Discussion

Your Favorite Brands Got Worse On Purpose

lamasery: I think there's a lot of hidden inflation in this. Or, if not outright inflation, something similar to it.Look at what it costs to get a work shirt (I mean, for physical labor, "blue collar", heavy chambray or something along those lines) of comparable quality & materials to what was in a Sears catalog in the 1930s or ordered by the US military in the 1940s, which in neither case could be regarded as super-fancy. You're probably looking at minimum $150.You want a button-up shirt that isn't total shit? Over $100. On clearance.You "can" dress in cheaper alternatives, but those are so bad that their equivalent in the 1930s effectively didn't exist as a new product. You'd be looking at second- or third-hand good (by modern standards, not necessarily anything remarkable for the time, see again those work shirts) clothes, or some simply-constructed homemade garment.On the plus(?) side we now have clothes so cheap that even though they develop holes or split seams within months, they're not worth repairing even for fairly-poor people, which is... something.Dressing yourself in new clothes is a lot cheaper now. Dressing yourself in the same quality of new clothes? Maybe not.

somewhatgoated: Just but either professional (as in practitioners of a trade us it) or military products — those tend to be much better than “consumers” products. They cost more but they will last a lifetime. Of course not super applicable to every aspect of fashion, but I’ve been doing this for all kinds of products for years and was never disappointed. For fashion I would recommend to hit up small designers, ideally someone you know personally. It will cost more but look amazing and last many years.Stop buying so much shit in general.

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

giraffe_lady: I don't know what the right term is but yeah it's not quite inflation. IIRC households pre-ww2 were spending 15% of their budget on clothing, and the farther back you go the higher that gets even to the point where the concept of "budget" breaks down and the entire family's activities were oriented around procuring food and cloth.Good fabric has always been and is still very expensive! We have created much cheaper alternatives but if you want the quality your predecessors had you better be prepared to look 15% of your household budget in the face. Homemade isn't even an alternative here. Most of the cost of good clothing is in the fabric and there's just no way around this.

blakesterz: I'm glad they had the "Brands That Still Make Their Own Stuff" list, that was my first thought. What other brands are still decent?

ianstormtaylor: Check their ledger for a full database of the goods and bads: https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/

sandinmyjoints: The ledger seems useful, I expect to consult it when making future purchases: https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/

trjordan: > 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.

vharuck: 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 at reviews on Amazon to see if anyone else had these problems, and they had. The FAO Schwarz brand had been bought by the ThreeSixty Group in 2016. Now it's just a way to polish the image of cheap toys.

ghaff: 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.

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

MaysonL: And, before major purchases, check to make sure that private equity firm has not bought them.

thatmf: Private equity destroys everything it touches

igleria: except for the shareholder's wallets. sometimes.

seizethecheese: The interesting thing here is that this is about brands being bought out of bankruptcy and licensed. The trademark system in the US exists to prevent consumer confusion, one might think that if a company ceases to exist, the trademark shouldn’t survive.

refulgentis: 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, they're using a topic that we all appreciate specifically to divide our reactions into "if it's AI, it's good! What's the problem?" and god knows what the actual endgame is. But it's certainly not Palantir maintaining a consumer rights blog.FWIW fact check is great, their RAG stuff works fine. But the unsourced "anonymous anecdotes" are made up, can't find backing for any of them and they're sort of entry-level rage-bait. (ex. DC shoes snowboard boots now designed in Florida by people that never designed snowboard boot)

AlexB138: Is there a review platform that focuses on brands, rather than on stores? For instance, if I look for Brooks Brothers reviews, I get reviews of individual stores, of their website, and a couple articles talking about the business. It seems like a good way to combat the information asymmetry being exploited here would be a trustworthy (I know, good luck) review platform that focuses on overall brands, rather than specific outlet channels. This seems like it ought to exist, but I'm not aware of where.It seems like that may be partly what this site is trying to build with the ledger, but it looks focused only on the "bad".

keyana217: Author here. The Ledger is designed to cover both sides. 59 Approved brands right now, 31 on Watchlist, plus the Avoid list and Former Great. It's meant to answer "what's still worth buying" just as much as "what's not."It's a living document and has just been released - will be expanded quickly

AlexB138: Very curious to see what you do with it. I like the premise very much and will be checking back to see how it develops.Just as feedback, the reason I got the feeling that it was largely focused on "the bad" is that the "approved" entries seem much lower signal. For instance, I opened Leatherman to get a sense of why it was approved, but there was essentially no information there other than ownership. Maybe that's your focus, but it's a little difficult to get a sense of why I should be confident in it as a buyer.Best luck with the project, it seems like meaningful work.

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

keyana217: Author here. Good catch... you're right. The wool is still woven in Pendleton and Washougal, but finished product sourcing is a mix and some blankets are now assembled offshore. Will update the Ledger entry and the essay today.

palmotea: Please address the criticisms that this is AI written slop here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47850659.Why are you writing this and what's your goal? Are you actually checking every fact in the article?I think you'd do well to cite a lot more of your sources, especially given the AI concerns.

palmotea: > Just but either professional (as in practitioners of a trade us it) or military products — those tend to be much better than “consumers” products. They cost more but they will last a lifetime.Eh, I'm not sure that's such good advice. IIRC, I remember stumbling across tacticool "military grade" USB thumb drives, for instance. I doubt those are any better than your typical name-brand drive. "Professional" seems to be an often used marketing keyword to indicate quality or power (e.g. "Mac Pro").Some keywords that may work better are "industrial" and "commercial," they don't have the same ring to them as "professional" and "military grade."

lamasery: The impression I've gotten from ex-military folks is that regarding "military grade" as a marker of quality is a habit they find particularly funny.

lamasery: Trawling Reddit with great care and a critical eye, plus obscurer topic-specific forums, is the best solution I've come up with. Though even those are full lies-for-pay (advertising) especially on Reddit.