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I consider this phenomenon part of what I like to call the "Amazon syndrome", even though Amazon is far from being the only culprit. As China started flooding t

I consider this phenomenon part of what I like to call the "Amazon syndrome", even though Amazon is far from being the only culprit. As China started flooding the rest of the world with cheap but decent products mass-produced in a random factory in Shenzhen, people turned away from brands they used to trust and towards no-name options from the likes of "Kxbnheb" or "Ypknwoj" in order to save a buck. Eventually the big brands themselves had to lower the quality of their products to be able to compete with the generic products, which benefit greatly from economies of scale by virtue of being manufactured by multiple companies in massive quantities. Meanwhile, targeted ads deployed at a large scale with flexible pricing models made it possible for not-so-reputable outfits to get their name in front of millions of people's eyes. While only huge companies with a good track record could get past the ad vetting team of a newspaper or TV channel, anybody and their dog can start a Facebook ad campaign for almost no money and then keep paying as the number of impressions scales up. If on one hand this democratized prestigious ad spots that used to be available exclusively to brands everyone already knows, on the other hand it also allowed random dropshipper nobodies to establish a presence as a "niche shop" of some sort and then end up selling you rebranded Chinese no-name products you might as well have bought directly from AliExpress for half the price with free shipping (or straight up scamming you). As much as the HN bubble likes to see a level playing field where all companies are treated equally, I think it's good to have gatekeepers in the advertising industry. But, I get it, the tech giants are all about quantity-over-quality and Facebook's ad revenue would drop to basically nothing (by their standards) if they started vetting each ad campaign manually, so here we are.

dazc 4y ago
'Eventually the big brands themselves had to lower the quality of their products to be able to compete with the generic products...' I remember some brands lowering the quality of their product long before all of these random Chinese copycats sprung up. Maybe this is why they were able to get a foothold because people like myself began to think that some cheap copies were actually better than the genuine article. My pet grievance being branded footwear which has mostly become cheap garbage with a premium price tag.
- pg938hkd 4y ago
  Nike quality is atrocious materials are garbage grade but shoes still sell for 200+
  - grugagag 4y ago
    The brand has some inertia. Eventually word will spread out deeply that nike is trash and the perceived value will go with it or along with the generation that knew them if they’re lucky.
    - pg938hkd 4y ago
      I think it’s the celebrity endorsements. They really live in the Jordan name/brand. Kind of like adidas lives on soccer and for a while yeezy branding.
      - grugagag 4y ago
        It does until it doesn’t
- rapnie 4y ago
  Came here to say that. You paid for the brand and the perceived 'status' that brandishing (pun intended) the logo gave you, not the quality. This was long before the Chinese crapstream flowed richly. Maybe there's perceived quality too, as a bias that forms by paying so much for the branded article.
sharkweek 4y ago
I’ve got a take: I think the current gap in the market for a lot of product areas is “more expensive but high quality.” I desperately want to spend more money on a product that will stand the test of time but it’s so hard to find them at times. Sure there will always be a majority of shoppers who want the cheapest thing as fast as they can get it and they won’t mind if they have to buy 3 of them every year, but I think the market is going to start supporting a more artisanal approach for consumer goods as the pendulum swings the other way over the next decade (although current global finance which I won’t pretend to understand might make this a little trickier…)
- hoseja 4y ago
  Sadly this is a very unstable position. No economies of scale. No consumer reach, extreme incentive to sell out once/if your product does get popular, knockoffs, etc...
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  “ I think the current gap in the market for a lot of product areas is “more expensive but high quality” Often those products do exist, but you need to become an “expert in X” to find them. Oh… you want to buy a high quality leather [whatever], better start learning about leather grades, leather tanneries, stitching thread, stitching types… so it doesn’t blow out in a year. Except we can’t all become experts in all products, and many companies are perfectly happy to build a brand on quality and then slowly erode that quality to increase margins.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > Often those products do exist, but you need to become an “expert in X” to find them. Or you rely on media and, in countries where that's available, stuff like the government-backed, independent "Stiftung Warentest" in Germany ("foundation for testing products").
  - beej71 4y ago
mschuster91 4y ago
> But, I get it, the tech giants are all about quantity-over-quality and Facebook's ad revenue would drop to basically nothing (by their standards) if they started vetting each ad campaign manually, so here we are. Facebook makes well over 20 billion dollars in net profits annually. They could easily invest a couple billion dollars into moderating better advertising and content, but since "user happiness" and "cost externalized to society" (e.g. people injured by bad products, cost of buying a new gadget because the old one barely lasted a year, costs of viral "challenges") is harder to quantify than "amount of dollars in profit", they all don't. This is why government regulation is needed: to hold companies accountable for externalized costs.
dukeofdoom 4y ago
There's also the opposite strategy. Making a cheaper product of lower quality at lower costs. The better quality product loses sales and advantages of mass adoption, and often can go out of business. The lower quality product is now the dominant one in the market. The resellers can freely raise prices now, to match the better products price and greatly increase profits. The public is now stuck with a lower quality product being the only thing available at same price. Eg. I went to look at dishwashers at Costco, and the thinest of the metal used amazed me. You could bend things with two fingers. I shopped around, and bought some Samsung model, looks space age, but its pretty terrible at actually washing dishes. The marked for Dishwashers optimized for profit, and appearance of being functional. But at this point, I'm pretty convinced a GE dishwasher from the 70s was better.
- hermitdev 4y ago
  In the case of a dishwasher, I wonder how much environmental regulations factor into that. Modern dishwashers use less water for a cycle, but they also do a poorer job of actually washing dishes. So, what do you do? Prewash? Run multiple times? It's also concerning that the regulations on dishwashers are going to get tighter yet in the US if the certain organizations get their wish. Likewise with toilets. Low flow toilets are mostly terrible and do a terrible job at flushing. Literally the only thing they're designed to do. If you have to flush 2-3 times with a low flow and maybe even involve a plunger, are we really ahead?
  - dukeofdoom 4y ago
    Just to add one more factor, what happens overtime in old toilets is that sediment stone develops on the inside, and causes enough friction for the toilet paper to catch and plug up. So you can probably except even shorter life span from the new toilets as they flush less water, so more likely for that stone to develop. So you're more likely to need to replace the toilet in the future. Also the flushing mechanism is proprietary, so if anything goes bad, more likely to have to replace the toilet. Really debatable if having to replace toilets more often is environmentally friendly. It will make more money for the toilet manufactures.
figassis 4y ago
It’s not true that established brands made cheaper products to compete. Their prices remained the same or got higher, but quality still suffered. It’s just greed, no complex reasoning required. I recently bought a gym bag from Nike. Feels super cheap, like I could have gotten it from Aliexpress. The zippers keep locking into the fabric. Feels completely disposable. Bought a pair of running shoes from Skechers early last year, had to throw away this year because the soles got worn out and I kept getting injured on one foot because I was stepping unevenly. I bought Skechers because I had once had a pair of sneakers that lasted me the entire 5y of college. No such luck now. No reason, just greed.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Running shoes are good for about 600 to 700km fyi. After that, the foam breaks down too much to provide adequate cushioning and the right sproing. Having the external hard rubber last longer than that is just unnecessary weight. You may just be in better shape than you were in college. Distance stacks up fast and running faster wears shoes out faster. sauce: I run marathons and go through about 6 pairs of running shoes per year
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Which shoes do you use? I use ASICS GT-2000s and they usually last 350km to 400km, or a year, in my case (a couple 5k to 8k runs per week). I guess different styles of running could also cause different amounts of wear and tear.
    - Swizec 4y ago
      Adidas Adios stuff has worked best for me. But I’m also 56kg so they prob last longer than they would for a bigger person.
  - _fat_santa 4y ago
    As a "non-runner" who just needs running shoes for the gym and walking around, I found great luck at Thrift Stores. What I found us a marathoner will buy a pair of Nike's and run that 600-700km until they are "spent" and give them to Goodwill. While they aren't good for running anymore, I found most to have plenty of sole left for 6-7 months of walking and going to the gym, all for around $10. This is probably not the best for my feet, but when I bust a hole where my big toe goes I feel less bad because I spent $10 and not $100.
imwillofficial 4y ago
Ah, Ypknwoj, a brand you can trust.
- teddyh 4y ago
  Fhqwhgads!
  - grugagag 4y ago
    The problem with these brands is that they’re unpronounceable, and they’re almost as memorable as serial numbers.
    - teddyh 4y ago
      It’s /fə·'hʊ·kwə·gɑdz/: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjjWJMIGhM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjjWJMIGhM
      - grugagag 4y ago
        I imagine some kind of marketing for these fabricating a myth that if you can pronounce the brain you get one pair for free, a la tiktok brainless meme without any basis in reality
Veserv 4y ago
One of the real problems is that essentially all advertising and marketing is a plague that is knowingly inflicting misleading information and insinuation on the public. It is not like they do not know how a ad will be interpreted, the entire game in almost every case is saying something that is technically correct but that the target audience will incorrectly interpret as better. The standard of false advertising should not be: "There is at least one interpretation that is true." it should be: "Almost every member of the target audience will come to a correct understanding." If a company gets into a lawsuit and their lawyer defends the ad by saying, "Technically speaking, ..." they should lose. If a company can not accurately explain the nuances of the limitations of their product in a short time segment then they can just err on the side of caution instead of implying untrue statements. This would absolutely devastate the bullshit advertising and branding that is used to prop up garbage products and make it easier to segment high quality products because it would be much harder for low quality competitors to make misleading me too statements without running afoul of false advertising.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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dazc 4y ago

'Eventually the big brands themselves had to lower the quality of their products to be able to compete with the generic products...' I remember some brands lowering the quality of their product long before all of these random Chinese copycats sprung up. Maybe this is why they were able to get a foothold because people like myself began to think that some cheap copies were actually better than the genuine article. My pet grievance being branded footwear which has mostly become cheap garbage with a premium price tag.

pg938hkd 4y ago
Nike quality is atrocious materials are garbage grade but shoes still sell for 200+
- grugagag 4y ago
  The brand has some inertia. Eventually word will spread out deeply that nike is trash and the perceived value will go with it or along with the generation that knew them if they’re lucky.
  - pg938hkd 4y ago
    I think it’s the celebrity endorsements. They really live in the Jordan name/brand. Kind of like adidas lives on soccer and for a while yeezy branding.
    - grugagag 4y ago
      It does until it doesn’t
rapnie 4y ago
Came here to say that. You paid for the brand and the perceived 'status' that brandishing (pun intended) the logo gave you, not the quality. This was long before the Chinese crapstream flowed richly. Maybe there's perceived quality too, as a bias that forms by paying so much for the branded article.

sharkweek 4y ago

I’ve got a take: I think the current gap in the market for a lot of product areas is “more expensive but high quality.” I desperately want to spend more money on a product that will stand the test of time but it’s so hard to find them at times. Sure there will always be a majority of shoppers who want the cheapest thing as fast as they can get it and they won’t mind if they have to buy 3 of them every year, but I think the market is going to start supporting a more artisanal approach for consumer goods as the pendulum swings the other way over the next decade (although current global finance which I won’t pretend to understand might make this a little trickier…)

hoseja 4y ago
Sadly this is a very unstable position. No economies of scale. No consumer reach, extreme incentive to sell out once/if your product does get popular, knockoffs, etc...
germinalphrase 4y ago
“ I think the current gap in the market for a lot of product areas is “more expensive but high quality” Often those products do exist, but you need to become an “expert in X” to find them. Oh… you want to buy a high quality leather [whatever], better start learning about leather grades, leather tanneries, stitching thread, stitching types… so it doesn’t blow out in a year. Except we can’t all become experts in all products, and many companies are perfectly happy to build a brand on quality and then slowly erode that quality to increase margins.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Often those products do exist, but you need to become an “expert in X” to find them. Or you rely on media and, in countries where that's available, stuff like the government-backed, independent "Stiftung Warentest" in Germany ("foundation for testing products").
- beej71 4y ago

mschuster91 4y ago

> But, I get it, the tech giants are all about quantity-over-quality and Facebook's ad revenue would drop to basically nothing (by their standards) if they started vetting each ad campaign manually, so here we are. Facebook makes well over 20 billion dollars in net profits annually. They could easily invest a couple billion dollars into moderating better advertising and content, but since "user happiness" and "cost externalized to society" (e.g. people injured by bad products, cost of buying a new gadget because the old one barely lasted a year, costs of viral "challenges") is harder to quantify than "amount of dollars in profit", they all don't. This is why government regulation is needed: to hold companies accountable for externalized costs.

dukeofdoom 4y ago

There's also the opposite strategy. Making a cheaper product of lower quality at lower costs. The better quality product loses sales and advantages of mass adoption, and often can go out of business. The lower quality product is now the dominant one in the market. The resellers can freely raise prices now, to match the better products price and greatly increase profits. The public is now stuck with a lower quality product being the only thing available at same price. Eg. I went to look at dishwashers at Costco, and the thinest of the metal used amazed me. You could bend things with two fingers. I shopped around, and bought some Samsung model, looks space age, but its pretty terrible at actually washing dishes. The marked for Dishwashers optimized for profit, and appearance of being functional. But at this point, I'm pretty convinced a GE dishwasher from the 70s was better.

hermitdev 4y ago
In the case of a dishwasher, I wonder how much environmental regulations factor into that. Modern dishwashers use less water for a cycle, but they also do a poorer job of actually washing dishes. So, what do you do? Prewash? Run multiple times? It's also concerning that the regulations on dishwashers are going to get tighter yet in the US if the certain organizations get their wish. Likewise with toilets. Low flow toilets are mostly terrible and do a terrible job at flushing. Literally the only thing they're designed to do. If you have to flush 2-3 times with a low flow and maybe even involve a plunger, are we really ahead?
- dukeofdoom 4y ago
  Just to add one more factor, what happens overtime in old toilets is that sediment stone develops on the inside, and causes enough friction for the toilet paper to catch and plug up. So you can probably except even shorter life span from the new toilets as they flush less water, so more likely for that stone to develop. So you're more likely to need to replace the toilet in the future. Also the flushing mechanism is proprietary, so if anything goes bad, more likely to have to replace the toilet. Really debatable if having to replace toilets more often is environmentally friendly. It will make more money for the toilet manufactures.

figassis 4y ago

It’s not true that established brands made cheaper products to compete. Their prices remained the same or got higher, but quality still suffered. It’s just greed, no complex reasoning required. I recently bought a gym bag from Nike. Feels super cheap, like I could have gotten it from Aliexpress. The zippers keep locking into the fabric. Feels completely disposable. Bought a pair of running shoes from Skechers early last year, had to throw away this year because the soles got worn out and I kept getting injured on one foot because I was stepping unevenly. I bought Skechers because I had once had a pair of sneakers that lasted me the entire 5y of college. No such luck now. No reason, just greed.

Swizec 4y ago
Running shoes are good for about 600 to 700km fyi. After that, the foam breaks down too much to provide adequate cushioning and the right sproing. Having the external hard rubber last longer than that is just unnecessary weight. You may just be in better shape than you were in college. Distance stacks up fast and running faster wears shoes out faster. sauce: I run marathons and go through about 6 pairs of running shoes per year
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Which shoes do you use? I use ASICS GT-2000s and they usually last 350km to 400km, or a year, in my case (a couple 5k to 8k runs per week). I guess different styles of running could also cause different amounts of wear and tear.
  - Swizec 4y ago
    Adidas Adios stuff has worked best for me. But I’m also 56kg so they prob last longer than they would for a bigger person.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  As a "non-runner" who just needs running shoes for the gym and walking around, I found great luck at Thrift Stores. What I found us a marathoner will buy a pair of Nike's and run that 600-700km until they are "spent" and give them to Goodwill. While they aren't good for running anymore, I found most to have plenty of sole left for 6-7 months of walking and going to the gym, all for around $10. This is probably not the best for my feet, but when I bust a hole where my big toe goes I feel less bad because I spent $10 and not $100.

imwillofficial 4y ago

Ah, Ypknwoj, a brand you can trust.

teddyh 4y ago
Fhqwhgads!
- grugagag 4y ago
  The problem with these brands is that they’re unpronounceable, and they’re almost as memorable as serial numbers.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    It’s /fə·'hʊ·kwə·gɑdz/: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjjWJMIGhM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjjWJMIGhM
    - grugagag 4y ago
      I imagine some kind of marketing for these fabricating a myth that if you can pronounce the brain you get one pair for free, a la tiktok brainless meme without any basis in reality

Veserv 4y ago

One of the real problems is that essentially all advertising and marketing is a plague that is knowingly inflicting misleading information and insinuation on the public. It is not like they do not know how a ad will be interpreted, the entire game in almost every case is saying something that is technically correct but that the target audience will incorrectly interpret as better. The standard of false advertising should not be: "There is at least one interpretation that is true." it should be: "Almost every member of the target audience will come to a correct understanding." If a company gets into a lawsuit and their lawyer defends the ad by saying, "Technically speaking, ..." they should lose. If a company can not accurately explain the nuances of the limitations of their product in a short time segment then they can just err on the side of caution instead of implying untrue statements. This would absolutely devastate the bullshit advertising and branding that is used to prop up garbage products and make it easier to segment high quality products because it would be much harder for low quality competitors to make misleading me too statements without running afoul of false advertising.

deleted 4y ago

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deleted 4y ago

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