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No matter what product you make, it seems that it's impossible to earn money without using unethical proprietary practices. I guess the brand will argue that th

by jokoon 6y ago

No matter what product you make, it seems that it's impossible to earn money without using unethical proprietary practices. I guess the brand will argue that the products are "hard to find" and that it requires "precise refilling". And apparently it's even true for such crazy good home products that really don't get enough visibility. I mean it's the first time I discover this washing machine, and I want one. It's almost like this hacking article was just designed as a disguised advertisement for this washing machine.

ryandrake 6y ago
I don't think the existence of this product means it's impossible to earn money without using unethical proprietary practices. It just means that this company is yet another one where honestly selling a product one time for the customer's money is not enough. The goal, more and more often, is to lock the customer into a scheme where they will be milked monthly for even more money. It's just too bad these schemes are spreading into every product category. And since they are often disguised as normal products, it is getting easier and easier to accidentally get roped into one of these without realizing it.
- ruslan 6y ago
  The thing is that it is impossible to compete with a chinese made appliance just by selling a product that will last. You have to sell it for the price significantly lower in hope to return investment by selling locked cartriges. That is where such perverted business schemes come from. The more we allow chinesium to penetrate to our homes, the less room we left for other better products to get developed and find their way to the market.
Nextgrid 6y ago
It's absolutely possible to earn money by solving a real problem. It only becomes impossible when there is no real problem to solve and you're intentionally creating a problem. Dishwashers are a solved problem and have been for decades. If you search hard enough you can find lower-profile models that solve the "size" problem this current product is trying to address. I'm not sure whether this company is profitable. Most likely they aren't and the proprietary cartridge system is a way to lock people in for future profits and potentially fishing for VC funding or an acquisition by a bigger unethical company happy to milk this thing out until it collapses. Their whole eco-friendly concept (pseudo - because shipping the cartridges is anything but) is to appeal to environment freaks with more money than common sense and/or fish for eco-related awards or government grants (just like Solar Roadways).
floatrock 6y ago
Selling the base product at a loss to make it up in accessory/operational purchases is as old as razors and razor blades. My favorite example was I think it was one of the early xboxes was being sold for less than the cost of the hardware, expecting to make up the difference in licensing on game sales. Well, a bunch of college CS labs realized the cost advantage, starting buying them in bulk, loaded linux onto them, and used them as cheap GPU clusters. I see this model as a financing hack... the reason you can buy an HP printer for like $40 isn't because the hardware costs $40, it's because you're effectively paying interest on an invisible loan every time you buy inkjet cartridges. The longer the manufacturer has you buying cartridges, the bigger return on their initial (invisible) loan. What makes this model shitty to the consumer is there's no cap on the "interest". The "loan" ends once the plastic gear somewhere deep inside the machine breaks and your customer needs to get a new one. Then you're back to competing against everyone else offering the same invisible loans on the Best Buy shelf. If you're lucky, the consumer doesn't see the stockholm syndrome they got themselves into last time and they choose your product again because it's familiar. It's not helpful to call this an "unethical proprietary practice". It's more helpful to see this as the useful "low teaser rate" financial hack it is, then try to think up new financial models that might be a bit more honest (while still being sufficiently profitable that it makes business-sense to switch).
- datagram 6y ago
  > My favorite example was I think it was one of the early xboxes was being sold for less than the cost of the hardware, expecting to make up the difference in licensing on game sales. This is still common practice: Sony and Microsoft generally either sell their consoles to break even or at a loss. The only difference between then and now is that they've made it much harder to run alternate operating systems. As far as I'm aware, Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that actually tries to profit off of hardware sales.

by jokoon 6y ago

ryandrake 6y ago

I don't think the existence of this product means it's impossible to earn money without using unethical proprietary practices. It just means that this company is yet another one where honestly selling a product one time for the customer's money is not enough. The goal, more and more often, is to lock the customer into a scheme where they will be milked monthly for even more money. It's just too bad these schemes are spreading into every product category. And since they are often disguised as normal products, it is getting easier and easier to accidentally get roped into one of these without realizing it.

ruslan 6y ago
The thing is that it is impossible to compete with a chinese made appliance just by selling a product that will last. You have to sell it for the price significantly lower in hope to return investment by selling locked cartriges. That is where such perverted business schemes come from. The more we allow chinesium to penetrate to our homes, the less room we left for other better products to get developed and find their way to the market.

Nextgrid 6y ago

It's absolutely possible to earn money by solving a real problem. It only becomes impossible when there is no real problem to solve and you're intentionally creating a problem. Dishwashers are a solved problem and have been for decades. If you search hard enough you can find lower-profile models that solve the "size" problem this current product is trying to address. I'm not sure whether this company is profitable. Most likely they aren't and the proprietary cartridge system is a way to lock people in for future profits and potentially fishing for VC funding or an acquisition by a bigger unethical company happy to milk this thing out until it collapses. Their whole eco-friendly concept (pseudo - because shipping the cartridges is anything but) is to appeal to environment freaks with more money than common sense and/or fish for eco-related awards or government grants (just like Solar Roadways).

floatrock 6y ago

Selling the base product at a loss to make it up in accessory/operational purchases is as old as razors and razor blades. My favorite example was I think it was one of the early xboxes was being sold for less than the cost of the hardware, expecting to make up the difference in licensing on game sales. Well, a bunch of college CS labs realized the cost advantage, starting buying them in bulk, loaded linux onto them, and used them as cheap GPU clusters. I see this model as a financing hack... the reason you can buy an HP printer for like $40 isn't because the hardware costs $40, it's because you're effectively paying interest on an invisible loan every time you buy inkjet cartridges. The longer the manufacturer has you buying cartridges, the bigger return on their initial (invisible) loan. What makes this model shitty to the consumer is there's no cap on the "interest". The "loan" ends once the plastic gear somewhere deep inside the machine breaks and your customer needs to get a new one. Then you're back to competing against everyone else offering the same invisible loans on the Best Buy shelf. If you're lucky, the consumer doesn't see the stockholm syndrome they got themselves into last time and they choose your product again because it's familiar. It's not helpful to call this an "unethical proprietary practice". It's more helpful to see this as the useful "low teaser rate" financial hack it is, then try to think up new financial models that might be a bit more honest (while still being sufficiently profitable that it makes business-sense to switch).

datagram 6y ago
> My favorite example was I think it was one of the early xboxes was being sold for less than the cost of the hardware, expecting to make up the difference in licensing on game sales. This is still common practice: Sony and Microsoft generally either sell their consoles to break even or at a loss. The only difference between then and now is that they've made it much harder to run alternate operating systems. As far as I'm aware, Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that actually tries to profit off of hardware sales.