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It’s sad that there is a dichotomy between building a good product and building too good of a product that you don’t get enough return customers.
by blackflame7000 7y ago
It’s sad that there is a dichotomy between building a good product and building too good of a product that you don’t get enough return customers.
- smitty1e 7y agoThe art would seem to be to build the durable product with room for extension, so that compelling upgrades are possible. As seen with people who collect Apple products and just keep adding to the fruit basket.
- zaat 7y agoApple products are pretty much the opposite of good products, at least in the meaning of "good" implied in the context. Leaving aside the failure rate of these, most of their products are sealed with propriety battery. This gives them a pretty short service life which guarantees returning costumers.
- smitty1e 7y agoWas that true of the old Mac computers, though? I'm not talking about the post-Jobs stuff.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoIt's one of the big flaws in [Western] Capitalism.
- skybrian 7y agoIs it? Many people like low prices, and might not be interested in keeping stuff for more than a few years before getting a better widget. (Depending on what it is.)
- orthecreedence 7y agoIt is, because I like widgets that last 10+ years and they are becoming increasingly hard to find (and yes, I would pay much more for them, if only they were made).
- ahartmetz 7y agoFor household appliances there is Miele. They do cost much more. The vacuum cleaners are actually fairly affordable in Germany but not in the US AFAIK...
- hinkley 7y agoIf you look for instance at high end woodworking tools, you create a constellation of related tools and expect customers to buy others. You also see variations in quality levels (eg, kitchen knives).
- Tharkun 7y agoIt's a common misconception that a good kitchen knife will last forever. It won't. Repeated sharpening will make the knife smaller and smaller. Here's a picture of a sushi chef's knives: the knife on the bottom right was once the same size as the top left one. http://i.imgur.com/EiQnGu3.png http://i.imgur.com/EiQnGu3.png
- hinkley 7y agoIf I could get my partner to agree to use the end-grain cutting boards I bought exclusively, my knives would last longer than I will be capable of safely using sharp implements. 'Forever' really just means 'until I elect to give them up' to most of us. That's why all those appliances came in ugly colors in the 70's. We were still flirting with planned obsolescence.
- labawi 7y agoPerhaps you could make your production capacity small enough you won't need return customers, at least until you've earned enough and slowly reduce production as market saturates? Would need to resist a lot of temptation for short term gain.