the other how can consumer be blamed for choosing the cheaper ones? Especially in the age of LLMs, it you are building a quality product you need to include a spec sheet of what makes your product better than the competitor. Not dumbed down marketing speak like "lasts longer" but specific details justifying the premium, like "zippers made in Japan" or the stitching density, fabric specifics, etc. Consumers who care can use LLM to understand what it all means and make informed choice. But when the information is hidden consumer will choose the cheapest option.
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  consumer451
  I spent way too much money on a Peak Design backpack. 4 years in, the zipper broke. They honored the lifetime warranty, and swapped me for a brand new one.That was my first time ever dealing with such a high-end product and a lifetime warranty.Just sharing because it was a good experience.
• PaulDavisThe1st
  While I would not disagree with many of the points made in TFA, I think this is a bad example to demonstrate the problem the author is trying to address.Why? Over the last twenty years, many high end backpack designs have moved towards lighter weight materials and construction, because of trends in the world of backpacking.This means that even in the high end segment of the market, comparing packs to ones from decades ago can be misleading - they are working with different design goals.None of this eliminates the points about cheaper materials and construction at the lower end of the market, but it does make things a bit more complex than they need to be if a different example was used to illustrate all this.
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  nunez
  63% AI generated according to Pangram. Better than 100%; this makes me think that they wrote the copy manually then used an LLM to clean it up.Anyway, VF also bought Timberland and, by proxy, Smartwool. They absolutely tanked both brands.
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  delichon
  I've got a story of this but backwards. I know a guy, a hiking guru, moderately famous for his backpacks. He's an ultralight long distance enthusiast who designs much of his own equipment. I went to his house for a weekend session with a few people to learn to make our own, and I'm still using the one I made. For a few years he made and sold them out of his living room. Then he sold his brand to an outfit that scaled it up into a decent business.But the lightweight hiking guru made ultralight backpacks, with thin material and very minimal extras. It was designed to be light by a guy who could sew, so he was happy to fix it as needed on the trail. To him that was a feature not a bug. Meanwhile the company that bought the brand and design necessarily made it more robust, feature-full, and twice as heavy. They were pretty much forced to by the number of returns they were getting.So now I treasure my old backpack that worseonpurpose would probably deplore, and keep it repaired so that I don't have to make another or go buy one that worseonpurpose would probably like better.
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  harisenbon
  Whenever I buy something with a zipper I check that it’s YKK first.If it isn’t, I know there’s a good chance they’re cheaping out on other places as well.
• hayleox
  I wonder if there's an advertising law angle here. If a company sells multiple products in the same product category, they really shouldn't be allowed to have them branded so that they seem like multiple companies. The main name/logo on these products should be required to have something that makes it clear that they're all from the same company.They can pick one of their backpack brands to keep (and eliminate/sell off the rest), or they can tack "VF" onto the front of each brand name, or something like that. A customer shouldn't have to dig into the fine print or do research to know whether two products are from the same manufacturer.
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  evolve2k
  Talk to any Aussie tech workers you know and chances are they or their friend has a Crumpler backpack. (No affiliation just a big fan).Originally created by a bike courier who sick of bags breaking sewed a bag out of the toughest material he could get, marine canvas. To this day they make somewhat indestructible, well designed, trendy well loved bags.Also they have a lifetime warranty and repair policy that is very hard to beat. Maybe you’re not local, but you can tell these will be well made (and they really are)https://www.crumpler.com/pages/repairNot sure if they ship to the US. But worth a look if you are serious about excellent well made well design backpacks.https://www.crumpler.com/collections/backpacksI know so many Aussie tech folk who swear by the Crunpler Entity as their laptop bag of choice.https://www.crumpler.com/products/entity?variant=44393825992...
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  Eric_WVGG
  Speaking of “worse on purpose,” I immediately tried to subscribe to this site’s RSS feed — none. Unthinkable on any blogging platform for most of the past twenty years.
• sureMan6
  This article is LLM written and unsourced so the entire thing could be a hallucination and there's no reason to trust any claim made in it, don't even read it
• jrussino
  I heard advice from Adam Savage on the topic of cost-vs-quality that I've found to be quite useful. It was something along the lines of:When you're first getting into a new craft/hobby and need a specific tool, get the cheapest one you can buy. When you're first starting out, you probably don't really know how to judge quality, and you don't have a good sense for what features/enhancements you actually need (not to mention, you may or may not know you're actually going to stick with the hobby at all).By the time that first cheap one breaks, or you gain some experience/skill and hit your frustration limit with it, you'll have a much better understanding of what you want out of the tool and will be better position to pick out the "best" version to suit your needs.
• ctoth
  Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
• krabat
  Boots. I have bought Italian-made boots for 23 years - the same brand and model. 1. pair the inner lining died, rest was fine-to worn for 7 years, including laces, 2. pair lasted 7 years, the inner lining held this time, laces too. 3. pair was smaller than indicated, I stood the pain for one winter, could not "grow them", 4. pair has laces die after 1 year, leather cracking after 2 years, rubber seal opening after 2 years and lace (metal) hooks straightening from tying the laces. And this is the company, who has always promised exchange of soles for 100$ - but THAT has never been an issue.Metal hooks, lace-weave and thread, leather, glue - I wonder how much they save, but I have bought my last pair.VIBRAM boots and soles.
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  dfee
  > People who do get warranty replacements report receiving bags that are worse than the one they sent in. Thinner fabric. Cheaper hardware. You mailed back a 2016 JanSport and got a 2025 JanSport, and those are fundamentally different products.This rhymes. Recently, I took my iPhone 16 Pro in to swap out the screen (there was an ever growing dead spot, and they handled it free of charge). Unfortunately, the screen they replaced it with is much more fragile – hairline fractures within days. I know the replacement screen is of lesser structural quality, but I can't prove it. I've had iPhones since the day they debuted in 2007(?), and this moment connected the dots across years of screen replacements. The original is always much more durable.But again, sadly I can't prove it.
• oliwarner
  Thread counts and Denier are poor metrics for items that employ technical fabrics, seam glues and other modern improvements that legitimately lower these sorts of simple measurements. People don't want to buy the same heavyweight waxed backpacks their grandparents used.There definitely are BOM- and manufacturing reduction movements in these mature products but backpacks honestly don't seem nearly as bad as (eg) walking boots.The Worse On Purpose article on power tools follows a similar tack. Offshore manufacturing, corporate consolidation and cheaper processes don't actually make the overall picture worse when we have affordable tools packing modern lithium batteries and brushless neodymium motors.
• amai
  I recommend Deuter backpacks. German overengineering at its best. After ten years my backpack is still good as new.
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  Someone
  > A $35 JanSport that dies in eighteen months: $23 per year. […] A $200 bag that lasts ten years: $20 per year. Already cheaper.If it is, it isn’t by much. The difference between $200 paid now versus 7 times $35 = $245 over a period of ten years is about 5 years of interest over $200. At 4% interest, that’s about $40.
• chuckadams
  Got me an Osprey ~12 years ago. Light as a feather, tough as nails. But it's not the kind of thing you can just sling over your shoulder like my old North Face bag (which was stolen). But yeah, the moral of the story is, as always, "If you want durable, don't buy it from Wal-Mart" (or Target, or Kohls, or Amazon)
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  ButlerianJihad
  I swear by Swiss Gear nowadays. However, it's been several years since I purchased one. I don't know if they've maintained the same high quality.But I had a Swiss Gear backpack that was fantastic, and it lasted me nearly a decade. It was originally purchased at a Target. It was versatile and I could take it anywhere. It had little grommets to pass-through earphone cords and such. It survived even through several washes in a washing machine.Then at a thrift store, I found a Swiss Gear suitcase. It has wheels and a telescoping handle. It expands very nicely. I have it stored away and still haven't found occasion to use it.I also picked up a Swiss Gear laptop bag with a "messenger bag" shoulder strap. These I found at Office Depot. It's really nice. It has a velcro fastener to secure the laptop itself. It has mesh pockets for all kinds of accessories. If I don't put in a laptop, it can carry documents, folders, or binders. It's been very durable.
• runjake
  I tend to find a relatively reliable model of something and stick with it.I've noticed, without exception, across clothing, backpacks, and appliances that the next iteration is more cheaply made:- Thinner fabrics- Less stitching- And on appliances and other tools, more plastic parts where they used to be metal.My latest <LredactedG> washer has a newly plastic mounting bracket that appears designed to fail within a decade due to vibration. Even the metal backing is thinner that the previous generation.
• dividefuel
  I firmly believe that many goods like this fall into a cycle.Existing products are cheaply made and poor quality, so a new company emerges producing a higher quality product. Eventually word gets out and their sales blow up. But to keep their profits going up, they begin to coast and cut corners. Fast forward a decade or two, and now they're the ones making low quality gear, leaving the market open for a new high quality brand.In short, high quality leads to recognition and growth, and then cutting corners leads to profit.
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  kstrauser
  I gritted my teeth and bought a GoRuck GR1 a year ago. If it fell into a volcano, which is what it might take to destroy it, I’d buy another one. It’s still possible to find “buy it for life” backpacks but be prepared for eye-watering price tags.
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  CoolThings
  Seven years ago I bought a Jansport backpack for 50 usd, for daily use. After a year, its zipper broke. Shipping it to Jansport required to pay 15 usd for shipping. So instead, I bought in Walmart a generic backpack for 15 usd, that I still use seven years later. Never bought Jansport again.
• Jaygles
  Product labels should prominently display the parent corporation. Whatever is the top of the chain of ownership.
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  __mharrison__
  Make sure your bag has YKK zippers (if it has zippers).I used to sell outdoor equipment. If a brand cheaps out on zippers, I wouldn't trust it.I really like my Patagonia Black hole mini MLC. Awesome access. Fits under an airplane seat. Generous laptop padding. Excellent zippers. Water bottle pocket. Lovely warranty (Patagonia store nearby often gives new product when I try to get product repaired).
• chromacity
  This is yet another instance of a weirdly specific domain that pops up and starts posting seemingly LLM-generated articles that follow a single pattern - in this case, how "they" made everything worse. We had a similar instance few days ago with smarterarticles.co.uk, and many others before that.I get that this says something we might believe, but I don't think it's a good use of our time to engage with engineered nerd-bait that probably wasn't produced in good faith.
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  readingnews
  On the flip side, a really good bag, and these have lasted so long I can not recall when I purchased them, are really expensive [https://www.tombihn.com/].What is really irritating is that sometimes we see the same thing within a single brand (we have a garbage entry-level item and a top tier item which is good).
• Sharlin
  If you're looking for a backpack that can survive just about anything, and don't mind a "tactical" look, check out Savotta:https://www.savotta.fi/collections/backpacksThey're expensive, but last a lifetime or more.
• cheschire
  Meanwhile my LTT commuter backpack, while expensive, did not get worse on purpose. It’s so good I’ve considered getting their full size backpack as well.
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  egypturnash
  I'm waiting for this to happen to Tom Bihn's bags now that they have new owners who're starting to outsource the smaller bags to Vietnam instead of sewing them in-house in Seattle. Luckily for me, I've got what I need from them and expect it to last for quite some time
• lkramer
  There are so many examples of this. Processed food, sweets and so on. Cadbury, Toblerone, etc live on the brand recognition, but have come objectively worse over the years. Often they are owned by the same mega corp that have a strategy of milking the brands for as long as possible.It's bait and switch on global, organised scale and it's almost impossible to fight except on an individual level.
• oasisbob
  The irony of composing this article about industrial sameness with an LLM is too much.
• nazgulnarsil
  This should be called what it is: Brand FrackingTrust will be arbitraged until there are few information asymmetries to exploit.
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  lan321
  Since we're all shilling our favourite backpacks:I've been using an Ikea Varldens for the past 6-8 years. Very efficient for my use case (2 work laptops, groceries, travel luggage, documents and earbud case, tools). It has a couple of nice small compartments and a single large one so it's very light for the size and material. Until now the only thing that's annoyed me was the long straps when riding a motorcycle, so I ran cable ties through the loops to stop them from slapping my hands and sides. It's seen quite a bit of abuse and it's still intact. It's even practically waterproof.
• moritzwarhier
  Parts of it read like a response tohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778933Sam Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness
• vscode-rest
  My strategy with pretty much everything I can is to deeply research to find any Made In USA variant of whatever it is I’m trying to purchase, and buy whatever that is regardless of price. I’ve never had that fail me.For backpacks, my Waterfield pack has held up fantastically across several years of regularly absolutely stuffing it with gear for my work travel.
• drob518
  Basically, all the old brands that had great quality were killed by private equity and have become skin suits worn by low-cost imitators trying to squeeze another penny out of customers. There are still good brands, but they are increasingly niche and you certainly pay a large premium for them.
• eYrKEC2
  I tried to use the Teton 65L to ruck. Just put a 50 lbs bag of wheat in there.Shoulder strap failed on insert to main pack after six 1-hour rucks . Got a replacement. Zipper failed at bottom on another one.Wanted to increase load to 100 lbs, but gonna have to go with a different brand.
• kgkgklf
  Similar thing happened to the Linus Tech Tips backpack, it was supposed to have double bottoms, but chinese suppliers cheaped out. This is a very common chinese trick where they try to get away with something cheaper than specified. This is actually even expected when ordering stuff in large quantities from china, the supplier is guessing what parts they can cheap out on without anyone noticing, it’s not even considered fraud, but a kind of optimization.
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  vondur
  I've been buying my bags from Timbuk2. High quality, I had a messenger bag that I gave away after 10 years and it was in great condition. I have a backpack and messenger bag for them. They are also designed to protect laptops/tablets really well.
• vivzkestrel
  - dont see a contact page on your website at all and your archive has only 3 posts https://www.worseonpurpose.com/- here is an idea for the next post: AAA gaming got worse on purpose. Dont forget to mention anti consumer practices by EA and Ubisoft when you are at it
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  erikig
  Unpopular take here but I'm really ok with this.The sale of the high quality brand allows the original entrepreneurs to exit their business to someone that thinks they can run it more efficiently. The decline in quality allows for innovative upstarts to try new things.
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  duxup
  JanSport was always a budget-ish / not great brand from what I remember. I used them, but high quality was never their thing.
• maerF0x0
  The math that makes this intentional Price of a bag divided by years it actually lasts. That's your cost per year. A $35 JanSport that dies in eighteen months: $23 per year. Add the shipping cost when you try the warranty. Add the replacement cost when the claim gets denied. Add your time. A $200 bag that lasts ten years: $20 per year. Already cheaper. At fifteen years, which the well-built ones consistently do, you're at $13 per year. As much as people gripe about subscriptions, people forget there's an equivalent internal subscription rate to every product with a lifespan. And beyond that there's the opportunity cost of a large outlay with a FUD component around the longevity. Humans are, as far as i understand, hard-wired for irrational choices around shortermism vs long term bets, you basically have to externalize your thinking to accomplish better. (This could be by writing down your thoughts and then analyzing them externally as a critic, or by passing it off to an AI, etc).The $25 bag compared to the $200 bag, has $175 worth of free cash flow for other (potentially unexpected) purchases, can be replaced when trends/use case changes (or it gets dirty, or lost...), the capital could be invested in the market to generate ~$1 a month of passive income, and as far as the human can tell it's roughly the same. Basically all the thoughts of a JIT marketplace but on the personal scale...
• dehrmann
  > JanSport still advertises a lifetime warranty...Go try to use it.Literally every product with a lifetime warranty does this same game. It's best to read them as puffery.
• anon
  undefined
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  azan_
  So it’s bad that now apart from high quality expensive option (which is still available!) you can also get cheaper, lower quality one?
• helle253
  man, im feeling EXTREMELY vindicated with buying a backpack from a smaller, independent brand (Epperson Mountaineering)my backpack hasn't shown any major signs of wear or tear in the.. idk, 5 years since purchase?I left the shoulder sling in an airplane a couple years ago - it was in virtually perfect condition as well, I'm still pretty bummed at its loss.
• justinclift
  AI;Didn't Read (AIDR)
• looneysquash
  That's deplorable. We probably need to dig one or more levels deeper though.What changed to enable and popularized these bad business practices?
• jdelman
  Pangram says this article is about 50% AI generated, including the opening several paragraphs.
• tasuki
  Did they also buy Deuter and Osprey? What about Decathlon?
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  bovermyer
  Why do we allow megacorporations to exist at all?
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  nslsm
  This is some damn irritating writing. This writing irritates me more than a broken backpack seam would.
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  jonahs197
  You what? I buy my backpacks from Aliexpress.
• mancerayder
  This feels like the Arcteryx Hoodie situation. I've had a couple of them for going close to 5 or 8 years. I mistreat them - throwing them around, washing them normally in a machine, etc. Absolutely bullet proof with very mild pilling. When I went to buy the exact same thing, the newer models cost the same thing or more, but the reviews all complained that the product has changed, that it pills after a few months, etc.The same thing happened to me with t shirt and other clothing brands.Now if I buy something good, I'm rebuying multiple of it even if it's unneeded since apparently we live under the Law of Enshittification of Everything.
• ethagnawl
  As the saying goes, being poor is expensive.
• jezzamon
  I mean. If the cost per use of use is only slightly worse with these cheaper goods, you could just view that as a slight premium for the ability to switch styles every few years. It's also a smaller upfront investment, so taking account inflation it might not really be a big difference even considering that?Clearly most people choose to buy cheaper stuff and producing higher quality, more expensive things makes you a niche company
• bob1029
  I think this is more of a case of the product getting worse incidentally. Contrast with leaders who are actually making things worse on purpose. Apparently, for no other reason than to be ugly and mean about it. I've been on this earth long enough to discover that monsters are real.Windows 11 comes to mind as an example of something actually being made worse on purpose. Making it impossible to associate the original notepad.exe with text files is certainly not linked with business outcomes in any direct way. This seems to be purely about antagonizing the user base as much as possible. The only theory I can arrive at is that there is a secret cortisol harvesting scheme that results in better financial outcomes for Microsoft.It helps to differentiate these cases. I don't like capitalism taken to the extreme, but the other thing is significantly worse. Intent makes all the difference. Engineered to suck vs sucks because it wasn't engineered are two completely different levels of evil.
• TYPE_FASTER
  Osprey backpacks have worked well for me.
• jauntywundrkind
  It's a fun thread here.I feel like there's another component: that the consumer base has become so detached from making things in general. We are surrounded in ever more stuff, ever more material, but collectively are out of touch with making things, with material, and assemblage there-of.Our culture's perspective is as critic, as shopper, as buyer. Sure few of us were expect shoemakers or backpack makers, but people around us were industrious, did provide labor to make goods that people around them bought. The cycle of production had been directly apparent.This is low key one of the things I really had hope for for a while with 3d printers: that they opened up & exposed what is. That they would be a force to spread insight & to regard the little mechanisms and means of the world all around us. I think that's a little bit true, but it's pretty niche, and I expect most prints are for static parts; no movement or dynamic behavior. And it's somewhat the anti-process: crafter in a box. It's still amazing but barring major changes, I have over indexed.It's also worth noting the role of DMCA anti-cirumvention laws in casting mankind out of ever coming to grasp with what makes up the world. The combined legal and technological destruction of any right to repair is really not just about repair: it's an obstruction to humans understanding the world around them. We cannot become savvy in the world when the government tells us that business's right to keep us from knowing the world outstrips any mankind-the-toolmaker / natural scientist role/title/god-bourne nature, that cutting us off from the universe & living in ignorance is a hard cast legal binding fact. I find this to be as fallen as it comes. How do we stay alive as the race we were when our laws unwind the fantastic graces of inquiry the gods saw fit to give us?
• benced
  The melodrama of this article really rubs me the wrong way, especially when some of the brands they mention do still make good backpacks (like The North Face). The author acknowledges that with "it's a deliberate segmentation" strategy... which is just another way of saying that they make stuff at all price points.
• parliament32
  AI slop, I'm sure the contents are interesting but after a few paragraphs of the LLM "tone" I gave up.
• dwh452
  in the old days the brand name was also the company name. now brand names mean nothing.
• phendrenad2
  This is why brand loyalty or even brand recognition is stupid in the 21st century. Everything is made in the same factories anyway, so buying the Amazon item with a brand name like "FOOTHSYMPYZT" or whatever is the way to get exactly what you want. Just set the price point to whatever Amazon recommends and multiply it by 1.5 or 2.
• cratermoon
  I still have shoes I bought decades ago. Those brands are now nothing special, after the companies were bought or taken over by private equity.
• everyone
  These are really good backpacks imo https://www.sporthouse.ie/
• tristor
  > The brand reputation built by decades of quality products is now being used to move cheap products to buyers who trust the logo.This is private equity in a nutshell, really. This is what every single PE leveraged buyout ultimately ends up doing. Take a beloved brand, or better yet (in this case) a group of related beloved brands, cut costs, and reap the profit margins until the brand dies.
• justinhj
  Anecdotally this rings true with me. I have a 15 year old (at least) Samsonite backpack. It has zero signs of wear and has been on many trips, jammed under my feet in economy or on a dirty train floor. It was relatively expensive at the time at about $120.It was looking a bit sad and dusty so I upgraded to a fancier looking Bellroy that cost twice as much. When it arrived I instantly knew it was going back. It felt cheap, it looked cheap, and the compartment layout did not feel at all utilitarian.
• brainzap
  its the normal cycle of sports gear
• lowbloodsugar
  The issue here isn’t quality or market segmentation. The issue here is a de facto monopoly and the illusion of competition. Ok there’s also the issue of well known brand names now being entirely different companies and entirely different manufacturers.I just bought an Eddie Bauer fleece. I own three, well four. The fourth is going straight back. It is garbage. Eddie Bauer is one of the brands that got bought and now rents out the label.
• the_real_cher
  Is there any way I can see all of the mergers and conglomerations of large companies?Blue Bell ice cream and Jan-sport backpacks owned by the same company seems crazy to me.
• parineum
  > The sense that you were choosing between competitors was a fiction that VF Corp had no incentive to correct.I can't speak for everyone else but this isn't what I'm doing when I compare two backpacks. I'm comparing two different backpacks for their features and design. I don't really consider the brand name attached or care who owns it.
• chinathrow
  > This is the pattern. Acquisition. Cost optimization. Quality decline. Warranty narrowing. Brand equity extraction. And eventually, divestiture.PE at work.
• zackmorris
  Friendly reminder that antitrust enforcement and deregulation are incompatible
• dijit
  Wait until you hear about glasses!
• queenkjuul
  > From a shareholder's perspective, the bag that falls apart is the better product.As long as we collectively decide to keep living in a society dictated by shareholders, this shit will just keep getting worse and worse and worse...
• josefritzishere
  I hate this so much.
• whalesalad
  The enshittification of all things. It’s happening in the service industry, too. A lot of contractors like roofing and plumbing are being absorbed into private equity megacorps.
• fellowniusmonk
  Just because I don't want them to go out of business. I bought a backpack goruck gr1 26l nearly 10 years ago in Feb of 2017.I was a consulting and traveling heavily for many years and a digital nomad for others. I've carried that bag everywhere, it is good as new, I can hold a week of clothes in it, I recently got a vacuum pouch for winter thermals so that applies even for ski trips now. Its design lets me fill it up, zip it almost totally shut then compress it down to fit toiletries at the very top.As much abuse as I've put it through it is still perfect. If moths or something don't get to it it may actually outlive me at this point I see so little wear.Frankly I wish I could offer companies that make stuff that lasts forever a subscription fee or something to keep them using the same build quality, I mean cheap fast fashion/manf/etc seems to exert massive economic pressure to enshittify everything.
• bloovis
  [dead]
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  nekusar
  Its EVERYTHING that has gotten worse, on purpose.Capitalism ends up being owned by single companies across goods families. Private equity buys, strips, and bankrupts. Materials are engineered to fail near the end of their warranty. Companies lie about details hard to identify or prove. Companies use historical goodwill to loot the current landscape.Take for example, a citrus squeezer. We needed what I thought was a decent juicer. https://us.josephjoseph.com/products/helix-citrus-juicer-yel...Well, guess what... since its all just plastic, the 2 posts that provide the downward force when turning get sheared off when you fucking use the thing.We ended up going to an antique/flea market and found a all-metal juicer. It fucking works. And it likely will for the next 50 years.Capitalism itself is the scam. It was sold to us of "innovation, innovation, innovation!" And its just "worsening, extraction, destruction".
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  llmslave
  Private equity, and computers, optimized all the profits which drove profit quality down. We all have lower quality products to enrich a few finance individuals
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  Theodores
  I am okay with these big American corporations getting bought out, for their products to be reamed out, for the brand to be discarded, only to exist as a brand in a private-equity backed holding company.This is because other companies come along to fill the niche occupied by the established brands. Since they can't cheapen the products any more than the behemoths can, they need to innovate and evolve.As for the backpack product, I wish the likes of Eastpak and whatnot would just die, since they have not innovated in a very long time.