Hopefully I’ve worded the question right.
I was once told (I could never verify if it was true) that a crocs company once almost went bankrupt after they made their crocs practically indestructible. Whilst the story was most likely bullshit, it makes me wonder: if a company can make a product that is practically indestructible, is it ethical for them not to make them indestructible, so people will buy more from them?
The way I look at it is, on one hand, I feel like they should make products to the highest quality if they can so that the consumer has to spend less money and that less is wasted, but at the same time if it leads to the company going bankrupt, what of the workers and their families? So I can’t decide, what do you think?
The real reason was private equity
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/instant-pot-bankrupt
The poor growth that private equity didn’t find attractive could have been due to lack of repeat purchases tho.
But it means that the company was doing fine for decades.
It’s always private equity.
Corelle/Pyrex is its own story of going from the best product to “good enough”. Simple point, if you find yourself some old stuff of theirs, hang on to it because you can’t find anything comparable anymore. Same can probably be true of other old brands of products. I found an old Whirlpool dryer that I won’t ever let go of for the same reason. What will eventually fail on it I can either fix or buy a new, cheap part.
Right. Like I also hate capitalism as it exists today, but it is definitely possible to make a living making GOOD products. You just can’t make billions doing it. Even if the product was LITERALLY indestructible, people will lose them, plus they’re always making new people. It’s just a lot slower than if you make a shit product people have to keep replacing
agree 100%. It’s only impossible if you saturate the market, which means you’re a huge player.