5 ms·

Can you charge double and still keep your customers coming back?

35 points by pbowyer 11y ago

m52go 11y ago
Wow, I wish more companies had this mindset. When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features for solid build & longevity...and pay a lot more for it. Although to be fair, I'm not sure "arguments are a very rare occurrence indeed at Miele" is a sign of a healthy company.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features for solid build & longevity...and pay a lot more for it. I strongly agree. The trend for ever-cheaper, ever-nastier goods is understandable given the recent economic conditions, but very disappointing all the same. Personally, I will gladly pay a premium for things like good build quality and longevity. Sometimes that means I have to save up for something I want and can't just make an impulse purchase, but that's life. I suspect buying cheap and nasty is often a false economy in the long term anyway. If you pay twice as much for your washing machine but it lasts 20 years where the cheaper one would have made it to 5...
  - pierrebai 11y ago
    The problem is that 'buying quality' is very hard to prove. For important purchases, like a car, there may exist guides that give you good record of past performances, but for most thing, its mostly hearsay. "Oh, I've been buying from X for years and they never break." The race to the bottom has the property that paying less is an easily provable fact. You can measure it. Quality is too hard to measure. There is also the possibility, for some classes of goods, to purchase the cheap ones and fix the bad bits. Like purchasing a cheap laptop and replacing the HD with a SSD.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      All true, but I'm still going to buy my expensive kitchen equipment or my new computer or my new car from a brand with a track record of consistently good reviews and reliable customer service. In the age of the Internet and modern consumer advocacy groups, it's not hard to know who those are. Of course, any business can have an anomalous bad product from time to time. But even if you're the unlucky one, I reckon you're probably still better off with a business that values its customers and its brand anyway. At least you're likely to get some genuine efforts made to put things right, maybe even a free upgrade to a better product from the range if there really was a design flaw in a new model or some similar hard-to-fix issue.
    - lotsofcows 11y ago
      which.co.uk has guides for virtually everything. A UK publication but there must be similar elsewhere. And brands are usually fairly easy to match across countries.
- quesera 11y ago
  > Although to be fair, I'm not sure "arguments are a very rare occurrence indeed at Miele" is a sign of a healthy company Here, it's supposed to mean "the co-CEOs are in broad alignment regarding the direction of the company". But the whole article is suspiciously fawning. And the timing is interesting. Miele makes decent stuff. My dishwasher broke too soon, but I bought another.
to3m 11y ago
See also? http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- devit 11y ago
  This one doesn't seem very submarine... Unless the ones behind all this are not Mieli.
olau 11y ago
Interesting that they once made bicycles. Does anyone know who would be the Miele of bicycles?
- hodwik 11y ago
  There's too many great bicycle brands to need a Miele. People who buy bicycles are already discerning. If you just want a bike to get around a Surly is always a safe bet.
- pinkrooftop 11y ago
  If there's one thing a search of the internet does offer, its the entire set of known opinions on bicycles. To answer directly, probably Miele http://www.mielebicycles.com http://www.mielebicycles.com
  - justinator 11y ago
    I used to own a few Miele mountain bikes, made sometime in the late 80's early 90's. They were hand me downs from my Brother and Brother in Law. Canadian bikes. The company folded a while ago. Like many such companies, the name was bought from a Taiwan/Chinese company, to slap on whatever bikes that come out of the bike factory - the same factory other more known name brands come out. Frames from these companies are the same/very similar to those same brands; the components can be a bit dodgey. For more, http://www.bikesdirect.com/‎ http://www.bikesdirect.com/‎ (not that I recommend anything on there)
- jzwinck 11y ago
  In America that would be Waterford Precision Cycles. It's ok if you haven't heard of them, but you probably have heard of Schwinn. Waterford made bikes for Schwinn in the good old days, and today they make them to measure. You will pay a lot, but you will get an unpretentious classic. Or something with flames painted on, if you prefer.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    Good start to an argument! I would have added Rivendell (rivbike.com) as a very reputable maker of bicycles. On the topic of German know-how, though, I turn to my favorite topic of bicycle headlights. Why can't Americans make them? You can buy a lot of very fancy, very expensive bicycle lights made in America that are all crap. Every one of them has a useless circular beam, like a flashlight. As an exemplar I give you the Light & Motion Urban 800, very popular in San Francisco, $150, completely fucking useless[1]. From the Germans we have the B&M Ixon IQ[2], comparable in output but with proper optics, casts an even beam on the road ahead without blinding oncoming riders, $55. 1: http://www.lightandmotion.com/the-perfect-light/on-bike/road/urban-800-fast-charge http://www.lightandmotion.com/the-perfect-light/on-bike/road... 2: http://www.bumm.de/produkte/akku-scheinwerfer/ixon-iq.html http://www.bumm.de/produkte/akku-scheinwerfer/ixon-iq.html
drewg123 11y ago
Now, if only my Miele dishwasher didn't break every two years like clockwork...
- icebraining 11y ago
  Maybe you're better off buying older machines. Our house came with two fairly used Miele machines when we bought it 16 years ago: the dishwasher is still going, and the clothes washer was replaced only a couple of years ago.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  Exactly! They are expensive and they work well, are quiet, and all that but they aren't reliable and Miele doesn't stand behind them with a warranty that's any longer than anyone else offers. They offer a 1-year warranty just like any third-rate brand. I finally replaced mine with a Bosch that offers a limited 5-year warranty and a lifetime warranty on the tub, and it was cheaper to buy the whole Bosch than to get the Miele fixed once.
chkuendig 11y ago
There's plenty of companies selling on build quality (I just bought a secondhand Jura Coffee Machine and love it, same for the Peugeot pepper grinder). Interestingly more of these companies seem to come from Europe than the U.S. (very few from Asia, but that's not surprising since the manufacturing base traditional used to compete on price)
mmmBacon 11y ago
Germany manufactures a lot of things. I read an article once that said 30% of the BOM cost of iPhone went to Germany. It bothers me that we cannot replicate their success here in the US. Surely we are just as capable.
- msandford 11y ago
  Technically just as capable. Culturally? Not really. It's management that keeps the US from competing with Germany in that way, not engineering. How do you change the culture? I don't know.
  - meatysnapper 11y ago
    The US has almost no precision machinists. Those guys are in Germany, Swizterland and Japan. There are all sorts of things you can't build over here or in China because we don't have the people who can do it precisely enough.
    - mmmBacon 11y ago
      I agree here. I recently worked on a project that required very tiny and optically precise injection molding and coating. Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers couldn't get close to making what we needed. There was a US manufacturer that could make the part but was very difficult to work with and they could not do all the process steps we needed. In the end, we went with a German company because they could do the precision machining required to meet our tolerances as well as the other process steps. Additionally, I often need to find precision materials or really high performance components and many times these are from German companies. Take the humble LED as an example, perhaps the most industry leading company in GaN LEDs is in Germany. Japanese can often offer the precision needed too but their companies are a lot less accessible and it takes a lot of time to build a relationship with them if you don't have one already. What they are really great at is that once you've built that relationship, they are usually very aggressive at supporting your needs. In Germany, I think some of it has to do with the fact that they have these government supported institutes for industrial research like HHI (Heinrich Hertz Institute). This allows them to find markets for new and risky technology and then transfer those innovations to industry.
johnnydoebk 11y ago
>> Can you charge double and still keep your customers coming back? I can charge 4000% and still keep my customers coming back. Sincerely yours, Martin Shkreli.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

35 points by pbowyer 11y ago

m52go 11y ago

Wow, I wish more companies had this mindset. When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features for solid build & longevity...and pay a lot more for it. Although to be fair, I'm not sure "arguments are a very rare occurrence indeed at Miele" is a sign of a healthy company.

Silhouette 11y ago
When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features for solid build & longevity...and pay a lot more for it. I strongly agree. The trend for ever-cheaper, ever-nastier goods is understandable given the recent economic conditions, but very disappointing all the same. Personally, I will gladly pay a premium for things like good build quality and longevity. Sometimes that means I have to save up for something I want and can't just make an impulse purchase, but that's life. I suspect buying cheap and nasty is often a false economy in the long term anyway. If you pay twice as much for your washing machine but it lasts 20 years where the cheaper one would have made it to 5...
- pierrebai 11y ago
  The problem is that 'buying quality' is very hard to prove. For important purchases, like a car, there may exist guides that give you good record of past performances, but for most thing, its mostly hearsay. "Oh, I've been buying from X for years and they never break." The race to the bottom has the property that paying less is an easily provable fact. You can measure it. Quality is too hard to measure. There is also the possibility, for some classes of goods, to purchase the cheap ones and fix the bad bits. Like purchasing a cheap laptop and replacing the HD with a SSD.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    All true, but I'm still going to buy my expensive kitchen equipment or my new computer or my new car from a brand with a track record of consistently good reviews and reliable customer service. In the age of the Internet and modern consumer advocacy groups, it's not hard to know who those are. Of course, any business can have an anomalous bad product from time to time. But even if you're the unlucky one, I reckon you're probably still better off with a business that values its customers and its brand anyway. At least you're likely to get some genuine efforts made to put things right, maybe even a free upgrade to a better product from the range if there really was a design flaw in a new model or some similar hard-to-fix issue.
  - lotsofcows 11y ago
    which.co.uk has guides for virtually everything. A UK publication but there must be similar elsewhere. And brands are usually fairly easy to match across countries.
quesera 11y ago
> Although to be fair, I'm not sure "arguments are a very rare occurrence indeed at Miele" is a sign of a healthy company Here, it's supposed to mean "the co-CEOs are in broad alignment regarding the direction of the company". But the whole article is suspiciously fawning. And the timing is interesting. Miele makes decent stuff. My dishwasher broke too soon, but I bought another.

to3m 11y ago

See also? http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
devit 11y ago
This one doesn't seem very submarine... Unless the ones behind all this are not Mieli.

olau 11y ago

Interesting that they once made bicycles. Does anyone know who would be the Miele of bicycles?

hodwik 11y ago
There's too many great bicycle brands to need a Miele. People who buy bicycles are already discerning. If you just want a bike to get around a Surly is always a safe bet.
pinkrooftop 11y ago
If there's one thing a search of the internet does offer, its the entire set of known opinions on bicycles. To answer directly, probably Miele http://www.mielebicycles.com http://www.mielebicycles.com
- justinator 11y ago
  I used to own a few Miele mountain bikes, made sometime in the late 80's early 90's. They were hand me downs from my Brother and Brother in Law. Canadian bikes. The company folded a while ago. Like many such companies, the name was bought from a Taiwan/Chinese company, to slap on whatever bikes that come out of the bike factory - the same factory other more known name brands come out. Frames from these companies are the same/very similar to those same brands; the components can be a bit dodgey. For more, http://www.bikesdirect.com/‎ http://www.bikesdirect.com/‎ (not that I recommend anything on there)
jzwinck 11y ago
In America that would be Waterford Precision Cycles. It's ok if you haven't heard of them, but you probably have heard of Schwinn. Waterford made bikes for Schwinn in the good old days, and today they make them to measure. You will pay a lot, but you will get an unpretentious classic. Or something with flames painted on, if you prefer.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  Good start to an argument! I would have added Rivendell (rivbike.com) as a very reputable maker of bicycles. On the topic of German know-how, though, I turn to my favorite topic of bicycle headlights. Why can't Americans make them? You can buy a lot of very fancy, very expensive bicycle lights made in America that are all crap. Every one of them has a useless circular beam, like a flashlight. As an exemplar I give you the Light & Motion Urban 800, very popular in San Francisco, $150, completely fucking useless[1]. From the Germans we have the B&M Ixon IQ[2], comparable in output but with proper optics, casts an even beam on the road ahead without blinding oncoming riders, $55. 1: http://www.lightandmotion.com/the-perfect-light/on-bike/road/urban-800-fast-charge http://www.lightandmotion.com/the-perfect-light/on-bike/road... 2: http://www.bumm.de/produkte/akku-scheinwerfer/ixon-iq.html http://www.bumm.de/produkte/akku-scheinwerfer/ixon-iq.html

drewg123 11y ago

Now, if only my Miele dishwasher didn't break every two years like clockwork...

icebraining 11y ago
Maybe you're better off buying older machines. Our house came with two fairly used Miele machines when we bought it 16 years ago: the dishwasher is still going, and the clothes washer was replaced only a couple of years ago.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
Exactly! They are expensive and they work well, are quiet, and all that but they aren't reliable and Miele doesn't stand behind them with a warranty that's any longer than anyone else offers. They offer a 1-year warranty just like any third-rate brand. I finally replaced mine with a Bosch that offers a limited 5-year warranty and a lifetime warranty on the tub, and it was cheaper to buy the whole Bosch than to get the Miele fixed once.

chkuendig 11y ago

There's plenty of companies selling on build quality (I just bought a secondhand Jura Coffee Machine and love it, same for the Peugeot pepper grinder). Interestingly more of these companies seem to come from Europe than the U.S. (very few from Asia, but that's not surprising since the manufacturing base traditional used to compete on price)

mmmBacon 11y ago

Germany manufactures a lot of things. I read an article once that said 30% of the BOM cost of iPhone went to Germany. It bothers me that we cannot replicate their success here in the US. Surely we are just as capable.

msandford 11y ago
Technically just as capable. Culturally? Not really. It's management that keeps the US from competing with Germany in that way, not engineering. How do you change the culture? I don't know.
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  The US has almost no precision machinists. Those guys are in Germany, Swizterland and Japan. There are all sorts of things you can't build over here or in China because we don't have the people who can do it precisely enough.
  - mmmBacon 11y ago
    I agree here. I recently worked on a project that required very tiny and optically precise injection molding and coating. Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers couldn't get close to making what we needed. There was a US manufacturer that could make the part but was very difficult to work with and they could not do all the process steps we needed. In the end, we went with a German company because they could do the precision machining required to meet our tolerances as well as the other process steps. Additionally, I often need to find precision materials or really high performance components and many times these are from German companies. Take the humble LED as an example, perhaps the most industry leading company in GaN LEDs is in Germany. Japanese can often offer the precision needed too but their companies are a lot less accessible and it takes a lot of time to build a relationship with them if you don't have one already. What they are really great at is that once you've built that relationship, they are usually very aggressive at supporting your needs. In Germany, I think some of it has to do with the fact that they have these government supported institutes for industrial research like HHI (Heinrich Hertz Institute). This allows them to find markets for new and risky technology and then transfer those innovations to industry.

johnnydoebk 11y ago

>> Can you charge double and still keep your customers coming back? I can charge 4000% and still keep my customers coming back. Sincerely yours, Martin Shkreli.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]