8 ms·

The cutest monopoly: Koala Kare

123 points by Anon84 2y ago

talldayo 2y ago
> In the age of antitrust, why has Koala Kare, Big Baby Change Station, flown under the radar? Proportionality, it seems. Why has nobody sued the printer ink monopolists? Because compared to Google or Apple they're somewhat of a lesser evil.
- 1propionyl 2y ago
  Same with Crayola. The reality is that Koala Kare and Crayola simply do not affect people's lives as much as tech giants on the list (Amazon and Apple), or CPGs like Hershey's candy bars or Gatorade beverages. To put a finer colored wax point on it: my crayon doesn't have access to my entire online life or my shopping habits, and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons.
  - drbig 2y ago
    > and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons. Thanks for that insight. "Vote with your wallet" and similar responses seem to die under the actual, practical, reality of exclusion and/or lack of access.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ascorbic 2y ago
    > my crayon doesn't have access to my entire online life or my shopping habits, and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons. Those have only really become an aspect of antitrust cases in the past decade though
    - 1propionyl 2y ago
      Railroad, telecom, and oil monopolies of their time had their own analogue forms of reach into everyday life in ways crayons did/do not.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Because it's not the age of antitrust, and nothing has been broken up? Lina Khan trying her best does not an age of antitrust make. It's an age of unprecedented concentration of ownership with attendant open and unashamed market manipulation, which of course makes people talk about antitrust more, while also having absolutely no mechanism to do anything about it, which makes them talk about it with a tone of frustration and anger. But frustration and anger does not break up companies. Functioning governments do.
  - ascorbic 2y ago
    Yeah, it's not an age of antitrust – it's an age of monopoly
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Eh. At least based on the article, they don’t seem that abusive. The printer ink thing actually is, but as alluded to in the article, we’re in an age of fairly minimalist anti-trust enforcement (this is maybe _beginning_ to change; the EC has been getting more aggressive for the last couple of decades, and the US authorities finally seem to be waking up a bit, but it’s early days and from a low base). Even in an environment of robust enforcement you probably wouldn’t expect that this company would face difficulties, but the printer people might well.
bsder 2y ago
This is a monopoly without lock-in or network effect. As such, it really isn't a priority. If KoalaCare raises prices or collapses quality, they'll get a competitor. A maintenance department can replace every single changing station in a big office building in a month if they wanted to.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mylastattempt 2y ago
It seems the author does not see the difference between a monopoly on a service as opposed to a monopoly on a product. These changing stations can be replaced without any difficulty, by another brand, if the need arises. For services or whole ecosystems, such as Google and Apple (iCloud, Apple Pay, etc) there is a huge vendor lock-in, even for consumers. Monopolies in the latter are unwanted most of the time. But being the major manufacturer and distributor of some non-consumer-bought public bathroom equipment doesn't really do much harm, since a competitor can arise relatively easily if need be.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  > It seems the author does not see the difference between a monopoly on a service as opposed to a monopoly on a product. It seems that they don't even know what a monopoly is at all in the context of their own article about antitrust laws, really.
- xnyan 2y ago
  >these changing stations can be replaced without any difficulty Don't disagree that a plastic changing station can be efficiently made by someone else, but I think you may be misunderstanding their advantage. Koala is providing a service in the world of "places in which the public use the bathroom", which is part of the "places occupied by the public" market. There are an unfathomable amount of needs, requirements, practical concerns, laws/regulations, etc that have to be served when you operate a public space. Koala is part of the established suite of solutions to the problem of operating a public space, and "supply chain diversity" or even "we cost marginally less" is not enough to displace them. Koala would have to really mess up or you'd have to offer a significant advantage to displace a solved problem at an affordable price when it's just one of a thousand things you need to think about. tldr: rent seeking is reliable way to make money if you don't mess up your core value or get too greedy for the market to bear
  - userbinator 2y ago
    "get too greedy for the market to bear" Was that intentional?
toast0 2y ago
> “If you have a monopoly just because you’re the only one who happens to make something and no one else wants to make it, there's nothing wrong with that,” Milici says. > “US antitrust law doesn’t prohibit monopolies. It prohibits conduct by monopolists.” > Meanwhile, companies like Crayola (83%) or Gatorade (63%) have faced little scrutiny. AFAIK, none of these companies are known to engage in prohibited conduct, so that's probably why they've not had much scrutiny. You don't hear about Koala Kare forcing you into buying anything else if you want their change stations, or anything like that. There's free competition, but the Koala stations seem to work well and so there you go. If RubberMade is one of the major alternates and they can't sell a lot of them, I dunno ... RubberMade products are very common in commercial buildings. Same thing with Crayola, maybe they've got some super secret thing where they buy up all the crayon making supplies, or maybe everyone else just makes shitty crayons and you only have to get burned a couple times before you're like Crayola crayons are always reasonable, just gonna buy those. Maybe not their markers though, I'm partial to Sanford's Mr. Sketch Scented Markers.
- righthand 2y ago
  I mean Gatorade you can make at home with 3 ingredients so definitely not a monopoly.
  - codetrotter 2y ago
    Or you can buy a bottle of Gatorade and mix salt and vinegar and lemon juice into it and then have your son give that to the bully that’s been stealing his Gatorade. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mother-arrested-after-concocting-drink-son-give-school/story?id=107876249 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mother-arrested-after-concocti...
  - culi 2y ago
    saving others a google search: > water, sucrose (table sugar), dextrose, citric acid, natural flavor, sodium chloride (table salt), sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, and flavoring/coloring ingredients. > Some Gatorade flavor variations used to contain brominated vegetable oil as a stabilizer
  - 2y ago
bradfitz 2y ago
I'm suddenly reminded of an old tweet of mine: https://x.com/bradfitz/status/825404204055359488 https://x.com/bradfitz/status/825404204055359488 "A moment of silence please for all the babies who fell off not-so-Sturdy Station v1. #ScaryVersionNumbers"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jader201 2y ago
Re: Gatorade’s 63% monopoly, I’ve recently thought about how quickly Prime went to mass market. It seems like it blew up on YouTube and stores couldn’t keep it in stock. Then all of the sudden, it’s sitting next to Gatorade in huge volumes at Costco. I’ve never seen a product so quickly “disrupt” a long-time monopoly. It remains to be seen whether it’s a fad or if they could actually compete with Gatorade, but it seems like they could, if anyone could. To be clear, I’m personally not a fan of how companies like this use marketing (especially on YouTube) targeting young — impressionable — audiences, so I’m not necessarily rooting for either one of them (Gatorade is horribly unhealthy). But I have found it interesting at the very least.
- marcellus23 2y ago
  Where do you live? I'm in the northeast and I've never heard of Prime before, and I can't remember ever seeing it (maybe in one or two stores), although maybe my eyes just skip over it since I'm usually looking for Gatorade.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    I, too, live above the Mason-Dixon line and I've never heard of Prime either. But maybe this has less to do with geography, and more to do with the media that we allow ourselves to be exposed to. For instance: I haven't watched regular advertising-supported TV (OTA or streaming or otherwise) for at least a decade, and my general online experience (including with things like YouTube) is generally completely ad-free (thanks, Sponsorblock and uBlock Origin). I am, very purposefully and intentionally, rather "out of the loop" when it comes to advertising for trendy things.
    - marcellus23 2y ago
      I go into shops pretty often in my area but never see it, so I don't think it's just a case of media exposure.
  - mikrl 2y ago
    It’s all over eastern Canada. Driving through New Brunswick every gas station had the common selection. My small town gas station in Ontario had supply issues because as soon as some cases got delivered the zoomers/αoomers would buy it all.
xorcist 2y ago
Not really a monopoly, as there are several competing brands. At least abroad. There are plenty of other markets with an dominating actor where competition isn't harmed, so it's not considered problematic in the antitrust sense. One should probably take the invention story here as just a story, foldable diaper changing stations were starting to get common in 1986, at least in the Nordics.
- graemep 2y ago
  > One should probably take the invention story here as just a story, foldable diaper changing stations were starting to get common in 1986, at least in the Nordics. I was wondering about that too. I first saw one in a men's toilet in the early 1990s. That was that was at the cafe owned by St-Martin-in-the-Fields in London (the big one on Trafalgar Square) which I was very impressed by at the time. They was pretty sure they were fairly common in the UK at the time, just in the women's, and had been for a few years. If the idea of fold down tables had been invented in the US in a mid 80s that would be a very rapid spread, though possible as its an obvious good die. However if they were getting common in the mid-80s its obviously not the origin (or the only origin - parallel invention is quite likely).
  - xorcist 2y ago
    I looked up the only brand of fold down tables I know and apparently they started already in 1981, so it makes sense the product was well established half a decade later. Parallel invention happens, it is not a complicated invention, but it is just as likely someone remembered something they saw abroad. We don't know. But apparently they executed well on the idea, regardless of where it came from.
tetris11 2y ago
> The Koala joined the ranks of omnipresent brands that have surpassed the generic names for what they make: think Kleenex, Chapstick, Play-Doh, and so on. I was surprised when someone said to me "do you want a tempo?" after I sneezed. I had to ask them to clarify before I got it
- 12_throw_away 2y ago
  I don't get it
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  Tempo? or Tissue? I'm very confused now. Am I missing it too or do you sneeze in funk?
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Tempo is a popular tissue brand is other parts of the world, aka asking someone if they want a Kleenex vs a tissue.
  - Tao3300 2y ago
    Yes, give me the tempo. I'm the Coltrane of jazz sneezing solos.
    - nativeit 2y ago
      Dragging…
pchristensen 2y ago
Only tangentially related, when my kids were younger, I used "changing table in the men's bathroom" as a useful measure of company health. It a) costs little, and b) required little care to make the decision, but a company or building that couldn't manage those two things was either broke or stagnant.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  This seems pretty similar to my "contractor's estimator talks directly to my wife when she asks questions" test for whether we hire someone to work on our house.
  - nusl 2y ago
    I really like this one. I get pretty annoyed when folks talk over others because they believe they aren't, for whatever reason, able to give a response.
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  Most company bathrooms probably don't have many babies coming through though, right? So this test is limited to just places like stores, restaurants, etc. which is a tiny subset of companies.
  - lainga 2y ago
    bathroomsAreUnisex || (bathroomTypesWithTable % 2 == 0)
    - kvdveer 2y ago
      A common setup that fails this condition is: * mens bathroom, no changing table. * women's bathroom, no changing table. * non-segregated disabled bathroom with a changing table. That said your point is valid. Changing tables should be accessible regardless of gender. I've changed my son quite a few times in the ladies room, and never got into any problems. Then again, this side of Lake Atlantic isn't quite as gender-rigid as I've seen in US news reporting.
toyg 2y ago
For the sake of this publication, I hope that they got paid by Google (in money or favours) for this rambling low-quality "article". A dominant position in an open market with zero lock-in, is completely inconsequential to antitrust laws. Unless nefarious behaviour is alleged, it just means the product (and/or the branding) is superior. Can anyone replace a Koala product with an alternative, without suffering any repercussion? Yes. Can anyone build a bathroom without buying from Koala? Also yes. Will your bathroom continue to work if you remove a Koala product? Still yes. Are consumers or businesses suffering from this market dominance? Not really (I guess Koala can command slightly premium prices, but we're talking plastic building supplies here - the margins will likely be pretty low already). This has nothing to do with big-tech cases.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- legostormtroopr 2y ago
  > Can anyone build a bathroom without buying from Koala? Can you? I ask, because I legitimately don't know - The article mentions the Baby Act that mandates a change table in public restrooms, so you MUST have a change table - and that change table MUST meet some safety standards. What I do know is that regulatory capture is a quiet activity that can be done through many mechanisms. What are the safety regulations around baby changing stations and who writes them? If anything, this article hasn't made me feel more fuzzy towards Google, but makes me ask "why does Koala Care have such a large market share?" If making a change table is as easy as some plastic, some straps and a bolting assembly surely someone can make a product just as good for the same or less price. However, that clearly isn't the case, which makes me question what is the regulatory landscape for approval of change tables and who approves them?
  - xmprt 2y ago
    The change stations are decades old technology so I don't think there could be any real regulatory capture because the core patents related to this invention have expired by this point.
  - 2y ago
Tao3300 2y ago
That first image is hilariously bad and wrong.
- mango7283 2y ago
  I wish the poop is so neat lol
rqtwteye 2y ago
I think a problem gets more problematic the larger the market is. A monopoly in a 100 million market is probably less harmful than a monopoly in a trillion market. It also depends on the lock in effect. I don't think this company has any moat besides its brand name, its sales force and good products.
urbandw311er 2y ago
This is so bizarre as a non-US reader, I have literally never heard of them. (Despite having heard of all the others in the “monopoly by market share” table)
- mango7283 2y ago
  Are you a parent though? I'm non-US and I've seen their changing stations in the malls, they are pretty ubiquitous.
  - eru 2y ago
    I guess it depends on which part of the world you are in, I guess? They are common in Singapore as well, but I doubt they are common all over the globe.
    - mango7283 2y ago
      Yeah I figure it's one or the other. If anything I am somewhat surprised it's not some generic Chinese copies in the malls.
skissane 2y ago
As an Australian, I always find American companies adopting Australian imagery a bit jarring. It can result in an "uncanny valley" feeling, in which something which comes across as rather American (because it is) but has a superficial layer of Australianness layered atop. Cultural appropriation, perhaps? Koala Kare isn't the worst. The worst by far, in my opinion, is "Outback Steakhouse". I remember when they first opened in Australia (in the 1990s or early 2000s???), they didn't even bother to metricate their menu. It felt weird, ordering American style food in a putatively Australian restaurant in the western suburbs of Sydney, with a menu telling you the size of steak in ounces instead of the usual grams. And I never went back to one, until sometime last decade, I was in San Mateo, California, and I was hungry and bored, so I thought I'd give them another go. And there was absolutely nothing Australian about the place except the name and imagery. And then they serve Fosters – which is a beer few Australians actually drink any more (I remember my dad drinking it in the 1980s), and few places in Australia even sell it. In fact, I'm pretty sure there was a period when they stopped brewing and selling it in Australia altogether; apparently more recently they've relaunched it and you can buy it again, but I can't remember seeing it on sale. In my life, I've drunk far more Fosters while in India than I ever have in Australia.
- mynameishere 2y ago
  I await your Subaru Outback rant. But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell. It's just marketing.
  - skissane 2y ago
    > I await your Subaru Outback rant. Yes, it is a bit of a silly name, because if you actually go to the Outback, you won't find many Subaru Outbacks there, because they aren't actually designed for those conditions. What you will find, is heaps of Toyota Landcruisers and Nissan Patrols, which are. > But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell No doubt. But I wonder how many of the many people who condemn Taco Bell as "cultural appropriation", would even think to make the same criticism of Outback Steakhouse?
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
Strange article. Did someone at the executive level of this company commit some faux pas against the author or editor of this site? There's no meat here, just a sirt of half-assed execution of a once-off "vendetta" of some kind. I enjoyed the synopsis origin story though.
brightbeige 2y ago
“You think you’re supposed to put a human baby on that mouse trap of a device. They have gang signs carved into them. Those are for snorting coke off of.” - John Mulaney
aaronbrethorst 2y ago
There’s nothing cute about a shit-smeared slab of gray plastic that you’re desperately trying to wipe clean while also fighting to hold on to a writhing toddler with a poopy diaper who is trying to shove the public bathroom’s communal toilet plunger into his mouth. I’m glad these things exist. I am also glad I now carry what are essentially puppy pads for lining these things. And I am glad that Cocomelon screen time on YouTube is enough of a treat to get him to behave during diaper changes. If you aren’t familiar with Cocomelon, consider yourself lucky… https://www.animationmagazine.net/2024/05/cocomelon-continues-to-reign-as-most-watched-kids-show-on-netflix/ https://www.animationmagazine.net/2024/05/cocomelon-continue...
quickthrowman 2y ago
> An architect stating something like "We always specify Hubbell wiring devices, Sherwin Williams paint, and Koala Care changing stations wherever applicable Yeah, my take is that it sounds like Koala Kare is really good about getting architects to specify their products in construction projects, but I never look at the Div 10 specs since it’s not my niche. I’ll have to take a look at some TI specs and see what I find. Here’s a link to their canned spec section for 10 28 14 - Baby Changing Stations, .docx format: https://www.koalabear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Section102814BabyChangingStations.docx https://www.koalabear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Section...

123 points by Anon84 2y ago

> In the age of antitrust, why has Koala Kare, Big Baby Change Station, flown under the radar? Proportionality, it seems. Why has nobody sued the printer ink monopolists? Because compared to Google or Apple they're somewhat of a lesser evil.

1propionyl 2y ago
Same with Crayola. The reality is that Koala Kare and Crayola simply do not affect people's lives as much as tech giants on the list (Amazon and Apple), or CPGs like Hershey's candy bars or Gatorade beverages. To put a finer colored wax point on it: my crayon doesn't have access to my entire online life or my shopping habits, and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons.
- drbig 2y ago
  > and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons. Thanks for that insight. "Vote with your wallet" and similar responses seem to die under the actual, practical, reality of exclusion and/or lack of access.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ascorbic 2y ago
  > my crayon doesn't have access to my entire online life or my shopping habits, and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons. Those have only really become an aspect of antitrust cases in the past decade though
  - 1propionyl 2y ago
    Railroad, telecom, and oil monopolies of their time had their own analogue forms of reach into everyday life in ways crayons did/do not.
pessimizer 2y ago
Because it's not the age of antitrust, and nothing has been broken up? Lina Khan trying her best does not an age of antitrust make. It's an age of unprecedented concentration of ownership with attendant open and unashamed market manipulation, which of course makes people talk about antitrust more, while also having absolutely no mechanism to do anything about it, which makes them talk about it with a tone of frustration and anger. But frustration and anger does not break up companies. Functioning governments do.
- ascorbic 2y ago
  Yeah, it's not an age of antitrust – it's an age of monopoly
rsynnott 2y ago
Eh. At least based on the article, they don’t seem that abusive. The printer ink thing actually is, but as alluded to in the article, we’re in an age of fairly minimalist anti-trust enforcement (this is maybe _beginning_ to change; the EC has been getting more aggressive for the last couple of decades, and the US authorities finally seem to be waking up a bit, but it’s early days and from a low base). Even in an environment of robust enforcement you probably wouldn’t expect that this company would face difficulties, but the printer people might well.

bsder 2y ago

This is a monopoly without lock-in or network effect. As such, it really isn't a priority. If KoalaCare raises prices or collapses quality, they'll get a competitor. A maintenance department can replace every single changing station in a big office building in a month if they wanted to.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

mylastattempt 2y ago

It seems the author does not see the difference between a monopoly on a service as opposed to a monopoly on a product. These changing stations can be replaced without any difficulty, by another brand, if the need arises. For services or whole ecosystems, such as Google and Apple (iCloud, Apple Pay, etc) there is a huge vendor lock-in, even for consumers. Monopolies in the latter are unwanted most of the time. But being the major manufacturer and distributor of some non-consumer-bought public bathroom equipment doesn't really do much harm, since a competitor can arise relatively easily if need be.

stronglikedan 2y ago
> It seems the author does not see the difference between a monopoly on a service as opposed to a monopoly on a product. It seems that they don't even know what a monopoly is at all in the context of their own article about antitrust laws, really.
xnyan 2y ago
>these changing stations can be replaced without any difficulty Don't disagree that a plastic changing station can be efficiently made by someone else, but I think you may be misunderstanding their advantage. Koala is providing a service in the world of "places in which the public use the bathroom", which is part of the "places occupied by the public" market. There are an unfathomable amount of needs, requirements, practical concerns, laws/regulations, etc that have to be served when you operate a public space. Koala is part of the established suite of solutions to the problem of operating a public space, and "supply chain diversity" or even "we cost marginally less" is not enough to displace them. Koala would have to really mess up or you'd have to offer a significant advantage to displace a solved problem at an affordable price when it's just one of a thousand things you need to think about. tldr: rent seeking is reliable way to make money if you don't mess up your core value or get too greedy for the market to bear
- userbinator 2y ago
  "get too greedy for the market to bear" Was that intentional?

toast0 2y ago

> “If you have a monopoly just because you’re the only one who happens to make something and no one else wants to make it, there's nothing wrong with that,” Milici says. > “US antitrust law doesn’t prohibit monopolies. It prohibits conduct by monopolists.” > Meanwhile, companies like Crayola (83%) or Gatorade (63%) have faced little scrutiny. AFAIK, none of these companies are known to engage in prohibited conduct, so that's probably why they've not had much scrutiny. You don't hear about Koala Kare forcing you into buying anything else if you want their change stations, or anything like that. There's free competition, but the Koala stations seem to work well and so there you go. If RubberMade is one of the major alternates and they can't sell a lot of them, I dunno ... RubberMade products are very common in commercial buildings. Same thing with Crayola, maybe they've got some super secret thing where they buy up all the crayon making supplies, or maybe everyone else just makes shitty crayons and you only have to get burned a couple times before you're like Crayola crayons are always reasonable, just gonna buy those. Maybe not their markers though, I'm partial to Sanford's Mr. Sketch Scented Markers.

righthand 2y ago
I mean Gatorade you can make at home with 3 ingredients so definitely not a monopoly.
- codetrotter 2y ago
  Or you can buy a bottle of Gatorade and mix salt and vinegar and lemon juice into it and then have your son give that to the bully that’s been stealing his Gatorade. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mother-arrested-after-concocting-drink-son-give-school/story?id=107876249 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mother-arrested-after-concocti...
- culi 2y ago
  saving others a google search: > water, sucrose (table sugar), dextrose, citric acid, natural flavor, sodium chloride (table salt), sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, and flavoring/coloring ingredients. > Some Gatorade flavor variations used to contain brominated vegetable oil as a stabilizer
- 2y ago

bradfitz 2y ago

I'm suddenly reminded of an old tweet of mine: https://x.com/bradfitz/status/825404204055359488 https://x.com/bradfitz/status/825404204055359488 "A moment of silence please for all the babies who fell off not-so-Sturdy Station v1. #ScaryVersionNumbers"

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

jader201 2y ago

Re: Gatorade’s 63% monopoly, I’ve recently thought about how quickly Prime went to mass market. It seems like it blew up on YouTube and stores couldn’t keep it in stock. Then all of the sudden, it’s sitting next to Gatorade in huge volumes at Costco. I’ve never seen a product so quickly “disrupt” a long-time monopoly. It remains to be seen whether it’s a fad or if they could actually compete with Gatorade, but it seems like they could, if anyone could. To be clear, I’m personally not a fan of how companies like this use marketing (especially on YouTube) targeting young — impressionable — audiences, so I’m not necessarily rooting for either one of them (Gatorade is horribly unhealthy). But I have found it interesting at the very least.

marcellus23 2y ago
Where do you live? I'm in the northeast and I've never heard of Prime before, and I can't remember ever seeing it (maybe in one or two stores), although maybe my eyes just skip over it since I'm usually looking for Gatorade.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  I, too, live above the Mason-Dixon line and I've never heard of Prime either. But maybe this has less to do with geography, and more to do with the media that we allow ourselves to be exposed to. For instance: I haven't watched regular advertising-supported TV (OTA or streaming or otherwise) for at least a decade, and my general online experience (including with things like YouTube) is generally completely ad-free (thanks, Sponsorblock and uBlock Origin). I am, very purposefully and intentionally, rather "out of the loop" when it comes to advertising for trendy things.
  - marcellus23 2y ago
    I go into shops pretty often in my area but never see it, so I don't think it's just a case of media exposure.
- mikrl 2y ago
  It’s all over eastern Canada. Driving through New Brunswick every gas station had the common selection. My small town gas station in Ontario had supply issues because as soon as some cases got delivered the zoomers/αoomers would buy it all.

xorcist 2y ago

Not really a monopoly, as there are several competing brands. At least abroad. There are plenty of other markets with an dominating actor where competition isn't harmed, so it's not considered problematic in the antitrust sense. One should probably take the invention story here as just a story, foldable diaper changing stations were starting to get common in 1986, at least in the Nordics.

graemep 2y ago
> One should probably take the invention story here as just a story, foldable diaper changing stations were starting to get common in 1986, at least in the Nordics. I was wondering about that too. I first saw one in a men's toilet in the early 1990s. That was that was at the cafe owned by St-Martin-in-the-Fields in London (the big one on Trafalgar Square) which I was very impressed by at the time. They was pretty sure they were fairly common in the UK at the time, just in the women's, and had been for a few years. If the idea of fold down tables had been invented in the US in a mid 80s that would be a very rapid spread, though possible as its an obvious good die. However if they were getting common in the mid-80s its obviously not the origin (or the only origin - parallel invention is quite likely).
- xorcist 2y ago
  I looked up the only brand of fold down tables I know and apparently they started already in 1981, so it makes sense the product was well established half a decade later. Parallel invention happens, it is not a complicated invention, but it is just as likely someone remembered something they saw abroad. We don't know. But apparently they executed well on the idea, regardless of where it came from.

tetris11 2y ago

> The Koala joined the ranks of omnipresent brands that have surpassed the generic names for what they make: think Kleenex, Chapstick, Play-Doh, and so on. I was surprised when someone said to me "do you want a tempo?" after I sneezed. I had to ask them to clarify before I got it

12_throw_away 2y ago
I don't get it
zer00eyz 2y ago
Tempo? or Tissue? I'm very confused now. Am I missing it too or do you sneeze in funk?
- fragmede 2y ago
  Tempo is a popular tissue brand is other parts of the world, aka asking someone if they want a Kleenex vs a tissue.
- Tao3300 2y ago
  Yes, give me the tempo. I'm the Coltrane of jazz sneezing solos.
  - nativeit 2y ago
    Dragging…

pchristensen 2y ago

Only tangentially related, when my kids were younger, I used "changing table in the men's bathroom" as a useful measure of company health. It a) costs little, and b) required little care to make the decision, but a company or building that couldn't manage those two things was either broke or stagnant.

throwway120385 2y ago
This seems pretty similar to my "contractor's estimator talks directly to my wife when she asks questions" test for whether we hire someone to work on our house.
- nusl 2y ago
  I really like this one. I get pretty annoyed when folks talk over others because they believe they aren't, for whatever reason, able to give a response.
hunter2_ 2y ago
Most company bathrooms probably don't have many babies coming through though, right? So this test is limited to just places like stores, restaurants, etc. which is a tiny subset of companies.
- lainga 2y ago
  bathroomsAreUnisex || (bathroomTypesWithTable % 2 == 0)
  - kvdveer 2y ago
    A common setup that fails this condition is: * mens bathroom, no changing table. * women's bathroom, no changing table. * non-segregated disabled bathroom with a changing table. That said your point is valid. Changing tables should be accessible regardless of gender. I've changed my son quite a few times in the ladies room, and never got into any problems. Then again, this side of Lake Atlantic isn't quite as gender-rigid as I've seen in US news reporting.

toyg 2y ago

For the sake of this publication, I hope that they got paid by Google (in money or favours) for this rambling low-quality "article". A dominant position in an open market with zero lock-in, is completely inconsequential to antitrust laws. Unless nefarious behaviour is alleged, it just means the product (and/or the branding) is superior. Can anyone replace a Koala product with an alternative, without suffering any repercussion? Yes. Can anyone build a bathroom without buying from Koala? Also yes. Will your bathroom continue to work if you remove a Koala product? Still yes. Are consumers or businesses suffering from this market dominance? Not really (I guess Koala can command slightly premium prices, but we're talking plastic building supplies here - the margins will likely be pretty low already). This has nothing to do with big-tech cases.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
legostormtroopr 2y ago
> Can anyone build a bathroom without buying from Koala? Can you? I ask, because I legitimately don't know - The article mentions the Baby Act that mandates a change table in public restrooms, so you MUST have a change table - and that change table MUST meet some safety standards. What I do know is that regulatory capture is a quiet activity that can be done through many mechanisms. What are the safety regulations around baby changing stations and who writes them? If anything, this article hasn't made me feel more fuzzy towards Google, but makes me ask "why does Koala Care have such a large market share?" If making a change table is as easy as some plastic, some straps and a bolting assembly surely someone can make a product just as good for the same or less price. However, that clearly isn't the case, which makes me question what is the regulatory landscape for approval of change tables and who approves them?
- xmprt 2y ago
  The change stations are decades old technology so I don't think there could be any real regulatory capture because the core patents related to this invention have expired by this point.
- 2y ago

Tao3300 2y ago

That first image is hilariously bad and wrong.

mango7283 2y ago
I wish the poop is so neat lol

rqtwteye 2y ago

I think a problem gets more problematic the larger the market is. A monopoly in a 100 million market is probably less harmful than a monopoly in a trillion market. It also depends on the lock in effect. I don't think this company has any moat besides its brand name, its sales force and good products.

urbandw311er 2y ago

This is so bizarre as a non-US reader, I have literally never heard of them. (Despite having heard of all the others in the “monopoly by market share” table)

mango7283 2y ago
Are you a parent though? I'm non-US and I've seen their changing stations in the malls, they are pretty ubiquitous.
- eru 2y ago
  I guess it depends on which part of the world you are in, I guess? They are common in Singapore as well, but I doubt they are common all over the globe.
  - mango7283 2y ago
    Yeah I figure it's one or the other. If anything I am somewhat surprised it's not some generic Chinese copies in the malls.

skissane 2y ago

As an Australian, I always find American companies adopting Australian imagery a bit jarring. It can result in an "uncanny valley" feeling, in which something which comes across as rather American (because it is) but has a superficial layer of Australianness layered atop. Cultural appropriation, perhaps? Koala Kare isn't the worst. The worst by far, in my opinion, is "Outback Steakhouse". I remember when they first opened in Australia (in the 1990s or early 2000s???), they didn't even bother to metricate their menu. It felt weird, ordering American style food in a putatively Australian restaurant in the western suburbs of Sydney, with a menu telling you the size of steak in ounces instead of the usual grams. And I never went back to one, until sometime last decade, I was in San Mateo, California, and I was hungry and bored, so I thought I'd give them another go. And there was absolutely nothing Australian about the place except the name and imagery. And then they serve Fosters – which is a beer few Australians actually drink any more (I remember my dad drinking it in the 1980s), and few places in Australia even sell it. In fact, I'm pretty sure there was a period when they stopped brewing and selling it in Australia altogether; apparently more recently they've relaunched it and you can buy it again, but I can't remember seeing it on sale. In my life, I've drunk far more Fosters while in India than I ever have in Australia.

mynameishere 2y ago
I await your Subaru Outback rant. But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell. It's just marketing.
- skissane 2y ago
  > I await your Subaru Outback rant. Yes, it is a bit of a silly name, because if you actually go to the Outback, you won't find many Subaru Outbacks there, because they aren't actually designed for those conditions. What you will find, is heaps of Toyota Landcruisers and Nissan Patrols, which are. > But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell No doubt. But I wonder how many of the many people who condemn Taco Bell as "cultural appropriation", would even think to make the same criticism of Outback Steakhouse?

SuperNinKenDo 2y ago

Strange article. Did someone at the executive level of this company commit some faux pas against the author or editor of this site? There's no meat here, just a sirt of half-assed execution of a once-off "vendetta" of some kind. I enjoyed the synopsis origin story though.

brightbeige 2y ago

“You think you’re supposed to put a human baby on that mouse trap of a device. They have gang signs carved into them. Those are for snorting coke off of.” - John Mulaney

aaronbrethorst 2y ago

There’s nothing cute about a shit-smeared slab of gray plastic that you’re desperately trying to wipe clean while also fighting to hold on to a writhing toddler with a poopy diaper who is trying to shove the public bathroom’s communal toilet plunger into his mouth. I’m glad these things exist. I am also glad I now carry what are essentially puppy pads for lining these things. And I am glad that Cocomelon screen time on YouTube is enough of a treat to get him to behave during diaper changes. If you aren’t familiar with Cocomelon, consider yourself lucky… https://www.animationmagazine.net/2024/05/cocomelon-continues-to-reign-as-most-watched-kids-show-on-netflix/ https://www.animationmagazine.net/2024/05/cocomelon-continue...

quickthrowman 2y ago

> An architect stating something like "We always specify Hubbell wiring devices, Sherwin Williams paint, and Koala Care changing stations wherever applicable Yeah, my take is that it sounds like Koala Kare is really good about getting architects to specify their products in construction projects, but I never look at the Div 10 specs since it’s not my niche. I’ll have to take a look at some TI specs and see what I find. Here’s a link to their canned spec section for 10 28 14 - Baby Changing Stations, .docx format: https://www.koalabear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Section102814BabyChangingStations.docx https://www.koalabear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Section...