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Anyone working on a Trader Joes meets Amazon? That curates maybe 1-3 versions of things, largely eliminating paradox of choice. I guess Costco is kind of a bul
by Reedx 7y ago
Anyone working on a Trader Joes meets Amazon? That curates maybe 1-3 versions of things, largely eliminating paradox of choice.
I guess Costco is kind of a bulk version of that...
Also I've been increasingly interested in just buying things once and having them last a decade+, ideally a lifetime (less waste). But this takes a lot of research. Trader Joes does a good job of curating groceries and I've come to trust their choices. It would be nice to have this for products.
Essentially, "This is the version of X that will last 10+ years."
- mikeyouse 7y agoBrandless is pursuing something down this line: https://brandless.com/ https://brandless.com/
- arkitaip 7y agoBrandless makes no sense to me. They mostly buy from China and their products are more expensive than they should be (their product descriptions don't offer any arguments why, at least). They claim to be health and environmentally-conscious but there's no relevant information to read on the product pages. Take this random Brandless product: https://brandless.com/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner https://brandless.com/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner Why on Earth would you buy it? How can you possibly tell that it's eco-friendly or not?
- 0xffff2 7y agoWhy wouldn't you buy it? It's a $4 kitchen spoon. What could you possibly want to know? Edit: A bit of poking around suggests that Acacia is a fairly sustainable source of wood, so I would guess that's the thing that makes it eco-friendly. Some of their other acacia products do mention this, but the spoon doesn't for some reason.
- Igelau 7y agoI was going to say, that's a pretty nice looking spoon for $4.
- mikeyouse 7y agoI think they're trying to convey a sense of trust across all of the items they offer through their parent 'Brand' which is a bit ironic given the name. Ideally they only offer eco-friendly items and that relieves the consumers of the burden of making that choice for themselves. As noted on other Acacia products, it's a fast-growing renewable wood. https://brandless.com/products/acacia-wood-cheese-board https://brandless.com/products/acacia-wood-cheese-board
- riversflow 7y agoI don’t understand how selling items manufactured in a country with the environmental regulatory environment of China can honestly be sold as eco-friendly.
- fmajid 7y agoChina is improving, if only because a rising middle-class is demanding air that doesn't choke their lung in cities like Beijing or Shanghai. The US, on the other hand, is regressing.
- riversflow 7y agoThere are many vectors to environmental health besides the PM2.5 and PM10 levels. Chinese industry dumps straight into the rivers and onto the ground. Among many other environmental shortcomings relative to western industry. They also have no/toothless Occupational Safety,a separate but still reasonable concern.
- jefftk 7y agoWeird that "/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner" doesn't seem to involve stainless steel at all.
- wolfgang42 7y agoThe care instructions still mention that the handle is stainless steel. I suspect they’ve revised the design without creating a new SKU. I do wonder why they felt the need to add metal at all though; I’ve never felt that a plain wooden spoon was lacking anything and having a heat-conductive material in a hot pot seems like a good way to get a burn. The description just says it’s a “nice accent.”
- Cougher 7y ago"At Brandless, we define clean beauty as beauty products that are made without questionable ingredients and only formulated with the minimum ingredients required for the product to function." I looked at a lotion, which includes the ingredient "fragrance". This is automatically questionable because it doesn't tell you what the ingredient actually is. Moreover, it's a term that companies use instead of telling us what's actually in the product, including any number of potentially harmful ingredients. It is also patently not required for the product to function, so it's clearly against Brandless's stated aim. Brandless looks to me like an Orwellian marketing gimmick: they claim to be brandless, yet they're actually trying to develop a brand.
- ggggtez 7y agoCBD is listed as the first item... My trust in such a brand quickly goes to zero.
- sergiotapia 7y agoWhat is CBD?
- lwf 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol
- sosodev 7y agoI don’t understand how that makes them untrustworthy
- bobobooey 7y agoAmazon is. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-to-launch-new-grocery-stores-separate-from-whole-foods-2019-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-to-launch-new-grocery...
- AlexandrB 7y agoHilarious. Aren't you basically advocating for a planned economy? Just with a corporate, instead of a government, bureaucracy.
- no_flags 7y agoNot OP, but I would say no. The corporation is subject to competition. If their curated products suck eventually people will figure it out and they'll go out of business. Do you consider Trader Joe's a planned economy?
- Merrill 7y agoYou can search for Amazon Basics or Amazon Essentials, which seem to be listings of high volume commodity products. However, I don't see adult dress gloves in Amazon Essentials. There are kids gloves. And if you want high style, these products aren't for you. The other alternative is to use specific branded sites, such as LL Bean or REI. These will provide premium products at a premium price. Finally, you can go directly to the manufacturer. If you want Marmot gloves, go to marmot.com. (Of course, it's unlikely that Marmot actually manufactures their gloves.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rabidrat 7y agoAB and AE are not hand-curated, and often as not just as crappy.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoYou mentioned it, but: costco.com. The restricted set of choices is very freeing!
- petra 7y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/
- rabidrat 7y agoIn 2006, I started a blogstore called "Reasonable Goods", and this was the whole premise. I got a Consumer Reports subscription and did a bunch of online research and tried hard to pick the one I thought would work well for ~80% of people in a bunch of categories. The first category was "toaster", and I found a decently-reviewed $20 basic toaster from a major manufacturer. I started using the tagline "It shouldn't take all day to buy a toaster". For the one-year anniversary post, I decided to write a follow-up article on the toaster. That's when I discovered, in an ironic twist, that a half-dozen of our flagship pick had caught on fire during operation, and because of this the model had been recalled by the manufacturer. That's when I realized that trying to find a commodity item that will last for a decade+ is impossible (these days anyway). The same model isn't manufactured for a decade, so you can't rely on history. Major manufacturers make mistakes and/or cut costs and/or sell their brand, so you can't rely on reputation. Even a top-3 recommendation from Consumer Reports did not prevent me from picking a lemon despite my sincere best effort to avoid it.
- kthejoker2 7y agoWithout irony I say the first two paragraphs of this post are one of the best parables of all time.
- psadri 7y agohttps://www.manufactum.com https://www.manufactum.com I haven’t but anything from them but this seems to be their premise.