7 ms·

My plan if I magically become a billionaire is to start a consumer goods (and maybe tools) brand that makes devices that are "just good". They won't be bristlin

My plan if I magically become a billionaire is to start a consumer goods (and maybe tools) brand that makes devices that are "just good". They won't be bristling with pointless and fragile features (like WiFi in everything), they won't have overwrought styling and decorative frills, but they will do things like not skimp on 0.1g of plastic in critical places, MOSFETs, UV stabilization, etc. Captive cables avoided. Metal preferred over plastic, and spares provided at cost. Wearable parts should be off-the-shelf components where possible. Parts lists and schematics provided. Any API should be open and documented. They won't be priced or marketed as premium, they're "just good" and you shouldn't have to pay extra on top just for the logo of all you wanted was a working, long-lived device. Then, importantly, stick to it and not ride laurels all the way down to the bottom of the barrel. And refuse to sell out to larger competitors who will then gut quality. The reason it's on my Magic Billionaire list is because I cannot imagine I'd get the investment to set up a brand that isn't designed to squeeze every last penny out of the products, but rather simply provide "just good" products.

endymi0n 4y ago
As this category used to exist (and partly still does in my country with Miele, but is considered niche), I doubt you‘ll get much product market fit there. Total Adressable Market is the nerds who care, i.e. barely anybody.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Miele gouge like hell on spares, a new door for my fridge-freezer costs about as much as the entire unit, including 2 doors, did. The door cover is maybe one of the top things to want replacing on a fridge. Also the plastic door trays are clearly suffering from "material use optimisation" because the hinges break off due to insufficient material support. On the other side, the thing is still working, but it's only been 8 years. But I do agree about the TAM, which is why it's contingent on being an idle billionaire.
  - scrlk 4y ago
    FWIW Miele refrigeration products are made by Liebherr and many are rebadged for Miele. You might be able to find an equivalent Liebherr product and save money by buying the Liebherr part instead.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      Right, but these are the kind of games that I, as a consumer, do not expect to have to play with an ethical producer that truly just cares about making good products.
- alliao 4y ago
  I have a 2015 or so era Miele and have taken apart the dish washer and some design decisions are a bit dubious too.. cost down of physical relay from traditional bulky electromechanical relay to solid state (without heatsink might I add) and situated on top of the dish washer where it's warm. you can tell they don't really care enough about it, as the location which worked for older style relay but would be hostile for newer relay which on paper have better reliability.
martindbp 4y ago
I have some more anti-feature requests for you: 1. I don't need a digital clock or timer on my appliances 2. No loud beeps whenever a touch button is pressed or a dial is turned or when the microwave is done 3. No blue LEDs that somehow light up the whole room at night 4. Physical dials where it makes sense (temperature, time etc) instead of clunky touch crap
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  And I promise not to skimp on controls and displays. Sure you can set up any device using only 4 seven segment displays and 2 buttons, with each button overloaded with about 12 functions. But that just means that although I advertised my cooker has a timer-start function, functionally, it doesn't have such features as they're impractical to learn and use.
  - martindbp 4y ago
    Ah, but how would I turn off the kid safety lock if it doesn't involve tapping Imperial March on two separate buttons in canon? After my kid randomly pressed a bunch of buttons on our stove the alarm kept randomly turning on, sometimes in the middle of the night and I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn it off. But one day it stopped.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      I had to find a manual for my washing machine to disable the child lock which accidentally got turned on. There's no symbol (maybe kids are onto that these days), you just have to intuit which buttons you have to hold at the same time. Plus points: you can turn the beep volume down. Minus points: without a manual you would never in a million years figure out the magic sequence to get into the menu and when you did what the numeric menu codes mean.
- 0xfeba 4y ago
  There was a microwave at a job that would, of course, beep when you pressed a button or the timer was done. But also when you opened or closed the door. Had a electric kettle that also beeped. I removed the piezo buzzer.
archi42 4y ago
At first your competing with manufacturers who save the pennies and invest in marketing/branding over reliability. And those will do anything to outcompete you (including metagaming like legal actions and smear campaigns). Because if your claims hold, you might reduced the market cap by a few percent, maybe even more. This means losing out on a lot of sales now and the "recurring" sales (because crap breaks after 2 or 3 years) for another decade. Later, when you mostly saturated your target market, you're mostly earning on the sales of spare parts (which you produce in bulk every few years and sell from your inventory). Also, you now have to enter the next market or let go of most of your people. That cycle then repeats, and maybe you re-enter a market to make the next version of a product. Did you think about a kickstarter to bootstrap with a mechanically relatively simple product, and on which you could compete with a relatively small mark up? E.g. a coffee grinder over a fully automatic coffee maker; or probably something even more simple.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  > Did you think about a kickstarter Honestly, I could not think of anything that would make me miserable more than battling up from ground level in this kind of market, using my few personal savings as collateral. Kind of the same reason I don't intend to get into politics. Yes, I'm giving up on a chance to make something better, but I won't make anything better from an early grave. I'm content to work for a company that I think is making good products. I have never worked for a company making cheap crap, and I hope I never will.
  - archi42 4y ago
    I feel very much the same :) Maybe we both "just" need to find a niche (or simple enough) product that can be started as an extended hobby. But I fear these are often not very interesting or won't even make us millionaires. How about electric tooth brushes, have these any relevant flaws these days? Another small thing: We have a cat toy that moves via vibration (they love it), but the 3 tiny 312-type cells only survive for at most 30m. We even tried those specced for hearing aids (180mAh instead of 30mAh), but they seem to have trouble with the current and don't live much longer; so using it is not only moderately expansive, but produces a lot of unnecessary waste. A small LiPo with USB-C charger could fit, but of course then the margin would drop sharply.
april_22 4y ago
The printer market is probably one of the worst when it comes to this. Everything just keeps breaking down and not working and I don't know a single company that makes printers that actually last.
- fleddr 4y ago
  This is easily solved, just subscribe to the HP Cloudcare Print Feed Spool Renewal program for a lifetime of print happiness. Terms and conditions apply.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Brother laser printers are pretty good. If you're asking about inkjets, they're all a scam. Don't buy one.
refurb 4y ago
You just need to realize your market is small. Speed Queen washers come to mind. They are commercial washers that laundromats would install. A home washer might cost $500. That’s what I spent and got 10 years out of an LG (and still going). A Speed Queen might cost 2 to 2.5X that. Most people don’t really care to buy it for life. $1200 now or $600 now isn’t a hard decision. People will just take their chances.

endymi0n 4y ago

As this category used to exist (and partly still does in my country with Miele, but is considered niche), I doubt you‘ll get much product market fit there. Total Adressable Market is the nerds who care, i.e. barely anybody.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Miele gouge like hell on spares, a new door for my fridge-freezer costs about as much as the entire unit, including 2 doors, did. The door cover is maybe one of the top things to want replacing on a fridge. Also the plastic door trays are clearly suffering from "material use optimisation" because the hinges break off due to insufficient material support. On the other side, the thing is still working, but it's only been 8 years. But I do agree about the TAM, which is why it's contingent on being an idle billionaire.
- scrlk 4y ago
  FWIW Miele refrigeration products are made by Liebherr and many are rebadged for Miele. You might be able to find an equivalent Liebherr product and save money by buying the Liebherr part instead.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    Right, but these are the kind of games that I, as a consumer, do not expect to have to play with an ethical producer that truly just cares about making good products.
alliao 4y ago
I have a 2015 or so era Miele and have taken apart the dish washer and some design decisions are a bit dubious too.. cost down of physical relay from traditional bulky electromechanical relay to solid state (without heatsink might I add) and situated on top of the dish washer where it's warm. you can tell they don't really care enough about it, as the location which worked for older style relay but would be hostile for newer relay which on paper have better reliability.

martindbp 4y ago

I have some more anti-feature requests for you: 1. I don't need a digital clock or timer on my appliances 2. No loud beeps whenever a touch button is pressed or a dial is turned or when the microwave is done 3. No blue LEDs that somehow light up the whole room at night 4. Physical dials where it makes sense (temperature, time etc) instead of clunky touch crap

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
And I promise not to skimp on controls and displays. Sure you can set up any device using only 4 seven segment displays and 2 buttons, with each button overloaded with about 12 functions. But that just means that although I advertised my cooker has a timer-start function, functionally, it doesn't have such features as they're impractical to learn and use.
- martindbp 4y ago
  Ah, but how would I turn off the kid safety lock if it doesn't involve tapping Imperial March on two separate buttons in canon? After my kid randomly pressed a bunch of buttons on our stove the alarm kept randomly turning on, sometimes in the middle of the night and I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn it off. But one day it stopped.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    I had to find a manual for my washing machine to disable the child lock which accidentally got turned on. There's no symbol (maybe kids are onto that these days), you just have to intuit which buttons you have to hold at the same time. Plus points: you can turn the beep volume down. Minus points: without a manual you would never in a million years figure out the magic sequence to get into the menu and when you did what the numeric menu codes mean.
0xfeba 4y ago
There was a microwave at a job that would, of course, beep when you pressed a button or the timer was done. But also when you opened or closed the door. Had a electric kettle that also beeped. I removed the piezo buzzer.

archi42 4y ago

At first your competing with manufacturers who save the pennies and invest in marketing/branding over reliability. And those will do anything to outcompete you (including metagaming like legal actions and smear campaigns). Because if your claims hold, you might reduced the market cap by a few percent, maybe even more. This means losing out on a lot of sales now and the "recurring" sales (because crap breaks after 2 or 3 years) for another decade. Later, when you mostly saturated your target market, you're mostly earning on the sales of spare parts (which you produce in bulk every few years and sell from your inventory). Also, you now have to enter the next market or let go of most of your people. That cycle then repeats, and maybe you re-enter a market to make the next version of a product. Did you think about a kickstarter to bootstrap with a mechanically relatively simple product, and on which you could compete with a relatively small mark up? E.g. a coffee grinder over a fully automatic coffee maker; or probably something even more simple.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
> Did you think about a kickstarter Honestly, I could not think of anything that would make me miserable more than battling up from ground level in this kind of market, using my few personal savings as collateral. Kind of the same reason I don't intend to get into politics. Yes, I'm giving up on a chance to make something better, but I won't make anything better from an early grave. I'm content to work for a company that I think is making good products. I have never worked for a company making cheap crap, and I hope I never will.
- archi42 4y ago
  I feel very much the same :) Maybe we both "just" need to find a niche (or simple enough) product that can be started as an extended hobby. But I fear these are often not very interesting or won't even make us millionaires. How about electric tooth brushes, have these any relevant flaws these days? Another small thing: We have a cat toy that moves via vibration (they love it), but the 3 tiny 312-type cells only survive for at most 30m. We even tried those specced for hearing aids (180mAh instead of 30mAh), but they seem to have trouble with the current and don't live much longer; so using it is not only moderately expansive, but produces a lot of unnecessary waste. A small LiPo with USB-C charger could fit, but of course then the margin would drop sharply.

april_22 4y ago

The printer market is probably one of the worst when it comes to this. Everything just keeps breaking down and not working and I don't know a single company that makes printers that actually last.

fleddr 4y ago
This is easily solved, just subscribe to the HP Cloudcare Print Feed Spool Renewal program for a lifetime of print happiness. Terms and conditions apply.
midoridensha 4y ago
Brother laser printers are pretty good. If you're asking about inkjets, they're all a scam. Don't buy one.

refurb 4y ago

You just need to realize your market is small. Speed Queen washers come to mind. They are commercial washers that laundromats would install. A home washer might cost $500. That’s what I spent and got 10 years out of an LG (and still going). A Speed Queen might cost 2 to 2.5X that. Most people don’t really care to buy it for life. $1200 now or $600 now isn’t a hard decision. People will just take their chances.