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Seems like we need to bring back "Make Do and Mend": https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large106365.html https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large106365.html

colechristensen 7y ago
It's hard for people to find high quality clothing because evaluating quality is hard and "quality" is sold by many places and it ends up being only an impression. It comes back to a thought I've had in mind for a while about margins. Margins are often set as a multiple of material cost. 10x, 100x, something like that. That rather large multiple handles the materials obviously, but also manufacturing, shipping, QA, marketing, overhead, etc. To make a price competitive product, you minimize your material cost and then use that multiple to set price. The problems lies in that if you use 2 cent nails instead of 1 cent nails, everything upstream does not double in price. There would be a small increase in cost-of-capital, and other losses related directly to the merchandise, but many many things aren't related at all. When your product is all the way at the bottom of the quality,price bracket, doubling your materials cost doesn't double your actual marginal cost and shouldn't double your price, but so often it does and stupid quality decisions are made which results in it being very difficult to find decent products. You end up having to pay super premium quality prices to get things designed and built as they reasonably should be. Or you end up paying hundreds of dollars so the one part that matters is up to spec when the actual difference in cost of that one part was maybe two or three dollars.
globular-toast 7y ago
Who has time to mend clothes now that everybody goes to work?
- baroffoos 7y ago
  And yet the average person somehow has hours per day to spend on TV/Social Media/Video Games
  - globular-toast 7y ago
    So you're suggesting having zero downtime? What a life...
    - canofbars 7y ago
      Fixing clothes is not a particularly time consuming activity. Usually its a 10 minute job to replace a button or fix some ripped stitches. Very few people are so busy they can't find 10 minutes to fix things. They could even work less if they spent less buying new things.

colechristensen 7y ago

It's hard for people to find high quality clothing because evaluating quality is hard and "quality" is sold by many places and it ends up being only an impression. It comes back to a thought I've had in mind for a while about margins. Margins are often set as a multiple of material cost. 10x, 100x, something like that. That rather large multiple handles the materials obviously, but also manufacturing, shipping, QA, marketing, overhead, etc. To make a price competitive product, you minimize your material cost and then use that multiple to set price. The problems lies in that if you use 2 cent nails instead of 1 cent nails, everything upstream does not double in price. There would be a small increase in cost-of-capital, and other losses related directly to the merchandise, but many many things aren't related at all. When your product is all the way at the bottom of the quality,price bracket, doubling your materials cost doesn't double your actual marginal cost and shouldn't double your price, but so often it does and stupid quality decisions are made which results in it being very difficult to find decent products. You end up having to pay super premium quality prices to get things designed and built as they reasonably should be. Or you end up paying hundreds of dollars so the one part that matters is up to spec when the actual difference in cost of that one part was maybe two or three dollars.

globular-toast 7y ago

Who has time to mend clothes now that everybody goes to work?

baroffoos 7y ago
And yet the average person somehow has hours per day to spend on TV/Social Media/Video Games
- globular-toast 7y ago
  So you're suggesting having zero downtime? What a life...
  - canofbars 7y ago
    Fixing clothes is not a particularly time consuming activity. Usually its a 10 minute job to replace a button or fix some ripped stitches. Very few people are so busy they can't find 10 minutes to fix things. They could even work less if they spent less buying new things.