4 ms·

Why isn't this in everything? I'd easily pay an extra few cents to have this in spray bottles. It's such a frustrating problem.

gxs 8y ago
Jumping to the conclusion that everything a company does is calculated and delibarate is a mistake I see a lot of people make, but in this case it’s accurate. In a business that operates at a scale of 100s of thousands if not millions of bottles sold annually, cents matter and can make up a significant portion of revenue. With this in mind, there is a huge incentive to get people to buy sooner rather than later and more often. Forcing a small amount to remain in a used up bottle is definitely a benefit to the company even if the product is going to waste. This doesn’t include the cost of implementing something new. I’d imagine a company would do extensive survey based research to understand if the additional customer satisfaction would outweigh the costs/downsides. If it’s not a conscious decision, it’s a nice coincidental benefit to them.
- markkanof 8y ago
  Maybe, but it seems more likely this isn't due to malice but just stupidity/apathy. Maybe most companies just aren't aware of this technology, or they don't want to implement something new because of uncertainty about the potential problems with the new technology. For example, maybe 1 out of a 100 of these bottles gets completely clogged and won't dispense anything at all. That looks bad for the company and maybe even requires a recall. It's easier to just stick with what they are doing and no-one is complaining loudly about the small bit of wasted product.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    Large companies are constantly doing research and development which handles all of this. They definitely aren't stupid and aren't waiting around for youtube videos to learn about things. They have teams that actively engage with new suppliers and inventors and are also getting pitched constantly with new ideas. It's most likely that extensive testing and consideration showed that this wasn't worth the costs. You even described such a scenario so I'm not sure why you think that's stupid or apathetic, when it's actually quite calculated.
- richie5um 8y ago
  Yup. Business benefit supersedes customer benefit. Always.
- akg_67 8y ago
  I am not sure why you were downvoted. There are several examples of the behavior you described. Potato chip companies reducing the quantity of chips in a bag but keeping the size and price same. Because they were unable to raise prices with older packaging. Typically customers didn’t look at weight, just size of package. It was in the news for quite a while and IIRC there is a business case study. It has been happening in beverages and other items too. Why do you see now package weights of odd numbers like 11.5 or 14.5 oz instead of standard number like 12 oz or 16 oz with typically no price reduction. Recently I encountered same behavior with toothpaste tube in Japan. To keep the form/shape of the toothpaste tube with usage the nozzle was designed to suck in air to fill new space in the tube. My wife claimed we are out of toothpaste and wanted to throw away the tube. The toothpaste tube was perfectly formed but I noticed tube was still little heavier than I would expect for a empty plastic tube. But when you squeeze the tube mostly Air was coming out with little bit of spray of paste. Reducing the air space with paper clip, we were able to use paste from same tube for another 2 weeks. Typical behavior would be most probably what my wife was going to do to throwaway old one and open a new one.
icantdrive55 8y ago
I think most companies basically just care about the over priced chemicals they sell in the sprayer. They want a sprayer that just empties the product, so the consumer can buy more? I try to reuse sprayer bottles. Some bottles allow this, but it's getting harder to get the tops off. I usually refill the opened bottle with 10% bleach, and water. I use the spray bottle until it stops working. Sometimes I use ammonia instead of bleach. Ironically, it sounds like this guy's invention might use more liquid per squeeze; hence causing the consumer to buy more pricy liquid? Maybe, I'm wrong?
logicallee 8y ago
In my quick analysis (could be mistaken, I welcome corrections), if this is one-time disposible then it only makes sense if the value to the consumer of the amount of product not thrown out as a result, is less than the extra cost of licensing and manufacturing this and this cost can be passed onto the consumer somehow. In other words, if this costs 5¢ more then it is worth spending an extra 5¢ on if you keep from throwing at least 5¢ of product out. Below this it is better to throw a little product away. (However, consumers might overvalue being able to use the last little bit of product. Perhaps they value at 25¢ to not throw the last 1/30th of the product away, even though they paid less than $7.50 for the whole package. i.e. perhaps they paid $5.00 but would pay $5.25 to keep from throwing away the last 1/30th of the product. However this seems unlikely!) More likely, if it costs 25¢ it is more economical to throw away, for example, 5¢ of product instead, by not having it. However this analysis assumes that the 25¢ is passed onto the consumer. If the consumer is very price-sensitive (for example there is a standard price and very standard volume, as is the case with milk, though that isn't dispensed this way) then adding this as a competitive advantage would benefit the consumer, while the supplier eats the costs as a cost of acquiring this consumer. This is my quick analysis.
- MichaelApproved 8y ago
  It's nice that it would end up using all the product but I'm thinking more about convenience. I often hold a bottle sideways and, while there's plenty of liquid, I can't get the spray to work in that orientation. So frustrating.
chewxy 8y ago
Here's a cheaper and faster hack: soft tube + weighted end. The weighted end will tend to go towards where the liquids are. Imagine a bottle being held lengthwise. The weighted end will be in the same location as where the liquid is. Turn the bottle upside down... the weighted end drops to where the top of the bottle is, along with where the water is. Standard pressure thingies still work - you still get a spray. No need for custom membranse.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  I saw an instructional thing about that. They did it with a bit of silicone tubing the same diameter as the original, and a steel nut with matching inside diameter. Swap out the tube and screw the nut over the end. I'm not sure you could actually make it work upside-down without crimping, but at any normal usage angle it works great.
- fencepost 8y ago
  What it really comes down to is the question of the actual goal and the costs of reaching that goal. For a huge percentage of things "good enough" is in fact good enough. It's also important to not confuse the goal and proposed solutions for reaching that goal. For the example above, is the goal to be able to spray upside down? To ensure that the sprayer is able to spray a higher percentage of what's in the bottle? How large is that percentage improvement (90% up to 95%?), what's the incremental cost of increasing that percentage, and what is the actual worth of 5% of the contents of the bottle? A draw tube that is flexible enough to fold in half, strong enough to not kink, sturdy enough to not collapse when bursts of suction are applied, weighted enough to stay in liquid, strong enough to assemble quickly and easily, etc. is probably also expensive enough to just not be an economical solution. By the way, if you don't purchase cleaning supplies regularly you may have missed that a lot of those tubes have gone away - they're now molded as part of the bottle so just tipping the bottle will put all remaining liquid at the intake point.
- exikyut 8y ago
  What cheap alternatives to small bits of metal could be used for the weight? Metal could interact with and damage a lot of different things.

gxs 8y ago

Jumping to the conclusion that everything a company does is calculated and delibarate is a mistake I see a lot of people make, but in this case it’s accurate. In a business that operates at a scale of 100s of thousands if not millions of bottles sold annually, cents matter and can make up a significant portion of revenue. With this in mind, there is a huge incentive to get people to buy sooner rather than later and more often. Forcing a small amount to remain in a used up bottle is definitely a benefit to the company even if the product is going to waste. This doesn’t include the cost of implementing something new. I’d imagine a company would do extensive survey based research to understand if the additional customer satisfaction would outweigh the costs/downsides. If it’s not a conscious decision, it’s a nice coincidental benefit to them.

markkanof 8y ago
Maybe, but it seems more likely this isn't due to malice but just stupidity/apathy. Maybe most companies just aren't aware of this technology, or they don't want to implement something new because of uncertainty about the potential problems with the new technology. For example, maybe 1 out of a 100 of these bottles gets completely clogged and won't dispense anything at all. That looks bad for the company and maybe even requires a recall. It's easier to just stick with what they are doing and no-one is complaining loudly about the small bit of wasted product.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Large companies are constantly doing research and development which handles all of this. They definitely aren't stupid and aren't waiting around for youtube videos to learn about things. They have teams that actively engage with new suppliers and inventors and are also getting pitched constantly with new ideas. It's most likely that extensive testing and consideration showed that this wasn't worth the costs. You even described such a scenario so I'm not sure why you think that's stupid or apathetic, when it's actually quite calculated.
richie5um 8y ago
Yup. Business benefit supersedes customer benefit. Always.
akg_67 8y ago
I am not sure why you were downvoted. There are several examples of the behavior you described. Potato chip companies reducing the quantity of chips in a bag but keeping the size and price same. Because they were unable to raise prices with older packaging. Typically customers didn’t look at weight, just size of package. It was in the news for quite a while and IIRC there is a business case study. It has been happening in beverages and other items too. Why do you see now package weights of odd numbers like 11.5 or 14.5 oz instead of standard number like 12 oz or 16 oz with typically no price reduction. Recently I encountered same behavior with toothpaste tube in Japan. To keep the form/shape of the toothpaste tube with usage the nozzle was designed to suck in air to fill new space in the tube. My wife claimed we are out of toothpaste and wanted to throw away the tube. The toothpaste tube was perfectly formed but I noticed tube was still little heavier than I would expect for a empty plastic tube. But when you squeeze the tube mostly Air was coming out with little bit of spray of paste. Reducing the air space with paper clip, we were able to use paste from same tube for another 2 weeks. Typical behavior would be most probably what my wife was going to do to throwaway old one and open a new one.

icantdrive55 8y ago

I think most companies basically just care about the over priced chemicals they sell in the sprayer. They want a sprayer that just empties the product, so the consumer can buy more? I try to reuse sprayer bottles. Some bottles allow this, but it's getting harder to get the tops off. I usually refill the opened bottle with 10% bleach, and water. I use the spray bottle until it stops working. Sometimes I use ammonia instead of bleach. Ironically, it sounds like this guy's invention might use more liquid per squeeze; hence causing the consumer to buy more pricy liquid? Maybe, I'm wrong?

logicallee 8y ago

In my quick analysis (could be mistaken, I welcome corrections), if this is one-time disposible then it only makes sense if the value to the consumer of the amount of product not thrown out as a result, is less than the extra cost of licensing and manufacturing this and this cost can be passed onto the consumer somehow. In other words, if this costs 5¢ more then it is worth spending an extra 5¢ on if you keep from throwing at least 5¢ of product out. Below this it is better to throw a little product away. (However, consumers might overvalue being able to use the last little bit of product. Perhaps they value at 25¢ to not throw the last 1/30th of the product away, even though they paid less than $7.50 for the whole package. i.e. perhaps they paid $5.00 but would pay $5.25 to keep from throwing away the last 1/30th of the product. However this seems unlikely!) More likely, if it costs 25¢ it is more economical to throw away, for example, 5¢ of product instead, by not having it. However this analysis assumes that the 25¢ is passed onto the consumer. If the consumer is very price-sensitive (for example there is a standard price and very standard volume, as is the case with milk, though that isn't dispensed this way) then adding this as a competitive advantage would benefit the consumer, while the supplier eats the costs as a cost of acquiring this consumer. This is my quick analysis.

MichaelApproved 8y ago
It's nice that it would end up using all the product but I'm thinking more about convenience. I often hold a bottle sideways and, while there's plenty of liquid, I can't get the spray to work in that orientation. So frustrating.

chewxy 8y ago

Here's a cheaper and faster hack: soft tube + weighted end. The weighted end will tend to go towards where the liquids are. Imagine a bottle being held lengthwise. The weighted end will be in the same location as where the liquid is. Turn the bottle upside down... the weighted end drops to where the top of the bottle is, along with where the water is. Standard pressure thingies still work - you still get a spray. No need for custom membranse.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
I saw an instructional thing about that. They did it with a bit of silicone tubing the same diameter as the original, and a steel nut with matching inside diameter. Swap out the tube and screw the nut over the end. I'm not sure you could actually make it work upside-down without crimping, but at any normal usage angle it works great.
fencepost 8y ago
What it really comes down to is the question of the actual goal and the costs of reaching that goal. For a huge percentage of things "good enough" is in fact good enough. It's also important to not confuse the goal and proposed solutions for reaching that goal. For the example above, is the goal to be able to spray upside down? To ensure that the sprayer is able to spray a higher percentage of what's in the bottle? How large is that percentage improvement (90% up to 95%?), what's the incremental cost of increasing that percentage, and what is the actual worth of 5% of the contents of the bottle? A draw tube that is flexible enough to fold in half, strong enough to not kink, sturdy enough to not collapse when bursts of suction are applied, weighted enough to stay in liquid, strong enough to assemble quickly and easily, etc. is probably also expensive enough to just not be an economical solution. By the way, if you don't purchase cleaning supplies regularly you may have missed that a lot of those tubes have gone away - they're now molded as part of the bottle so just tipping the bottle will put all remaining liquid at the intake point.
exikyut 8y ago
What cheap alternatives to small bits of metal could be used for the weight? Metal could interact with and damage a lot of different things.