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Instant Brands, maker of Instant Pot and Pyrex cookware, files for bankruptcy
- tyingq 3y ago>The company that makes kitchen staples like CorningWare, Pyrex and the Instant Pot It seems they have nothing to do with the popular laboratory glassware (beakers, etc) that has Corning and/or Pyrex branding, right?
- code_duck 3y agoYes, that is correct. They sold the consumer products division in 1998, but still have brands of laboratory products and raw borosilicate glass.
- bsima 3y agoInstant Pot has become a cultural icon, everyone has one. How does such an iconic brand go under so quickly? Just bad management? I'm not buying the excuses of "its the macroeconomic climate blah blah"
- alexb_ 3y agoPyrex in particular switched to a new type of glass that is miles worse than their old glass, to the point where the brand name now is a negative.
- kgwxd 3y agoThe awful noise they used to make when 2 pieces touched was the brand.
- theshrike79 3y agoThe (urban legend?) I heard was that they changed the formula so that Pyrex couldn't be used for drug manufacturing. They still handle all temperatures a home chef will ever need, but a drug operation will reach the limits and the glass breaks.
- wavefunction 3y agoDefinitely an urban legend. Heat and narcotic substances do not mix very well beyond the barest threshold of baking temperatures.
- jbay808 3y agoThey do not handle the rapid temperature differentials a home chef often encounters when they aren't careful enough. Especially when they are expecting the resilience of borosilicate glass.
- katbyte 3y agothe new formula was cheaper to make. think thats all you really need to know
- katbyte 3y agounless you are in the EU, pyrex glass from there is still the good stuff
- neilv 3y agoUp until a few he Pyrex brand consumer food storage containers seemed to be this other glass (soda lime?, with the bluegreen if you looking into the edge). Then, a few years ago, they seemed to switch essentially the same SKUs to a third glass (whitish looking into the edge) in slightly different glass forms, and slightly different lid fit). (I don't think they were counterfeit.)
- branon 3y agoThey changed the formula for Pyrex glass many years ago and the new formula is inferior to the old one. Somehow I doubt the current incarnation of these companies has much at all to do with their origin.
- zinekeller 3y ago> Somehow I doubt the current incarnation of these companies has much at all to do with their origin. The origin of Pyrex is Corning, the Gorilla Glass maker. They divested Pyrex because they've got tired of dealing with the consumer market and wanted to focus on B2B sales. The US market was acquired by (as shown) eager to make a quick buck on brand recognition. The European market was acquired by a different company which still manufactures borosilicate cookware to this day (and are not affected by this bankruptcy).
- myself248 3y agoAye, and this drives me nuts. For 50+ years, "Pyrex" was the name of a material, borosilicate glass, with known material properties. You could count on it being safe in certain situations. Then Corning somehow decided that it was the name of a _brand_, and they could use whatever inferior material they wanted, and if you put it in those same situations it would explode and cover your kitchen/lab in glass shards. How that was even legal, I will never understand.
- retrac 3y agoPyrex, the term, was originally a brand for borosilicate glass. It has become partially generic over the years, like Aspirin or Kleenex. Aspirin is still a trademark of Bayer in Canada; if they want to switch to ibuprofen instead of aspirin as the active ingredient, and sell it as Aspirin, they could. Similarly, if Kimberley-Clark decides to start selling sandpaper and call them Kleenex, they could. If a trademark becomes fully generic it can be ruled so by a court, at which point the trademark protection is lost. Aspirin is like that in the US. But that is pretty rare these days.
- londons_explore 3y agoSounds like they took on lots of loans to grow the business, relying on interest rates staying at ~0%. When those loans come up for renewal and they have to pay 7% corporate bond rates, of course they're going to collapse.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoThat's the crazy part of the "free money" short term loans of the past couple of years. Did these companies not think that they'd need to be refinanced?
- coldpie 3y agoMore likely the execs know they can take their piece and then bounce when the check comes due. There's no downside, they can just move on to the next victim and repeat until they have enough money to retire.
- dylan604 3y agoWhen the interest rates bump up, that's not a per company thing. Where's the "next victim and repeat" opportunity going to be when there's no 0% available?
- londons_explore 3y agoWell we've had 2 decades of super low rates... Thats plenty to build up a nice big retirement fund...
- dylan604 3y agois retirement the next victim?
- michaelcampbell 3y ago"next"?
- redleggedfrog 3y ago"...everyone has one." Going to be difficult to sell more then. :^) Also, they don't fully replace more traditional cooking apparatus, like a pressure cooker, a crock pot, or rice cooker. We have all 4, and what the Instant Pot got a lot of use initially we found that the for purpose cooking pots worked better and got better results. So the Instant Pot slowly fell out of favor.
- alanbernstein 3y agoI got one to replace all three of those, and it works great.
- Forgeties79 3y agoNot that this means your response is wrong (I largely agree) but funny enough in my household our insta-pot is essentially just a rice cooker. We basically use it for nothing else, but it’s also really good for rice! Fluffy and perfect everytime.
- redleggedfrog 3y ago"...our insta-pot is essentially just a rice cooker." Yeah, ours pretty much boiled down to that, too. :^D
- bombcar 3y agoOr boiled up as it may be, they get nice and hot inside.
- duped 3y agoBut now you need to store three appliances instead of one, and not everyone has a large pantry or kitchen.
- kevinmchugh 3y agoWhat do crockpots and pressure cookers offer that the instant pot doesn't? I have a breville instant pot-equivalent and can't see ever needing a crockpot. And I understood it to be fundamentally just a pressure cooker with some programmability
- goatforce5 3y agoI think the problem is that _everyone has one_. > The company's meteoric growth trajectory has slowed down in recent years. According to S&P, sales declined by almost 22 per cent in the first quarter of 2023, the seventh consecutive quarterly contraction. We got one for the house ~4 years ago. It's still working fine, and we don't need to upgrade to one with Bluetooth connectivity or anything like that. I'm guessing they found the size of their market wasn't infinite.
- _the_inflator 3y agoYes, no commenter here ever said: I own at least 3 generations of pots. Unlike an iPhone, no one is willing to swap the model.
- BobbyJo 3y agoIsn't that fine though? I mean, if you've created a popular product, and make margin on every sale, why would only making 100 million dollars instead of 400 million dollars in profit push you into bankruptcy? Did they take out a ton of loans to expand their manufacturing capabilities with out of touch sales projections or something?
- hooverd 3y agoPrivate equity debt, mostly.
- karaterobot 3y agoBut then why wouldn't the same process result in the bankruptcy of all (relatively) durable goods manufacturers with a limited set of products? For example, why hasn't Vitamix (blenders) or Zwilling (knives) gone into bankruptcy? Also, I don't think the market for this stuff is ever truly saturated: every day, plenty of people get their first apartment and need to buy appliances. Instant Pot seems similar to other things like microwaves and toasters, which we don't think of as a dead end due to market saturation. I think the "bought by private equity and wrung dry" explanation makes more sense. Or if not that, perhaps just a poorly run business.
- skippyboxedhero 3y agoBecause everyone has one...you have explained it yourself. Every consumer brand that expands quickly will keep expanding to the point that they saturate their market (GoPro, Doc Martens was a recent IPO in the UK that has self-destructed, it happens over and over). What is unusual about this case is that, afaik, they didn't IPO. Usually the IPO is the prelude to saturation and then bankruptcy because the incentives get totally skewed (and because companies will usually fiddle with supply before the IPO to boost the sale price).
- harimau777 3y agoDeclining quality might also be an issue. Doc Martens no longer have the quality or guarantee that they used to. Similarly, other posts have mentioned that Pyrex has apparently changed their formula to a lower quality substitute.
- ksaj 3y agoIf Doc Martens went public in the 70's, they'd probably be in a lot better shape today. They aren't nearly as popular now as they were in the 70's thru 90's. They picked a weird time to go public.
- skippyboxedhero 3y agoThey didn't. They were acquired by private equity a few years before their IPO. The company had some issues with production/distribution, PE owner fixed these, pumped up supply, created a lot of buzz, sales skyrocketed (they are massively more popular than the 90s, they weren't a particularly big brand then...you have heard of them now), IPO'ed the company and then sales collapsed because everyone has one and they could push the sales dial only so far. They massively increased penetration with young people, the brand was really very limited before PE came in (and tbf, PE have ruined it because everyone has them now). Btw, the bonus pool for the PE owners for the DOC IPO was sizeable. Iirc, it was £400m, there were junior bankers taking home multiple millions on one transaction (Permira has an eat what you kill approach, so the bonus pool was shared with junior staff...it was so large that I don't think senior staff could have taken all of it anyway). You had people in their mid-20s making 10x the value of their parent's house in a few years, it is one of the best PE deals of the last few decades (the bonus pool was actually larger than the purchase price). Consumers significantly under-estimate how easy it is to get them to buy shit. There are PE funds who specialise in just these kind of deals: buy old brand, pump it up with hot air, IPO to clueless retail investors or sell to a bigger company...it works.
- OGWhales 3y agoRelated post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301612
- chazeon 3y agoIf Instant Pot goes out of business, I wonder where people should go to get electronic pressurized pots?
- berkle4455 3y agoSomeone will buy the brand/IP/factories/contracts/etc during bankruptcy and will continue manufacturing them
- dylan604 3y agoAmazon? Or have they already come out with an AmazonBasics version?
- sparrish 3y agoWe bought a Ninja. It's bigger, which is wonderful for our large family, and works great. Has lids for air frying and pressure cooking.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoThe ninja foodi line is pretty good. I've had mine for a few years now. I use the air fry, pressure cook, slow cook, and sous vide functions weekly.
- ksaj 3y agoInterestingly, Canadian Tire (very well known establishment up here!) used to sell InstaPot, and pretty much always had it on special. Lately they've shifted toward Ninja brand items.
- bombcar 3y agoFaberware and Ninja make some, and I'm sure if the IP IP doesn't get slurped up, Walmart and friends will make store-brand ones. They're not very complicated.
- snuxoll 3y ago
- MegaDeKay 3y agoI'm shocked by this. We have an Instant Pot and use it. All. The. Time. It is a well made product that is simple to use, has a good feature set, is useful, and relatively inexpensive (even better when it goes on sale, which is frequent). All the people I know that have one (and that is a lot of people) feel the same way. How can't you make money when you have something like this on your hands?!?!?!
- sp332 3y agoThey merged with a private equity company. It got turned into a financial instrument instead of a business.
- nathanaldensr 3y agoYep. There's always the assumption that just because a business sells a product or service that it is in business to sell a product or service. This is not always true.
- pessimizer 3y agoLike real estate.
- wnevets 3y agoIsn't that what happened to Bed Bath & Beyond? Can someone explain to me why this happening isn't a bad thing?
- katbyte 3y ago> explain to me why this happening isn't a bad thing because there is now a good change everyone with one of these devices is likely no longer going to get support, warranty, or updates. apps will become outdated and fall off the app store parts to repair will no longer be available etc devices/a brand people enjoyed using is now gone because PE did what PE does and destroyed the brand for a quick buck
- 3y ago
- AndrewStephens 3y agoThis is a shame - I have one of their combo air-fryers/pressure-cookers and although it is only a passable air-fryer, it is the best pressure cooker I have ever used and very good value for the relatively cheap price.
- 01100011 3y agoI tried their air fryer. Could not get rid of the toxic smell despite numerous, extended burn-in sessions, cooking in it, re-cleaning it, spraying oil in it, etc. Eventually gave up and got rid of it. It had great features but the smell was terrible.
- luckman212 3y agoSo where can we buy quality oven-safe glassware now in the US?
- proggy 3y agoAnchor Hocking is still around. For now. But if this pattern of private equity destroying trusted brands continues, one can only imagine how difficult it will be as a consumer to purchase well-made household commodities. I do not want to navigate a world where the provenance of every product is unknown, its white-label manufacturing origins hidden behind an alphabet soup name like MALACASA, KOMUEE, or M MCIRCO (all actual names of oven safe glassware products for sale today).
- nerdponx 3y ago> be as a consumer to purchase well-made household commodities. I do not want to navigate a world where the provenance of every product is unknown This is not a coincidental phenomenon, it's a deliberate end goal. Private equity is part of the problem, but more broadly the problem is that of consolidation and market incentives for behavior other than selling the best product at the best price. It's easy to blame government for not creating the right incentives or failing to create the right disincentives, but realistically corporations themselves have tremendous incentive to co-opt, subvert, and otherwise manipulate government decision-making processes and regulatory agencies.
- hinkley 3y agoThere’s a movie called, “Other People’s Money” that describes 1980’s era corporate raiders. These companies are just a subtler version of that.
- zwieback 3y agoThrift stores.
- quacker 3y agoOXO sells borosilicate cookware. I’m unsure if all their glass cookware is borosilicate but they clearly marked it as such when I last looked.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- prh8 3y agoFor all the discussion about Pyrex manufacturing below, here's a quick helper- The original (and good quality glass) is sold as PYREX. The worse glass is sold as pyrex. Those 2 are licensed out separately.
- zwieback 3y agoWow, I had no idea, thanks for the tip. I've been snatching up old PYREX in thrift stores when I heard the new stuff is no good. Now I know...
- katbyte 3y agoyou can still buy the good stuff from various websites in NA: https://icedteapitcher.myshopify.com/ https://icedteapitcher.myshopify.com/
- tecleandor 3y agoThere's a simple explanation: https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-between-two-pyrex-types/ https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-be... From the EU Pyrex webpage, when they talk about their materials in the French factory, they say it's borosilicate: The Pyrex® glass is unique. It is a borosilicate glass that is tempered, of superior quality and has a great thermal and mechanical shock resistance. [...] The Pyrex® glass is made of pure sand (80%), soda (4%), Alumina (2,5%) and bore (13%). So I'd say that at least EU Pyrex is safer (when talking about thermal shock, I guess). PD: Following the life of Pyrex, Duralex and Saint-Gobain is quite a thing...
- dylan604 3y agoI don't care about Instant Pots, but NOOOOOO!!! Not my Pyrex!!!!
- ksaj 3y agoToo late to be worrying about that now. The glass change was quite a while back.
- dylan604 3y agoI'm of a certain age that my pyrex is from a while back
- mvdtnz 3y agoI assure you this bankruptcy won't affect your existing Pyrex.
- 0x457 3y agoWell, you can keep using it after the company went bankrupt.
- dylan604 3y agoUntil they disable the licensing server so the next time it needs to renew the license it fails and becomes unusable. So glad I bought that smart home pyrex set of dishes
- zwieback 3y agoEveryone who wanted one has one and whoever wants one now gets their friends' cast-offs or duplicates.
- jeremy_wiebe 3y agoI’m not too surprised. Since introducing the Instant Pot there has been a lot of competition on their main product (pressure cooker). It seems like a race to the bottom for cost and so they must have faced shrinking profit margins. Also, they were diversifying their product offering into products that seemed like they were grasping and not really aligned with their main offering.
- agloe_dreams 3y agoYup, they were trying really hard to break into the pod coffee game by making machines (but not pods, lol razor/blade model backwards) the machines were neat, they have a combo Nespresso/Keurig machine we bought but it was kinda bad at both.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cactusplant7374 3y agoHas instant pot ever made a dual voltage version that works in USA and Europe? I really want to use mine for nomad'ing but not have two versions. It seems like this is probably more expensive when high voltage is involved? I noticed there is no dual voltage Vitamix product as well.
- meatmanek 3y agoIt's fairly easy to handle dual voltage for switch-mode power supplies like used on electronic devices, but a resistive heating element like used in a pressure cooker typically runs directly from line voltage, and needs to have its resistance tuned to draw the right amount of current for the power line voltage. A resistor tuned for 120V would draw 2x as much current (and therefore 4x as much power) on 240V, and probably burn out. You can get clever by splitting your resistor in half, and then using relays to put those halves either in series for 240V or parallel for 120V, but that adds cost and complexity. Since most consumers don't need this functionality, it's easier to just sell two different SKUs with different heating elements. High-power motors like used in blenders are similar - you'll use motors with different number of windings at different line voltages, otherwise your motor would be horribly underpowered at 120V or burn out at 240V. Power transformers exist which can convert between 120V and 240V, but they're not cheap.
- siddarthd2919 3y agoThey should have introduced the InstantPot AI line up with ChatGPT 4.0 to save the company.
- chris_va 3y agoSo, taken over by private equity in 2017... It'll continue to operate... I'm curious what fraction of the creditors are backed by Cornell Capital (PE owner), and if they just are using this to wipe out retirement plans/other creditors/dump a bunch of debt, or if they actually messed up.
- kurthr 3y agoSo I wonder how much was that the PE didn't feel like they were getting a large enough coupon (2017-19 rates) and wanted a quicker bankruptcy to redeploy their efforts? A rational corp would have refinanced the debt at 2021 rates. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/instant-brands-to-merge-with-cornell-capitals-corelle-brands-300805735.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/instant-brands-to-m...
- jppope 3y agoThat's why my guess was going to be: "financialization" ... buy the company, profit like crazy by selling it assets and taking on debt, cut R&D budgets, cut marketing, provide fat compensation for C-suite and board... bankruptcy ~5 years later after someone else is holding the bag. The playbook is practically as American as baseball these days. Even more so when tax payers get to pay for the bail out. tbh I should probably get with the times and start doing it myself, at some point the music will stop and there won't be any companies left to rob blind...
- another2another 3y agoI still weep for Boots the Chemist in the UK that this happened to. They used to be a great British company.
- kristopolous 3y agoIt's the Jack Welch dance. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Man-Who-Broke-Capitalism/David-Gelles/9781982176426 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Man-Who-Broke-Cap...
- dbg31415 3y ago
- dtgriscom 3y agoI have an Instant Pot, and love it a lot. But, here is some perhaps relevant anecdata: 1. The original stainless steel removable liner is embossed with nice, legible capacity levels. Unfortunately, they're way off: the "9 cup" line is actually about 12 cups. (Not a big deal; we just don't use the markings.) 2. I bought the Instant Pot Air Fryer Lid lid add-on, which was supposed to support temperatures of up to 400°F. But, after a lot of testing, I found that it was seriously limited as to the heat it would supply. Basically, the internal temperature never got over 360°F, and in fact after eight minutes of running the heater would turn off and the unit would cool down to 270°F and then maintain that temperature. All the while, the external temperature would happily show 400°F. My guess: they discovered late in the development cycle that the air fryer lid would overheat and kill older Instant Pots. They couldn't fix this after the fact, so they modified the lid firmware to limit the actual temperatures, but keep displaying the desired temperature, hoping users wouldn't notice. (I complained, and they promptly send me a new lid. But, it had the same flaw.) My Amazon review with the details: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2D14J5XXHC2GA https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2D14J5XXHC2GA . (Yes: I may have too much time on my hands...) IMHO, a company which ships clearly flawed products and hopes their customers don't notice is just burning their reputation.
- dbg31415 3y agoWhile I don't disagree, I think the main reason they failed had to do with spreading themselves too thin. Competing where they had no business competing. When they launched, they made an Instant Pots, and it was a fairly good product, with good marketing. There were other pressure cookers before, but this was beyond easy to use -- and super Instagram and Facebook friendly to share cooking videos. But then they expanded out to... Air Fryers, Coffee Makers, even Air Purifiers... and it's just too much. They weren't going up against old pressure cookers that hadn't really been updated in 40 years, they were going up against established modern brands like Nestle and Keurig, and whoever else. And they never really established a reason for all the different devices to live under that brand... and probably lost quality control (as you said). And yeah, I mean... I got an Instant Pots as a housewarming gift in 2010, and I loved it. So I gave Instant Pots to a bunch of friends as housewarming gifts... and it never seemed like a hit with the people who received it. At one point someone told me, "Thanks, but I already have one..." So I figured I'd replace my old one, and holy hell the quality in like 2017 or so was not good. Like you pointed out the measurements on the sides were not accurate. And every dish I had made in the old Instant Pot didn't cook right in the new one. (Probably because the temps were off.) I was an idiot and tossed the old Instant Pot I had before really trying the new one out... then when the new one sucked I stopped using it all together and never bought another one. Edit... here's a pressure cooker from like 2004. It was such a pain to clean and no matter what I did it splattered steam and liquid all over when it was turned on. Instant Pot was so much easier to use than this thing was. https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Wolfgang-Puck-7.5-qt.-Pressure-Cooker-Refurbished/1181999/product.html https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Wolfgang-Puck-7.5-qt.-...
- paradox460 3y agoI never quite understood the hype of Instant pot. It just seemed like an Electric pressure cooker. Breville has had one since the mid 00s, and my mother had a simpler Sears branded one in the 90s. Was it bandwagon effect? It always seemed like one of those products you'd see on an infomercial. The overall build quality, particularly the front button membrane, looked extremely cheap to me, like what you'd see on random Wish.com crap.
- dymk 3y ago> I never quite understood the hype of Instant pot > It just seemed like an Electric pressure cooker I think you understand it. That's all it is. They're good quality. Not wish.com crap.
- Groxx 3y agoYeah. Just a good pressure cooker. Which is something that tons and tons of other manufacturers screwed up for decades. It's popular because it's a desirable product and their competition is/was shit.
- BeetleB 3y agoNot sure myself. Instant Pot was around for quite a while before it really took off. Perhaps some guerilla marketing? I just looked at the Breville ones - a lot more expensive. Did the pre-Instant Pot ones have a timer, as well as yogurt/slow cooker capabilities?
- paradox460 3y agoYeah, my Aunt had one in the super early 00s and would always serve homemade frogurt on hot summer days.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoThe key thing for me was the stainless pot. Every other electric pressure cooker has a Teflon-coated pot that will get scratched, flake, discolour, go sticky and generally poison you after a couple of years. I guarded my old Moulinex pot like a mother bear her cubs and it still went weird. A Tefal rice cooker pan is still perfect, though, so I can do it, it's just pressure cooking seems too much hard work for Teflon to withstand.
- dukeofdoom 3y agoA bean company should buy them out, since they've made cooking raw beans a reasonably quick process.
- aussieguy1234 3y agoI have an instant pot and it's been going strong for the last 5 years. The main reason I got it instead of a competitor is the amount of recipes out there on the internet specifically for the instant pot which show the exact settings to use, step by step. Hopefully there will be some kind of market for aftermarket spare parts and repairs, if the company completely shuts down.
- rconti 3y agoI have an instant pot! It works great! > "At eight or nine or 10 per cent, that's $50 million a year just to service the debt — it's impossible to do," he said. "You can only sell so many Instant Pots." Well it seems like maybe that's something you should have thought of before taking on that much debt? Maybe you should consider a subscription model.... wait, no.
- anaganisk 3y agoExactly, make it smart, and call it a day. I mean, watch this ad, before you can cook rice, brilliant.
- klondike_klive 3y agoGuess I just bought a multipack of gaskets at the right time then. It's been one of the few products I've bought that have genuinely improved my quality of life. I made bulk meals for freezing when we had a newborn. I use it weekly at least.
- chewbacha 3y agoI really hope that the corning portion of the company survives and continues to make pyrex, corelle, and corning products. They are some of my favorite ceramics and have been a staple for decades. I'm very sad to hear about this.