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Instant Pot and Pyrex Maker Instant Brands Files for Bankruptcy
- Mistletoe 3y agoI don’t see how they managed to mess this up. The entire world bought an Instant Pot a few years ago when they were all the rage on Reddit, etc. We bought my brother one for a gift.
- awaythrow483 3y agoModern consumer brands have essentially nothing to do with selling consumer goods. They are financial vehicles for private equity to lever up on. In a decreasing liquidity environment many of these schemes will blow up. They could have sold 100x more insta pots and it wouldn't have mattered, it's pure financial gambling under the hood
- dr_monster 3y agoI’d like to read more about this, has it been documented or analyzed in any organized way via books/research, etc. that is available?
- bleepblop 3y agoThis is a good jumping off point. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/26/1172179099/how-private-equity-firms-widen-the-income-gap https://www.npr.org/2023/04/26/1172179099/how-private-equity... https://www.marketplace.org/2023/04/27/how-private-equity-creates-a-circle-of-pain-in-the-us-economy/amp/ https://www.marketplace.org/2023/04/27/how-private-equity-cr...
- awaythrow483 3y agoRoughly the things to look up are private equity and their "bust out" strategy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5PLEZiSZV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5PLEZiSZV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3_41Whvr1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3_41Whvr1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o10nh86q64Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o10nh86q64Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7VmIy0VXOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7VmIy0VXOY Buy a company with debt (leveraged buy out). Hand that cash back to the "private equity investors". Let the company go bankrupt and the debt magically dissapears. Basically legalized theft at enormous scale
- dismalpedigree 3y agoAgree. One of the most infuriating things we tolerate as a society. The number of good and solid companies adding value to society that have then been raided in order to line the pockets of a few is such a disgrace.
- yumraj 3y agoPerhaps everyone who wanted one already bought one, so the demand must have crashed. We have 2, but the 2nd one has never needed used.
- dataveg 3y agoThat’s part of the problem with durable or semi-durable businesses. You sell a ton - one to everyone- and then you only sell to people coming of age or to those who have failures. If you want to play with the math look up Bass models or diffusion models. Fascinating but quite sobering. Once a market is saturated it’s very hard to grow.
- starkparker 3y agoSo from a business sense the best feature of, say, a KitchenAid stand mixer is its accessory port.
- Krutonium 3y agoAs a home user, I agree, that's the best part of the Mixer. God I love it.
- IvyMike 3y agoInstant Pot was purchased in 2017 by Cornell Capital, a private equity company. I discovered this just now by when I thought "I bet some private equity company bought them and destroyed them in order to make short term profits" and then googled "instant pot private equity" to see if that was the case. It appears so. Gotta love those private equity companies. I'm no expert, but this article is a good overview of how they can be incentivized to kill good brands. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/6/21024740/private-equity-taylor-swift-toys-r-us-elizabeth-warren https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/6/21024740/private-equi...
- s1artibartfast 3y agoIf you look at Google trends, searches for instant pot peaked after the 2017 buyout. I think the examples of leveraged buyouts destroying brands is exaggerated. If it is a good brand, it will exist. It is just a chance of ownership from a capital firm to a lender.
- Mistletoe 3y agoThey made a lot of sales. Why does that have to be the death of the company? Just keep making good products. Everything doesn’t have to go up forever. I know this paints me as naive but growth above all else is eating us alive. How much growth is their bankruptcy?
- rhaway84773 3y agoBecause youre at the mercy of the distributors forcing you to lower prices, especially with the monopsony that exists in the US. Because you are at the mercy of your manufacturers increasing prices especially during a supply chain foul up during and after the pandemic which would affect you significantly more considering how big and heavy your product is. There’s a lot of reasons a company selling a lot of product can still go under in todays market.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoThings don't have to have continual growth. It actually is possible for a company to just sustain. However, if you see your rapid growth and then rapid decline, that is a dangerous transition for companies. It's easy to overspend and over commit yourself. Random websites on Google say instapot sales are down 65 percent in the last year. That is tough for any company to handle. WSJ says they had to cancel over 100M in contracts. That said, bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean it is the end of the product line. More likely it means some investors will lose some money, which is OK because they are in the business of making bets, and some won't pan out
- vrosas 3y agoMine’s main purpose is dealing with dinner when I forgot to defrost something the night before. Besides that it collects dust. I know it can do more but I view it as a machine that does everything ok and nothing perfect.
- codersfocus 3y agoIt boils eggs perfectly (shells are always easy to pull off)
- tkanarsky 3y agoThat's not hard to do, you just have to immediately run the eggs under cold water after boiling.
- rhaway84773 3y agoIt’s an excellent pressure cooker. And if you know how to pressure cook then it easily becomes the #1 tool in your kitchen, which is what it’s become in ours.
- InitialLastName 3y agoMine makes perfect oatmeal for my family every morning, and makes stews/slow-cooks meat for a few dinners/week during the winter.
- h2odragon 3y agoTake a well known, respected brand; remove all the things that made it respected, sell shoddy replacements instead (and throw the name at everything else it might stick to); and when you've milked it dry, walk away from the debts. I wish I could still easily buy real borosillicate glassware.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Jaepa 3y agoYou can still buy borosilicate Pyrex. PYREX (uppercased) is still made borosilicate, where pyrex(or Pyrex) is not.
- clairity 3y agothanks for that tip, i have PYREX measuring cups bought over 20 years ago that are still going strong, but this is good to know if i ever need to replace them with the same quality product.
- martin8412 3y agoYup.. If I go search for Pyrex on Amazon Spain, I find the real borosilicate stuff made in France since 1922. They never decided to cheap out on the materials.
- c-hendricks 3y agoI don't think it's this easy for people in America: https://lifehacker.com/that-viral-pyrex-brand-hack-is-horseshit-folks-1850157381 https://lifehacker.com/that-viral-pyrex-brand-hack-is-horses...
- donavanm 3y ago> I wish I could still easily buy real borosillicate glassware. You can, in NA and ANZ at least. Last I looked “lock & lock” storage containers were still borosillicate instead of soda lime. ISTR that there are a few other similar and easy available options.
- 6sp 3y agoThat’s too bad I love my Instant Pot it’s my favorite kitchen accessory behind my cast iron skillet.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoMaybe this won't seriously impact the product line. Looks lime they're filing for Chapter 11, not Chapter 7.
- maxerickson 3y agoIt doesn't really matter. Automatic electric pressure/rice cookers will be a product segment forever.
- deepspace 3y agoThe Instant Pot’s only remarkable feature is the low price. Korean brand Cukoo preceded Instant Pot, and will exist for a long time still. Their automatic pressure cookers are better in every way.
- yasp 3y agoHow so?
- test001only 3y agoThat's sad. When I last checked, insta pot was the only brand offering stainless steel vessel. Everybody else were offering only non-stick options, which I did not want to use.
- codersfocus 3y agoBestbuys store brand Insignia sells a steel one separately
- darkstar999 3y agoCheck out the Breville pressure cookers. They use ceramic coating.
- fowl2 3y agoPhillips sell an optional stainless steel additional inner pot, or at least they did 2 years ago when I bought one.
- Willish42 3y agohttps://archive.is/wRT1U https://archive.is/wRT1U
- reassembled 3y agoI don’t know what we’d do without the InstantPot. We literally have this thing going every night making veggies, beans and lentils, soups, and stews for the family. It really takes a ton of stress out of mealtimes, particularly with a toddler in the house. Even before we had a kid we were using the thing constantly, and telling all of our friends and family to buy one. Our first Instant Pot unit had a faulty pressure release seal in the lid and so Insta replaced and shipped a brand new lid to us free of charge.
- kylehotchkiss 3y agoYou could buy a fissler pressure cooker if you needed a different pressure cooker. Yes it goes on the stove and doesn’t have variable pressure settings but it gets the job done, is mechanically sound and should last decades with occasional seal replacements
- dagw 3y agoYes it goes on the stove and doesn’t have variable pressure settings The whole point of the instant pot is those two features. Being able to tell it what I want to make, turn it on, and then just walk away and forget about it until I need it is the whole point of having an Instant pot
- deepsun 3y agoAsia had multi-cookers for a long time, for some reason US audience isn't yet "disrupted" with those. It's basically the same, but without handing high pressure, which makes them much lighter, simpler, easier (just a simple click-in lid). High temperature destroys many vitamins and useful nutritions, it's only makes sense when you need to cook something ASAP. Other than that it's healthier to go slower.
- bob1029 3y agoI just bought some extra copies of my 6qt just in case this goes off a cliff pretty soon... I'm pretty sure I've cooked at least a ton worth of food in my original instant pot from 2015. It is still going strong. I cannot imagine using something else. I don't really care if there's something shinier/faster/whatever. I have a fuckin system now and the instant pot has timings critical to it.
- Dowwie 3y agoConsidering how popular instapots and pyrex products are, the company executives must have sucked the company dry. This can be a case study of corporate raiding from within. "Credit crunch and high interest rates weighed on liquidity" is language usually attributed to extreme risk taking in financing, another sign of fraudulent intent-- short term focus, get what they can while they can, leave a carcass behind.