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Check any zippers it may have. Does it say YKK on it, does it move freely and is it sturdy and made of quality, tough materials? Or is it flimsy and prone to
by corey_moncure 7y ago
Check any zippers it may have.
Does it say YKK on it, does it move freely and is it sturdy and made of quality, tough materials?
Or is it flimsy and prone to binding, can the pull tab be manipulated into some strange position?
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoYKK doesn't mean quite as it did. More an indicator of probably adequate than quality these days.
- killjoywashere 7y agoYKK signals from the designer to everyone who sees the garment: "I can't afford for this garment to fail because of the zipper". That is, they are selling into a crowd that attends to reputation signals. That is, in and of itself, a good signal. Take it as one of many. Submariney sort of story, but still useful: https://slate.com/business/2012/04/ykk-zippers-why-so-many-designers-use-them.html https://slate.com/business/2012/04/ykk-zippers-why-so-many-d...
- Fricken 7y agoI've got 2 jackets right now with broken zippers. I just checked, they're both YKK zippers, and one of those failing zippers is the replacement zipper for a previous YKK zipper that failed. All 3 are different types of YKK brand zipper.
- killjoywashere 7y agoIt is almost inevitable that the largest manufacturer has the largest number of failures. But your anecdote gives me no sense of their failure rate, and certainly tells me nothing about their failure rate in the context of other manufacturer failure rates.
- kortilla 7y ago3 zippers for a single person is really high, even if they are the largest manufacturer.
- darkerside 7y agoAlmost like it might say more about the person than the manufacturer?
- FDSGSG 7y agoProbably mostly speaks to the grade of the YKK zippers used in the clothes worn by the person, there are many different grades available.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoExcept that doesn't seem to reliably be the case any more. It used to be - the sleeping bag, Levi's or leather jacket would fail or become threadbare long before the zip. For all intents and purposes they didn't fail. When one did it was exceptional. Now it is far from uncommon for a YKK zip to fail long before the item. Presumably they've been as keen to reduce quality down to a price as most everyone else, by trading on the brand name rather than the actual quality that built that name. Or maybe Levi's or whoever are specifying the next cheapest zip down. They still do better than the unbranded, but that is a pretty low bar.
- FDSGSG 7y agoYKK makes lots of terrible zippers, you need to look specifically for the YKK Excella. Besides, YKK isn't the only high-end zipper maker, Raccagni, RiRi and Lampo all make excellent zippers too.
- JohnBooty 7y agoI've never had a peep of trouble from a YKK zipper, including quite a few purchased in the last few years.