10 ms·

Backpacks got worse on purpose

• justinclift 6mo ago
  AI;Didn't Read (AIDR)
• Theodores 6mo ago
  I am okay with these big American corporations getting bought out, for their products to be reamed out, for the brand to be discarded, only to exist as a brand in a private-equity backed holding company. This is because other companies come along to fill the niche occupied by the established brands. Since they can't cheapen the products any more than the behemoths can, they need to innovate and evolve. As for the backpack product, I wish the likes of Eastpak and whatnot would just die, since they have not innovated in a very long time.
  • eesmith 6mo ago
    If other companies come along to fill the niche then how is it that the likes of Eastpak and whatnot have not died?
    • alistairSH 6mo ago
      The article hints that they are dying - the holding company is looking to offload them because profits are down.
      • eesmith 6mo ago
        I did not explain myself well enough. The essay show the timescale for "getting bought out, for their products to be reamed out, for the brand to be discarded" is 20 years or more, dating from the Eagle Creek purchase to the current "potentially up for sale." That's a long time. That means Theodores is also okay with the same decades-long process happening to "your power tools, your boots, your sunglasses, and about a dozen other product categories where a company you trusted quietly got absorbed by a corporation you've never heard of." And after a new company X gains market share for its quality, we should expect the vulture capitalists to come swooping by again. On the environmental side, every one of these packs is plastic waste after 18 months rather than 10 years. It also means the methods people use to assess quality, despite omnipresent supercomputer phones and video-quality wireless networking, is ineffective, and manufacturers worsen their products knowing that. Why hasn't it gotten better? So no, I don't see how Theodores comment about the chain of events should make anyone else also feel okay with it.
        • alistairSH 6mo ago
          The "simple" answer is "markets aren't like textbooks". Consumers are lazy and greedy. The side effect of which is not-strict-enough regulation of negative externalities. In a perfect world, people would care about the downstream environment impact at least as much as they do about their time/money. But, they don't.
    • bluGill 6mo ago
      They are - the article finishes with them being for sale because they no longer generate money. They are not dead yet, but they are clearly out.
      • eesmith 6mo ago
        I give a more complete followup at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47779948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47779948 .
  • alistairSH 6mo ago
    I don't disagree in principle. But, as a consumer, this makes purchasing a bit more complicated. BITD, I could just buy an EastPak or JanSport and be fairly sure it was a good bag. Not much thought or analysis required. Today, I have to dig through 100s of brands I've never heard, with most of their ad budget spent on influencers who maybe can't be trusted. It's not a recipe for a healthy market.
    • pavl- 6mo ago
      If you feel like spending several hundred dollars on a backpack (big if, I know), I can personally vouch for https://www.seventeenthirtythree.com/ https://www.seventeenthirtythree.com/. It's more or less a one man show, and the guy is very obsessive about sourcing materials & assembly. Advertising is all word-of-mouth as far as I know. I at times feel anxious about his long term prospects for the exact reasons mentioned in the OP article - I have a backpack from this shop that's about a decade old and has zero visible wear. I think, in order to make this business model work, it's pretty much impossible to scale.
  • rcxdude 6mo ago
    The issue is it reduces information availability to customers: if a customer finds a brand that produces high quality products that they know from experience they can trust, that trust can't propagate forward in time because the incentive it to abuse it for short-term profit, which is a net negative overall because the customer needs to find the new high quality product on the market, something that costs time and comes with risks itself. It's a market inefficiency.
  • m000 6mo ago
    Why would you be ok with that? These brands earned the consumers' esteem because decades ago their products pushed the envelope in the respective markets. By having their product quality severely degraded, this also lowers the bar for the niche brands. They no longer need to push the envelop to get a competitive advantage. They just need to replicate what was already possible. I.e. no real innovation is happening any more. Also, for every 2 niche brands that are trying to get it right, you will get 1 that is sketchy: send designs to the cheapest manufactury in China, hire a few influencers to post on instagram, and you're done. Basically capitalizing on the misperception that "niche == better". So, we are left as consumers to have to dilligently research every purchase, just to get the quality that was the standard a few years back. There's nothing to enjoy here. Not to mention that at the bottom, this is just another manifestation of "fast fashion" and "planned obsolescence".
  • triceratops 6mo ago
    That's idiotic. As a consumer I'd prefer the same company to keep making the same good products forever. I don't have time to research which of the new brands is just as good.
    • whartung 6mo ago
      I have a pair of Mountainsmith Lumbar packs, both either over or pushing 30 years old (I have two because I misplaced and replaced my first, but later found it). It's an excellent pack, cinches up tight, mount it front or back, strap it to something else, you can pack the straps and use it as a simple satchel, or use the shoulder strap. Very high quality materials and zippers. It's for I'd consider "urban travel", great as a carry-on. Paperback books, tickets, meds, passports, journal, snacks. They've been in "the wild" but I don't drag them on rocks or things like that. They're over $100 today, so not cheap, but at a glance on the website, they look pretty much identical to what I have (and I know my second has slight differences in design from my first). Were I in the market, I wouldn't hesitate to drag and drop one into a cart and get another. I've not used their larger packs, and over time they've expanded their lumbar line. But I would completely expect their other products to be similar quality as the ones that I have.
    • pseudalopex 6mo ago
      When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
  I swear by Swiss Gear nowadays. However, it's been several years since I purchased one. I don't know if they've maintained the same high quality. But I had a Swiss Gear backpack that was fantastic, and it lasted me nearly a decade. It was originally purchased at a Target. It was versatile and I could take it anywhere. It had little grommets to pass-through earphone cords and such. It survived even through several washes in a washing machine. Then at a thrift store, I found a Swiss Gear suitcase. It has wheels and a telescoping handle. It expands very nicely. I have it stored away and still haven't found occasion to use it. I also picked up a Swiss Gear laptop bag with a "messenger bag" shoulder strap. These I found at Office Depot. It's really nice. It has a velcro fastener to secure the laptop itself. It has mesh pockets for all kinds of accessories. If I don't put in a laptop, it can carry documents, folders, or binders. It's been very durable.
  • MrDOS 6mo ago
    I was gifted a Swiss Gear backpack when I went off to school (over fifteen years ago now). It was good – albeit very heavy – for the first two or three years. Then the soft surfaces started wearing through, the mesh water bottle pocket on the side wore through, and finally one of the straps snapped. I started trying to figure out how to make a claim against their legendary warranty process... and found that at that time (2013 or 2014), in Canada, their backpacks had at most a 1-year limited warranty. Nuts! It does seem like Swiss Gear are now directly represented in Canada (rather than being represented by a third party, like they were a decade ago), and their backpacks now have a five-year warranty. But I guess my point is: if you don't live in the US, make sure that the things that a brand is famous for hold true in your region, too.
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • brushfoot 6mo ago
    The Swiss Gear backpack I used daily in college in 2008 is sitting beside me right now. I've put it through its paces over the past 18 years. I jogged here in the rain this morning with it weighed down with my laptop and a water bottle and other things. Minus some fraying at the base of the front pouch, it's as good as new. I've been very happy with it.
• emtel 6mo ago
  I bought a north face backpack for college in 1998. It cost $60. It was an extravagant expense for me at the time and I felt horrible about it for weeks. That backpack is currently at college with my son, who used it all through high school as well. It is by far the oldest and most durable daily-use object I’ve ever owned.
  • Cider9986 6mo ago
    I bought a north face backpack 4 years ago. Looks brand new.
    • kstrauser 6mo ago
      It mentioned in the article that their higher end models are still well made. I bet you can still get nice NF or JanSport bags if you’re careful. If I had to guess, I’d say the models at REI are decent (or else they’d get yanked) while the ones at Target are the chintzy ones.
  • enraged_camel 6mo ago
    First day of my college freshman year, I purchased a Targus backpack for the heavy ass gaming laptop I had back then. I still use it decades later. It has carried stuff inside it for tens of thousands of miles, seen lots of abuse, weathered all sorts of conditions, and is still in really good shape. Not a single tear. Every compartment, every feature works the way it did on day of purchase. I'm honestly amazed every time I use it.
    • swah 6mo ago
      What if its just bad use? I have some nice Targus model that I actually bought a second one because the zippers were opening. To my surprise, in a few weeks I got my first instance of zippers opening. Of course, I was overstuffing a bit at the top. I remembered that I had removed some guards that transform this model from more like a regular backpack to a clamshell. Maybe that is a very important feature I have to use, or the zippers will fail, when you carry a basketball there...
    • 6mo ago
• bloovis 6mo ago
  [dead]
• consumer451 6mo ago
  I spent way too much money on a Peak Design backpack. 4 years in, the zipper broke. They honored the lifetime warranty, and swapped me for a brand new one. That was my first time ever dealing with such a high-end product and a lifetime warranty. Just sharing because it was a good experience.
  • Swizec 6mo ago
    Gonna echo that I love my Peak Design backpack. Only backpack I’ve ever owned that delighted me so much I told others and showed it off. The design is a little dorky, especially now that every techbro in SF has one, but my god that thing has pockets and little details in all the right places. Been using mine for years and looks almost new. One downside of high quality gear: Velomacchi (motorcycle bags/backpacks) seems to have gone out of business. Been using their stuff for almost 10 years. Feels indestructible, works great, but I’m never getting a replacement and I guess any warranty lasts only as long as the company …
    • hombre_fatal 6mo ago
      Peak Design is the rare travel backpack I could find that has one massive storage compartment instead of 5+ small compartments. So you can really pack that thing efficiently. And the 45L variant is the biggest thing you can use as a carry-on. https://www.peakdesign.com/products/travel-backpack?Size=45L&Color=Sage https://www.peakdesign.com/products/travel-backpack?Size=45L... I've never spent $300 on a backpack before. It kinda stung. It's well-thought-out though. I've had it five years and it's been through a lot. The FAQ says to hand-wash it which is annoying though. There's no way you're gently washing out the sort of grime that my human oil leaves on the straps from real use, like clinging to your bare shoulders during a long sweaty trip through Mexico. So I feel a lil mischievous tossing the thing into the washing machine every year. Same way I feel using an alcohol wipe on my Macbook screen.
      • AlotOfReading 6mo ago
        Echoing the efficiency. I just returned from a 1mo trip living out of the 45L, including a supply of dead-tree books. That said, I've only had it a year and it's clearly not new anymore. Paint wear on the rivets, for example. I expect it'll be in rough shape when it's accumulated as many miles as the travel bag it's partially replacing.
• nslsm 6mo ago
  This is some damn irritating writing. This writing irritates me more than a broken backpack seam would.
  • darkwater 6mo ago
    Pure LLM, and it's a shame. The message and the content they are trying to pass are good and should be read by everybody out there. But god, the LLM writing, it feels like an Apple PR applied to a critique of capitalism.
  • Sharlin 6mo ago
    The trend of making articles out of sequences of pithy three-word soundbites rather than proper sentences is infuriating. It's super LLMy, yes, but it feels like even human-written content is like that these days.
  • Cider9986 6mo ago
    I am highly confident this article was AI generated
• Sharlin 6mo ago
  If you're looking for a backpack that can survive just about anything, and don't mind a "tactical" look, check out Savotta: https://www.savotta.fi/collections/backpacks https://www.savotta.fi/collections/backpacks They're expensive, but last a lifetime or more.
  • cirelli94 6mo ago
    I'd like to try one of them, it's on my list whenever I'll need a new backpack!
• brainzap 6mo ago
  its the normal cycle of sports gear
• furyofantares 6mo ago
  > I'll be writing about those next. I doubt it, you didn't write about this! You prompted it and signed your name to it.
  • rogerrogerr 6mo ago
    Yep, I’d rather read the prompt.
  • tencentshill 6mo ago
    Keyana Sapp is the "author" Good to know they hire that kind of incompetence at Palantir. It makes them less effective.
    • sureMan6 6mo ago
      Not really incompetence if he hasn't looked at the article
    • furyofantares 6mo ago
      It always seems to be the case with these LLM blogs that if they're not about AI they are from someone heavily involved in AI, at least for now. LinkedIn: > Strategic Partnerships @ Palantir | AI Strategy
  • CWuestefeld 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    • ryandrake 6mo ago
      Thank you. By the end of 2026, the same snarky "This article was written by LLM" comment is going to be posted on every single article on HN. It's becoming pointless to point out.
      • josephg 6mo ago
        There's still plenty of human authored content out there. No need to post slop on HN. My rule is: If you can't be bothered writing an article, don't expect me to read it.
• whalesalad 6mo ago
  The enshittification of all things. It’s happening in the service industry, too. A lot of contractors like roofing and plumbing are being absorbed into private equity megacorps.
• cortesoft 6mo ago
  As much as the result for consumers sucks, is this just a result of the quality backpack business not being a very profitable business to be in anymore? The reason they were able to buy all those backpack brands is because each of those brands were not making much money running a backpack company selling quality at a reasonable price. The purchaser makes some money leeching value out of the brand reputation, but then that brand value falls because of the crappy product, and they sell the brand because they leeched all the value out of it. This is only possible because you can’t make much money selling quality for a good price. Consumers will pick lower quality for the cheapest price every time.
  • taeric 6mo ago
    Agreed. You can also say that they are better engineered for most use, nowadays. With the adage that anyone can build a bridge that doesn't fall over, an engineering team is needed to build one that has the minimum resources to stay up. In particular, how durable do people think backpacks need to be? If you are going through them particularly quickly, maybe you are over loading compared to what they were designed for?
  • infecto 6mo ago
    Absolutely this. I am sure there are recorded cases where companies have gone out of their way to make things break early but I think it’s more times than not simply that cost matters and consumers are the voters and for the majority cheap wins. The average consumer is not very thoughtful and will opt to buy the cheaper good. For sure there are many economic constraints and not everyone has the luxury of buying quality but that’s not always the issues. This comes up a lot with washing machines and I sympathize with parts of it, why not standardize control boards more or other components in the machine but one of the biggest issues is simply the cost of labor in places like the US is high enough that it’s hard to make it cost effective to repair.
    • iterateoften 6mo ago
      The high cost of labor has nothing to do with reusable parts of the washing machine. If it was all standardized, you could do a lot of repairs yourself.
• nekusar 6mo ago
  Its EVERYTHING that has gotten worse, on purpose. Capitalism ends up being owned by single companies across goods families. Private equity buys, strips, and bankrupts. Materials are engineered to fail near the end of their warranty. Companies lie about details hard to identify or prove. Companies use historical goodwill to loot the current landscape. Take for example, a citrus squeezer. We needed what I thought was a decent juicer. https://us.josephjoseph.com/products/helix-citrus-juicer-yellow https://us.josephjoseph.com/products/helix-citrus-juicer-yel... Well, guess what... since its all just plastic, the 2 posts that provide the downward force when turning get sheared off when you fucking use the thing. We ended up going to an antique/flea market and found a all-metal juicer. It fucking works. And it likely will for the next 50 years. Capitalism itself is the scam. It was sold to us of "innovation, innovation, innovation!" And its just "worsening, extraction, destruction".
  • _fat_santa 6mo ago
    > Its EVERYTHING I would argue not everything, just the things we remember. Those brands got popular, got sold and enshittified. We remember these brands fondly (personally I had a JanSport bag all through elementary school) and that's why it sucks that they suck now but what we forget is now is there are 1000X more brands to choose from, some from megacorps trying to cut corners at every step. Some from small shops that genuinely want to make a great product. The problem is visibility. Those good brands you have to go look for, you can't just go to WalMart or Target like in the early 2000's and expect to get a quality product. All the quality products now live on small websites scattered across the internet.
    • nekusar 6mo ago
      Dont gaslight me. I remember even 26 years ago, stuff you bought was better crafted and could get parts to repair. Now? Its non-replacable batteries. Ultrasonic welded casing (destroy-open only). Glues, glops of glues. Plastic/nylon gears instead of metal. Thinner/worse materials. Scams online everywhere (like the legitimate company XYZZY). Every online corporate presence whores it names out to fly-by-nights. If I want to buy durable goods, its mostly not even for sale. Or I end up having to buy from Europe, or a boutique dealer in the States... that is if you can find them. And even the boutique dealers like Tom Bihn sold out, and is now making their bags in some sweatshop shithole with lowering and lowering standards.
• parineum 6mo ago
  > The sense that you were choosing between competitors was a fiction that VF Corp had no incentive to correct. I can't speak for everyone else but this isn't what I'm doing when I compare two backpacks. I'm comparing two different backpacks for their features and design. I don't really consider the brand name attached or care who owns it.
• jonahs197 6mo ago
  You what? I buy my backpacks from Aliexpress.
  • ivolimmen 6mo ago
    First thing that entered my mind while reading this. I have been saying this to my familiy for some time now. Never mind the price point; those unknown brands are really quite good. I still have my bag from Ali from 6+ years ago.
• readingnews 6mo ago
  On the flip side, a really good bag, and these have lasted so long I can not recall when I purchased them, are really expensive [https://www.tombihn.com/ https://www.tombihn.com/]. What is really irritating is that sometimes we see the same thing within a single brand (we have a garbage entry-level item and a top tier item which is good).
  • threetonesun 6mo ago
    Tom Bihn sold recently, and doesn't do everything in the US any more. Also I don't know that they were ever "expensive" so much as priced to reflect the economic reality of being made in America and (from what I've read), treating their employees well.
  • egypturnash 6mo ago
    guess who has a new owner and is starting to make some of their bags overseas https://www.tombihn.com/blogs/main/fall-2025-factory-update-faqs https://www.tombihn.com/blogs/main/fall-2025-factory-update-...
• kstrauser 6mo ago
  I gritted my teeth and bought a GoRuck GR1 a year ago. If it fell into a volcano, which is what it might take to destroy it, I’d buy another one. It’s still possible to find “buy it for life” backpacks but be prepared for eye-watering price tags.
  • busterarm 6mo ago
    Seriously, I've had my GR1 since 2013 and it's still flawless. It replaced my bike messenger bags (Chrome, Mission Workshop). It's been through sand, mud, dust and just shakes the abuse off like nothing. I do wish half the time though that I'd bought a 40L GR2 though.
    • kstrauser 6mo ago
      Yep. I like that the care instructions are literally to hose it off in the back yard and let it dry. This thing will outlive me. But I main got it because I’m a relatively large guy with broad shoulders and other bags pinched my neck. I was given a Timbuk2 pack from work that I otherwise liked, but the straps were too close together. I could either wear it high on my back and have them mash my neck all day, or low on my back wear it’s much harder to carry weight. (Side note to everyone: wear your backpack as high as possible when it’s even moderately loaded. When I see someone on BART with a huge backpack slung down by their hips, my back aches sympathetically. You want the heaviest load up between your shoulders.) Edit: I also keep glancing at the 40L GR2, but it's just FOMO. Great bags, but huge. I don't want to schlep something that size to the office, and definitely not on some of the trails we hike.
      • busterarm 6mo ago
        I've gone on one or two trips every year where the GR1 wasn't big enough and I needed a separate small bag. But granted, I wouldn't want to be hauling that around every day either, it's just more convenient for the overall pack.
        • kstrauser 6mo ago
• egypturnash 6mo ago
  I'm waiting for this to happen to Tom Bihn's bags now that they have new owners who're starting to outsource the smaller bags to Vietnam instead of sewing them in-house in Seattle. Luckily for me, I've got what I need from them and expect it to last for quite some time
  • xingped 6mo ago
    I didn't know about this and that's extremely disappointing. I already bought one bag from them but I guess I doubt I will be buying another.
    • egypturnash 6mo ago
      They're still making a lot of things in the US, there's a list on this blog post from last fall (https://www.tombihn.com/blogs/main/fall-2025-factory-update-faqs https://www.tombihn.com/blogs/main/fall-2025-factory-update-...). The "materials and transparency" section of each bag's page tells you where it's made. But the process has begun and you should probably grab anything you've been coveting before that list grows.
• chinathrow 6mo ago
  > This is the pattern. Acquisition. Cost optimization. Quality decline. Warranty narrowing. Brand equity extraction. And eventually, divestiture. PE at work.
• llmslave 6mo ago
  Private equity, and computers, optimized all the profits which drove profit quality down. We all have lower quality products to enrich a few finance individuals
  • infecto 6mo ago
    Or more likely consumers vote with their dollar and cost matters over quality. PE is just a bad scape goat, there are obvious outliers but largely companies make products that consumers want.
    • tsimionescu 6mo ago
      Companies are incentivized to sell the worse, most expensive version of a product that they can convince someone to buy. Many companies sell with huge margins, meaning there is significant slack to allow quality to increase for the current price point - there just isn't enough competition to matter. Many manufacturing companies also have complex supply chains, making this problem worse as everyone along the chain tries to maximize their own margin. It's not at all rare for a company to sell a quality product at a low margin for some years, building up a reputation, and then start decreasing quality to increase profitability once the quality branding is established.
      • infecto 6mo ago
        Of course, optimal companies maximize for margin. Buyers have their own optimization mental model and maybe is surprising but a vast majority are thinking mostly on cost. Buyers and sellers do a dance and in the perfect long run you hit the optimal balance. Consumers/buyers still play a large role in this, it is easier to put all the blame on PE or Big business.
        • tsimionescu 6mo ago
          This is the conventional thinking, but it ignores a huge factor - marketing. The major function of the gigantic advertising industry is to deceive consumers about the real qualities of a product, leaving price as the only only signal that they can detect through the noise, in most cases. And advertising works in multiple ways to promote slop. Sometimes, it is directly by marketing bad products as cheap but high quality bargains. Sometimes it is, as I said, by using previous high quality products to sell low quality ones at the same prices. Sometimes it works by creating a huge pressure to consume more (such as the pressure on fashion trends), wiping out any care about durability (if it's considered poor taste to wear the same T-shirt two seasons in a row, why pwuld you buy a durable T-shirt?). Sometimes it works by mudding the waters, making consumers distrust any reviews that praise the quality of a product, leaving price and directly visible looks as the only signals that rational consumers can base their decision on. So, overall, the blame for this state of affairs lies far more with the way the modern market was designed, than with consumers specifically.
• bovermyer 6mo ago
  Why do we allow megacorporations to exist at all?
  • love2read 6mo ago
    Google “Capitalism”
  • lamasery 6mo ago
    Chicago School assholes backed by the conservative/"pro-business" think tanks that boomed in the post-war era managed to place some judges and influence some lawmakers to completely break our anti-trust enforcement in the '70s, by shifting from a standard of "enormous corporations may be assumed harmful" to "specific harm that's very expensive to prove must be demonstrated", all but entirely eliminating anti-trust action.
  • Gormo 6mo ago
    The term "allow" implies that some entity called "we" exists, and has the capacity to exercise control over over unrelated third-parties' ability to engage in organized activity. No such entity exists, nor has such capacity.
    • bovermyer 6mo ago
      In theory, governments have the ability to curtail the activity of corporations. Are you challenging that idea?
      • Gormo 6mo ago
        Yes. Governments are themselves just organizations of people doing things, based on the same motivations and incentive structures as every other organization. The distinction between corporations, governments, and every other form of organized activity in society is an illusion.
• harisenbon 6mo ago
  Whenever I buy something with a zipper I check that it’s YKK first. If it isn’t, I know there’s a good chance they’re cheaping out on other places as well.
  • morsch 6mo ago
    The YKK zipper on my North Face hard shell broke. Got it replaced under warranty. Half a year later, it broke again. Anecdotes, sure, but I'm now buying cheap jackets instead.
    • LinuxAmbulance 6mo ago
      As far as I can tell, YKK has quality tiers now where not all YKK zippers are created equal. Rather unfortunate.
• chuckadams 6mo ago
  Got me an Osprey ~12 years ago. Light as a feather, tough as nails. But it's not the kind of thing you can just sling over your shoulder like my old North Face bag (which was stolen). But yeah, the moral of the story is, as always, "If you want durable, don't buy it from Wal-Mart" (or Target, or Kohls, or Amazon)
• MostlyStable 6mo ago
  While I personally find this kind of thing extremely annoying, to me, the main problem is the _difficulty_ of determining quality. The Donut media guys did a (relatively unscientific) video comparing a whole bunch of products from the 50s to modern day across several price points. What they found was that the things that "looked" the same now were simultaneously worse and also much cheaper. They also found that, if inflation adjusted, you get could, in most categories, the same or better quality for the same price. It was just that the brands and names that used to be quality were now usually not as much. So it is often the case that today, you can get something for cheaper than you ever could in the past (albeit not at a great quality), and if you are willing to pay higher prices (but often about the same as you would have paid in the past), you can still get good or even better quality. The main issue is that _determining_ which products actually are quality has also gotten harder in many cases. edit: found the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4C62HC1HSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4C62HC1HSo
  • CWuestefeld 6mo ago
    That's a worthwhile observation. It's good that there are lower-quality alternatives available. It means that people who couldn't in the past afford something at all, are now more likely to have some path to getting it. And even if you could afford the higher quality, you may not need it anyway. I've got a number of tools in my workshop that I'll probably use less than 10 times ever. I have no need of a high-quality product in these cases. I'd rather pay a fraction of that price to have something that'll survive the light duty that I put it to because I won't demand anything greater. But you're right, when you do need the higher quality, it can be tough to differentiate.
    • eesmith 6mo ago
      There are a lot of products which are nowhere near my Pareto frontier, but for the most part I lack the information needed to make that judgement. The result is that I, like others, spend too much on crappy products.
    • bluGill 6mo ago
      > I've got a number of tools in my workshop that I'll probably use less than 10 times ever. I have no need of a high-quality product in these cases. I'd rather pay a fraction of that price to have something that'll survive the light duty that I put it to because I won't demand anything greater. I've been burned too often with this thinking. All too often the cheap tool isn't just light duty so it breaks, it is not good enough to do the job at all. If the motor is too weak the tool won't do the job. If the wrench isn't precise enough it will round the bolt - this is worse than breaking: you can't fix the thing at all anymore with any quality of tool. I don't need the best tools, but I need one that is enough quality to do the job, and the cheap tools generally fail.
• dwh452 6mo ago
  in the old days the brand name was also the company name. now brand names mean nothing.
• elwebmaster 6mo ago
  We always see consumers blamed for choosing price over quality. How about retailers taking the blame for dumbing down or removing product specs? If two items look identical but one costs more than the other how can consumer be blamed for choosing the cheaper ones? Especially in the age of LLMs, it you are building a quality product you need to include a spec sheet of what makes your product better than the competitor. Not dumbed down marketing speak like "lasts longer" but specific details justifying the premium, like "zippers made in Japan" or the stitching density, fabric specifics, etc. Consumers who care can use LLM to understand what it all means and make informed choice. But when the information is hidden consumer will choose the cheapest option.
  • thegrim33 6mo ago
    Every backpack I've ever bought I was able to easily find all the relevant specifications I needed in order to choose a quality a pack. If you're looking at a pack which doesn't provide such specifications then that's an immediate giveaway that it's a low quality pack. It's not difficult, the average person really just does not care to do research. They instead just choose the cheapest one with the advertising that hooked them the best. But the information is there if you want it.
• kgkgklf 6mo ago
  Similar thing happened to the Linus Tech Tips backpack, it was supposed to have double bottoms, but chinese suppliers cheaped out. This is a very common chinese trick where they try to get away with something cheaper than specified. This is actually even expected when ordering stuff in large quantities from china, the supplier is guessing what parts they can cheap out on without anyone noticing, it’s not even considered fraud, but a kind of optimization.
• __mharrison__ 6mo ago
  Make sure your bag has YKK zippers (if it has zippers). I used to sell outdoor equipment. If a brand cheaps out on zippers, I wouldn't trust it. I really like my Patagonia Black hole mini MLC. Awesome access. Fits under an airplane seat. Generous laptop padding. Excellent zippers. Water bottle pocket. Lovely warranty (Patagonia store nearby often gives new product when I try to get product repaired).
  • sccxy 6mo ago
    I've got quite expensive ski jacket with 4 YKK zippers. 3 of 4 zippers are broken after few years of usage.
    • __mharrison__ 6mo ago
      I have multiple ski jackets and ski a couple times a week. No broken YKK zippers. Do you know a better zipper?
    • pushcx 6mo ago
      This is a little late for your nice jacket, but a lot of zipper damage comes from dirt getting into the teeth and then the zip grinds everything up. Outdoors shops sell a zipper lubricant to keep the dirt from sticking.
  • is_true 6mo ago
    I have a columbia backpack i bought like 20 years ago that doesnt have a ykk zipper but it's still in perfect condition, i've abused it a lot and the only thing broken is a rubber thingy it has for the headphones cable to go through.
  • ericpauley 6mo ago
    I've been using the same Patagonia Black Hole backpack for nearly a decade, every day include bike commutes (and crashes). The longevity is frustrating at this point because I'd really like a larger one but can't bring myself to switch until this one fails (which may be never). I don't see how it could be a surprise to anyone paying attention that a JanSport backpack doesn't deliver on quality. Perhaps there's more to the story but I got to the second AI slop one-liner and gave up.
• jezzamon 6mo ago
  I mean. If the cost per use of use is only slightly worse with these cheaper goods, you could just view that as a slight premium for the ability to switch styles every few years. It's also a smaller upfront investment, so taking account inflation it might not really be a big difference even considering that? Clearly most people choose to buy cheaper stuff and producing higher quality, more expensive things makes you a niche company
• lan321 6mo ago
  Since we're all shilling our favourite backpacks: I've been using an Ikea Varldens for the past 6-8 years. Very efficient for my use case (2 work laptops, groceries, travel luggage, documents and earbud case, tools). It has a couple of nice small compartments and a single large one so it's very light for the size and material. Until now the only thing that's annoyed me was the long straps when riding a motorcycle, so I ran cable ties through the loops to stop them from slapping my hands and sides. It's seen quite a bit of abuse and it's still intact. It's even practically waterproof.
  • qup 6mo ago
    I'll jump in: I was stuck in layover many years ago and bought a Topo Designs backpack -- Google says it's a 30L Apex Global travel bag. I use it every week, it shows no signs of degradation over approximately a decade. Huge beefy zippers, tons of pockets and organization for those who are into that. I paid like $200, but seems like they're cheaper now. Hopefully not because of the reasons in the article. At the time, I believe they were a small company from the state my layover was in--maybe Colorado.
    • operatingthetan 6mo ago
      I have a topo pack too, very high quality and the design seems timeless to me.
• oasisbob 6mo ago
  The irony of composing this article about industrial sameness with an LLM is too much.
• delichon 6mo ago
  I've got a story of this but backwards. I know a guy, a hiking guru, moderately famous for his backpacks. He's an ultralight long distance enthusiast who designs much of his own equipment. I went to his house for a weekend session with a few people to learn to make our own, and I'm still using the one I made. For a few years he made and sold them out of his living room. Then he sold his brand to an outfit that scaled it up into a decent business. But the lightweight hiking guru made ultralight backpacks, with thin material and very minimal extras. It was designed to be light by a guy who could sew, so he was happy to fix it as needed on the trail. To him that was a feature not a bug. Meanwhile the company that bought the brand and design necessarily made it more robust, feature-full, and twice as heavy. They were pretty much forced to by the number of returns they were getting. So now I treasure my old backpack that worseonpurpose would probably deplore, and keep it repaired so that I don't have to make another or go buy one that worseonpurpose would probably like better.
  • EA 6mo ago
    Yep. Ultralight hikers are industrious and good maintainers. They take pride in lightweight bags and making them or acquiring them. Those hikers will deal with a defect on the trail or after they get to port and expect to do so with their pack. Your average backpack consumer is a different breed. Cosmetic designs, logos, colors, and generic pockets are key marketing traits of consumer backpacks and small rips or tears are seen as reasons to replace the backpack.
  • Lio 6mo ago
    I agree. I don't really get worseonpurpose's argument here. I have two proper backpacks, an old UK made Karimor Jaguar from the late 80s and an OMM Classic 32 I bought recently. Although the Jag is pretty good shape considering its age it's the OMM that I reach for now. The OMM is actually modern take on an old Karimor design from 1973 but if you take all the removable bits off it comes in at around 380g. That's almost 1.5Kg lighter than my old backpack. For short weekend trips that's a massive saving. I seem to remember a story about Atom Packs and Aiguille Alpine. Aiguille make really tough packs for mountain rescue teams to throw equipment in. Atom Packs was founded to use slightly less robust but lighter materials for through hikers by a lad who did his apprenticeship Aiguille. I think their merit in both approaches and I like the trade offs depending on use cases. EDIT: I've just noticed that Aiguille now do "light" weight versions of their packs in 420D nylon. What I like about that is they are actually cheaper instead of charging a premium for thinner materials (hand made prices but still).
• Someone 6mo ago
  > A $35 JanSport that dies in eighteen months: $23 per year. […] A $200 bag that lasts ten years: $20 per year. Already cheaper. If it is, it isn’t by much. The difference between $200 paid now versus 7 times $35 = $245 over a period of ten years is about 5 years of interest over $200. At 4% interest, that’s about $40.
  • bluGill 6mo ago
    Don't forget to account for your time buying each new one and writing your name in it. If you don't replace soon enough also account for the lost value of things that fall out the holes.
    • Someone 6mo ago
      And for the fact that you may not need a backpack that lasts 10 years, or that you may want one that fits with whatever you prefer, e.g. matching what is in fashion over the years, or matching you growing older.
• the_real_cher 6mo ago
  Is there any way I can see all of the mergers and conglomerations of large companies? Blue Bell ice cream and Jan-sport backpacks owned by the same company seems crazy to me.
• duxup 6mo ago
  JanSport was always a budget-ish / not great brand from what I remember. I used them, but high quality was never their thing.
  • wan23 6mo ago
    When I was a kid everyone knew that JanSport was the one to get if you actually wanted your bag to survive. Absolutely one of those things where you'd spend more replacing the cheaper bags over and over compared to buying the JanSport once.
  • OkayPhysicist 6mo ago
    Their lifetime warranty used to be taken extremely seriously, and I really don't know what lifetime they were referring to. I had an old external frame pack that was my grandfather's back when my father was a Boy Scout. That pack outlived its buyer, and I was still using at Philmont where they had the same model as a museum piece. One of the zippers broke, and the back mesh was disintegrating, and pretty much as a joke we made a warranty claim. They honored that, circa 2012 or so. Their schoolbags were pretty great in the 2000s, too. Withstood some serious abuse, though their zippers were notably on the decline. But that was covered by warranty, so it was fine. By the mid 2010's, they were in full decline, and that's about when I stopped recommending their stuff.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6mo ago
    Absolutely not the case. Back in the days of exterior frame packs, Jansport was likely one of the best brands anywhere in the world. Incredibly well designed and made. OTOH, I haven't thought of Jansport as a go-to brand for a serious backpack in 30+ years ...
• lowbloodsugar 6mo ago
  The issue here isn’t quality or market segmentation. The issue here is a de facto monopoly and the illusion of competition. Ok there’s also the issue of well known brand names now being entirely different companies and entirely different manufacturers. I just bought an Eddie Bauer fleece. I own three, well four. The fourth is going straight back. It is garbage. Eddie Bauer is one of the brands that got bought and now rents out the label.
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• vivzkestrel 6mo ago
  - dont see a contact page on your website at all and your archive has only 3 posts https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ - here is an idea for the next post: AAA gaming got worse on purpose. Dont forget to mention anti consumer practices by EA and Ubisoft when you are at it
• Jaygles 6mo ago
  Product labels should prominently display the parent corporation. Whatever is the top of the chain of ownership.
• justinhj 6mo ago
  Anecdotally this rings true with me. I have a 15 year old (at least) Samsonite backpack. It has zero signs of wear and has been on many trips, jammed under my feet in economy or on a dirty train floor. It was relatively expensive at the time at about $120. It was looking a bit sad and dusty so I upgraded to a fancier looking Bellroy that cost twice as much. When it arrived I instantly knew it was going back. It felt cheap, it looked cheap, and the compartment layout did not feel at all utilitarian.
• looneysquash 6mo ago
  That's deplorable. We probably need to dig one or more levels deeper though. What changed to enable and popularized these bad business practices?
• oliwarner 6mo ago
  Thread counts and Denier are poor metrics for items that employ technical fabrics, seam glues and other modern improvements that legitimately lower these sorts of simple measurements. People don't want to buy the same heavyweight waxed backpacks their grandparents used. There definitely are BOM- and manufacturing reduction movements in these mature products but backpacks honestly don't seem nearly as bad as (eg) walking boots. The Worse On Purpose article on power tools follows a similar tack. Offshore manufacturing, corporate consolidation and cheaper processes don't actually make the overall picture worse when we have affordable tools packing modern lithium batteries and brushless neodymium motors.
• maerF0x0 6mo ago
  The math that makes this intentional Price of a bag divided by years it actually lasts. That's your cost per year. A $35 JanSport that dies in eighteen months: $23 per year. Add the shipping cost when you try the warranty. Add the replacement cost when the claim gets denied. Add your time. A $200 bag that lasts ten years: $20 per year. Already cheaper. At fifteen years, which the well-built ones consistently do, you're at $13 per year. As much as people gripe about subscriptions, people forget there's an equivalent internal subscription rate to every product with a lifespan. And beyond that there's the opportunity cost of a large outlay with a FUD component around the longevity. Humans are, as far as i understand, hard-wired for irrational choices around shortermism vs long term bets, you basically have to externalize your thinking to accomplish better. (This could be by writing down your thoughts and then analyzing them externally as a critic, or by passing it off to an AI, etc). The $25 bag compared to the $200 bag, has $175 worth of free cash flow for other (potentially unexpected) purchases, can be replaced when trends/use case changes (or it gets dirty, or lost...), the capital could be invested in the market to generate ~$1 a month of passive income, and as far as the human can tell it's roughly the same. Basically all the thoughts of a JIT marketplace but on the personal scale...
• TYPE_FASTER 6mo ago
  Osprey backpacks have worked well for me.
• fellowniusmonk 6mo ago
  Just because I don't want them to go out of business. I bought a backpack goruck gr1 26l nearly 10 years ago in Feb of 2017. I was a consulting and traveling heavily for many years and a digital nomad for others. I've carried that bag everywhere, it is good as new, I can hold a week of clothes in it, I recently got a vacuum pouch for winter thermals so that applies even for ski trips now. Its design lets me fill it up, zip it almost totally shut then compress it down to fit toiletries at the very top. As much abuse as I've put it through it is still perfect. If moths or something don't get to it it may actually outlive me at this point I see so little wear. Frankly I wish I could offer companies that make stuff that lasts forever a subscription fee or something to keep them using the same build quality, I mean cheap fast fashion/manf/etc seems to exert massive economic pressure to enshittify everything.
• zackmorris 6mo ago
  Friendly reminder that antitrust enforcement and deregulation are incompatible
• vscode-rest 6mo ago
  My strategy with pretty much everything I can is to deeply research to find any Made In USA variant of whatever it is I’m trying to purchase, and buy whatever that is regardless of price. I’ve never had that fail me. For backpacks, my Waterfield pack has held up fantastically across several years of regularly absolutely stuffing it with gear for my work travel.
• Eric_WVGG 6mo ago
  Speaking of “worse on purpose,” I immediately tried to subscribe to this site’s RSS feed — none. Unthinkable on any blogging platform for most of the past twenty years.
  • aendruk 6mo ago
    Same experience. “No feed found.” I chuckled at the irony and closed the tab.
• erikig 6mo ago
  Unpopular take here but I'm really ok with this. The sale of the high quality brand allows the original entrepreneurs to exit their business to someone that thinks they can run it more efficiently. The decline in quality allows for innovative upstarts to try new things.
  • JMiao 6mo ago
    nah, you've described it objectively. maybe should add pollution from over production and consumption of shit gear.
• ethagnawl 6mo ago
  As the saying goes, being poor is expensive.
• 34679 6mo ago
  If you're looking for a backpack, I can't recommend Osprey enough. They are still a independent US company with a lifetime warranty they actually stand by. I had to call their customer service just last week after I ordered the wrong size bag. I was connected to an actual human immediately, and he sent me a prepaid return label, even though it was my fault and I was fully expecting to pay for return shipping myself. I own several of their bags and have never had a single issue with any of them.
  • vjvjvjvjghv 6mo ago
    I had a buckle that was broken on one of my backpacks. Sent a message to Osprey and they sent a replacement buckle. I was quite impressed.
  • jeffrallen 6mo ago
    If you live in Switzerland and vibe with their brand, Freitag bags totally rock and never die.
    • MrBuddyCasino 6mo ago
      I don’t think anyone below GenX is allowed to wear them.
      • jeffrallen 6mo ago
        Possibly only people that say "totally rock" can totally rock them.
  • bradyd 6mo ago
    I have an Osprey backpacking pack that's about 10 years old. I had a squirrel chew through the zipper on the removable pouch. I sent it off to Osprey to be repaired and they sent me a brand new pouch.
  • seanw444 6mo ago
    My favorite bags I've had are from Mystery Ranch, but they're from before the Yeti acquisition, and I haven't tried any since, so I don't know how quality has held up. I do know they've eliminated a ton of their catalog.
• bob1029 6mo ago
  I think this is more of a case of the product getting worse incidentally. Contrast with leaders who are actually making things worse on purpose. Apparently, for no other reason than to be ugly and mean about it. I've been on this earth long enough to discover that monsters are real. Windows 11 comes to mind as an example of something actually being made worse on purpose. Making it impossible to associate the original notepad.exe with text files is certainly not linked with business outcomes in any direct way. This seems to be purely about antagonizing the user base as much as possible. The only theory I can arrive at is that there is a secret cortisol harvesting scheme that results in better financial outcomes for Microsoft. It helps to differentiate these cases. I don't like capitalism taken to the extreme, but the other thing is significantly worse. Intent makes all the difference. Engineered to suck vs sucks because it wasn't engineered are two completely different levels of evil.
• lkramer 6mo ago
  There are so many examples of this. Processed food, sweets and so on. Cadbury, Toblerone, etc live on the brand recognition, but have come objectively worse over the years. Often they are owned by the same mega corp that have a strategy of milking the brands for as long as possible. It's bait and switch on global, organised scale and it's almost impossible to fight except on an individual level.
• hayleox 6mo ago
  I wonder if there's an advertising law angle here. If a company sells multiple products in the same product category, they really shouldn't be allowed to have them branded so that they seem like multiple companies. The main name/logo on these products should be required to have something that makes it clear that they're all from the same company. They can pick one of their backpack brands to keep (and eliminate/sell off the rest), or they can tack "VF" onto the front of each brand name, or something like that. A customer shouldn't have to dig into the fine print or do research to know whether two products are from the same manufacturer.
  • Anamon 6mo ago
    Tough to define and enforce, though. It reminds me of EIG (Endurance International Group), who at least at one point owned a large portion of major mainstream webhosts (including Arvixe, Bluehost, Hostgator, A Small Orange, Site5...). They "streamlined" them all into one big operation, with reliability and customer support going to shit for every host they bought. But they kept all the brands separate, so people kept bouncing from host to host, wondering why they were all so shit, not realising that they never actually switched providers.
• drob518 6mo ago
  Basically, all the old brands that had great quality were killed by private equity and have become skin suits worn by low-cost imitators trying to squeeze another penny out of customers. There are still good brands, but they are increasingly niche and you certainly pay a large premium for them.
• vondur 6mo ago
  I've been buying my bags from Timbuk2. High quality, I had a messenger bag that I gave away after 10 years and it was in great condition. I have a backpack and messenger bag for them. They are also designed to protect laptops/tablets really well.
  • parliament32 6mo ago
    I'm still daily-ing a Timbuk2 from a decade ago and it looks fantastic, no issues whatsoever.
• ghighi7878 6mo ago
  > A $35 JanSport that dies in eighteen months: $23 per year. Add the shipping cost when you try the warranty. Add the replacement cost when the claim gets denied. Add your time. > A $200 bag that lasts ten years: $20 per year. Already cheaper. At fifteen years, which the well-built ones consistently do, you're at $13 per year. This ignores the money you would earn by not giving money upfront. A 23$ expense every year is cheaper than 200$ upfront over 10 years, because you will earn 15 euros over that 170 Euro first year if you put it in S&P500. And then 12 nect year and and 10 in third year and you are already ahead of the 200 Eurro bag. And you just dont spend time in warranty. Just throw it away dn buy next one for 35 Euros.
  • xnorswap 6mo ago
    Or put another way, we need to compare the net present value. The more expensive choice now is an investment into not buying future bags, and the future returns on that investment should be discounted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounting
  • svnt 6mo ago
    The bigger issue for me is these business models prey on the poor and overworked. There are a lot of people who can’t buy a $200 backpack because they need that money for food, but they still need a backpack, only have time to grab something at Wal-Mart, and they get stuck in poverty product churn. It’s like regressive taxation but carried out by capitalists.
  • crazygringo 6mo ago
    It also ignores the fact that your backpack needs change. At various points in my life I've needed: - A huge backpack, then a small one - Water bottle holders weren't important, then they were - Straps I could tighten to hold a yoga mat weren't important, then they were - A laptop slot wasn't important, then it was critical Plus my preference in color has changed, as well as my aesthetic preferences. Paying $200 for a backpack would be insane when I'll have different needs in a few years anyways. I buy cheap-ish backpacks, I've never had a zipper or seam fail on me before I needed to buy a new one for a different reason anyways. Or it was just stolen/lost. My general life philosophy is to buy the cheapest thing that meets my needs generally, replace as necessary (since I often need to replace/upgrade for functional reasons anyways), and buy a very few expensive high-quality items that I know are actually worth it. Like a mid-tier espresso machine, a good leather jacket, quality boots, a decent home speaker, and... I'm honestly struggling to think of anything else.
• runjake 6mo ago
  I tend to find a relatively reliable model of something and stick with it. I've noticed, without exception, across clothing, backpacks, and appliances that the next iteration is more cheaply made: - Thinner fabrics - Less stitching - And on appliances and other tools, more plastic parts where they used to be metal. My latest <LredactedG> washer has a newly plastic mounting bracket that appears designed to fail within a decade due to vibration. Even the metal backing is thinner that the previous generation.
• cheschire 6mo ago
  Meanwhile my LTT commuter backpack, while expensive, did not get worse on purpose. It’s so good I’ve considered getting their full size backpack as well.
• dfee 6mo ago
  > People who do get warranty replacements report receiving bags that are worse than the one they sent in. Thinner fabric. Cheaper hardware. You mailed back a 2016 JanSport and got a 2025 JanSport, and those are fundamentally different products. This rhymes. Recently, I took my iPhone 16 Pro in to swap out the screen (there was an ever growing dead spot, and they handled it free of charge). Unfortunately, the screen they replaced it with is much more fragile – hairline fractures within days. I know the replacement screen is of lesser structural quality, but I can't prove it. I've had iPhones since the day they debuted in 2007(?), and this moment connected the dots across years of screen replacements. The original is always much more durable. But again, sadly I can't prove it.
  • rkomorn 6mo ago
    My iPhone 16 Pro's screen got scratched/cracked within weeks of me getting it when none of my other iPhones (5 of them from the 3GS until the 13 mini) ever had any screen issues. It's hard to not feel like the durability is decreasing.
• parliament32 6mo ago
  AI slop, I'm sure the contents are interesting but after a few paragraphs of the LLM "tone" I gave up.
• tristor 6mo ago
  > The brand reputation built by decades of quality products is now being used to move cheap products to buyers who trust the logo. This is private equity in a nutshell, really. This is what every single PE leveraged buyout ultimately ends up doing. Take a beloved brand, or better yet (in this case) a group of related beloved brands, cut costs, and reap the profit margins until the brand dies.
• jauntywundrkind 6mo ago
  It's a fun thread here. I feel like there's another component: that the consumer base has become so detached from making things in general. We are surrounded in ever more stuff, ever more material, but collectively are out of touch with making things, with material, and assemblage there-of. Our culture's perspective is as critic, as shopper, as buyer. Sure few of us were expect shoemakers or backpack makers, but people around us were industrious, did provide labor to make goods that people around them bought. The cycle of production had been directly apparent. This is low key one of the things I really had hope for for a while with 3d printers: that they opened up & exposed what is. That they would be a force to spread insight & to regard the little mechanisms and means of the world all around us. I think that's a little bit true, but it's pretty niche, and I expect most prints are for static parts; no movement or dynamic behavior. And it's somewhat the anti-process: crafter in a box. It's still amazing but barring major changes, I have over indexed. It's also worth noting the role of DMCA anti-cirumvention laws in casting mankind out of ever coming to grasp with what makes up the world. The combined legal and technological destruction of any right to repair is really not just about repair: it's an obstruction to humans understanding the world around them. We cannot become savvy in the world when the government tells us that business's right to keep us from knowing the world outstrips any mankind-the-toolmaker / natural scientist role/title/god-bourne nature, that cutting us off from the universe & living in ignorance is a hard cast legal binding fact. I find this to be as fallen as it comes. How do we stay alive as the race we were when our laws unwind the fantastic graces of inquiry the gods saw fit to give us?
• eYrKEC2 6mo ago
  I tried to use the Teton 65L to ruck. Just put a 50 lbs bag of wheat in there. Shoulder strap failed on insert to main pack after six 1-hour rucks . Got a replacement. Zipper failed at bottom on another one. Wanted to increase load to 100 lbs, but gonna have to go with a different brand.
• jdelman 6mo ago
  Pangram says this article is about 50% AI generated, including the opening several paragraphs.
• azan_ 6mo ago
  So it’s bad that now apart from high quality expensive option (which is still available!) you can also get cheaper, lower quality one?
  • OkayPhysicist 6mo ago
    The problem is that there is a deliberate lack of information that clearly distinguishes the "technically a product" category from the "someone put effort into this" category. Price doesn't do it, brand doesn't do it, name recognition doesn't do it because companies are constantly enshittifying existing products, too.
• chromacity 6mo ago
  This is yet another instance of a weirdly specific domain that pops up and starts posting seemingly LLM-generated articles that follow a single pattern - in this case, how "they" made everything worse. We had a similar instance few days ago with smarterarticles.co.uk, and many others before that. I get that this says something we might believe, but I don't think it's a good use of our time to engage with engineered nerd-bait that probably wasn't produced in good faith.
• evolve2k 6mo ago
  Talk to any Aussie tech workers you know and chances are they or their friend has a Crumpler backpack. (No affiliation just a big fan). Originally created by a bike courier who sick of bags breaking sewed a bag out of the toughest material he could get, marine canvas. To this day they make somewhat indestructible, well designed, trendy well loved bags. Also they have a lifetime warranty and repair policy that is very hard to beat. Maybe you’re not local, but you can tell these will be well made (and they really are) https://www.crumpler.com/pages/repair https://www.crumpler.com/pages/repair Not sure if they ship to the US. But worth a look if you are serious about excellent well made well design backpacks. https://www.crumpler.com/collections/backpacks https://www.crumpler.com/collections/backpacks I know so many Aussie tech folk who swear by the Crunpler Entity as their laptop bag of choice. https://www.crumpler.com/products/entity?variant=44393825992783&collection=backpacks https://www.crumpler.com/products/entity?variant=44393825992...
  • LinuxAmbulance 6mo ago
    I picked up a Crumpler Brazillion Dollar Home bag about a decade back to carry all my photography gear, as there were no other bags on the market that would allow you to pack a large format monorail camera in them. That bag is built like a tank. Still ticking along, a little scuffed up, but zero issues. If you're carting around a few thousand dollars worth of delicate gear, it definitely offers some serious peace of mind.
  • hencq 6mo ago
    I bought Crumpler messenger bag about 15 years ago (in San Francisco when they still had a store there). Can confirm it’s indestructible. I’m glad to hear they’ve kept up their standards to this day!
    • evolve2k 6mo ago
      Just had a look and seems that you can get a pretty decent range of pre-owned crumpler bags on eBay and similar. Worth a look.
  • BaguetteOps 6mo ago
• dehrmann 6mo ago
  > JanSport still advertises a lifetime warranty...Go try to use it. Literally every product with a lifetime warranty does this same game. It's best to read them as puffery.
• CoolThings 6mo ago
  Seven years ago I bought a Jansport backpack for 50 usd, for daily use. After a year, its zipper broke. Shipping it to Jansport required to pay 15 usd for shipping. So instead, I bought in Walmart a generic backpack for 15 usd, that I still use seven years later. Never bought Jansport again.
  • peacebeard 6mo ago
    Curious if the generic one had YKK zippers and the Jansport did not, since people frequently emphasize their value.
• helle253 6mo ago
  man, im feeling EXTREMELY vindicated with buying a backpack from a smaller, independent brand (Epperson Mountaineering) my backpack hasn't shown any major signs of wear or tear in the.. idk, 5 years since purchase? I left the shoulder sling in an airplane a couple years ago - it was in virtually perfect condition as well, I'm still pretty bummed at its loss.
• benced 6mo ago
  The melodrama of this article really rubs me the wrong way, especially when some of the brands they mention do still make good backpacks (like The North Face). The author acknowledges that with "it's a deliberate segmentation" strategy... which is just another way of saying that they make stuff at all price points.
• ctoth 6mo ago
  Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
• dijit 6mo ago
  Wait until you hear about glasses!
• krabat 6mo ago
  Boots. I have bought Italian-made boots for 23 years - the same brand and model. 1. pair the inner lining died, rest was fine-to worn for 7 years, including laces, 2. pair lasted 7 years, the inner lining held this time, laces too. 3. pair was smaller than indicated, I stood the pain for one winter, could not "grow them", 4. pair has laces die after 1 year, leather cracking after 2 years, rubber seal opening after 2 years and lace (metal) hooks straightening from tying the laces. And this is the company, who has always promised exchange of soles for 100$ - but THAT has never been an issue. Metal hooks, lace-weave and thread, leather, glue - I wonder how much they save, but I have bought my last pair. VIBRAM boots and soles.
• nazgulnarsil 6mo ago
  This should be called what it is: Brand Fracking Trust will be arbitraged until there are few information asymmetries to exploit.
• nunez 6mo ago
  63% AI generated according to Pangram. Better than 100%; this makes me think that they wrote the copy manually then used an LLM to clean it up. Anyway, VF also bought Timberland and, by proxy, Smartwool. They absolutely tanked both brands.
  • disqard 6mo ago
    I was trying to figure out why this article got flagged. Thanks!
• mancerayder 6mo ago
  This feels like the Arcteryx Hoodie situation. I've had a couple of them for going close to 5 or 8 years. I mistreat them - throwing them around, washing them normally in a machine, etc. Absolutely bullet proof with very mild pilling. When I went to buy the exact same thing, the newer models cost the same thing or more, but the reviews all complained that the product has changed, that it pills after a few months, etc. The same thing happened to me with t shirt and other clothing brands. Now if I buy something good, I'm rebuying multiple of it even if it's unneeded since apparently we live under the Law of Enshittification of Everything.
• everyone 6mo ago
  These are really good backpacks imo https://www.sporthouse.ie/ https://www.sporthouse.ie/
• tasuki 6mo ago
  Did they also buy Deuter and Osprey? What about Decathlon?
  • Anamon 6mo ago
    According to people in the thread, Deuter and Osprey are still independent and high-quality. I don't know about backpacks specifically, but my general impression with Decathlon and their own brands has been that they somehow manage to be ridiculously cheap, while also being better made and lasting longer than many name brands that cost several times as much.
    • tasuki 6mo ago
      My impression of Decathlon is that they also have very helpful and usually knowledgable staff. People go work there because they're into the sports!
• josefritzishere 6mo ago
  I hate this so much.
• sureMan6 6mo ago
  This article is LLM written and unsourced so the entire thing could be a hallucination and there's no reason to trust any claim made in it, don't even read it
• cratermoon 6mo ago
  I still have shoes I bought decades ago. Those brands are now nothing special, after the companies were bought or taken over by private equity.
• phendrenad2 6mo ago
  This is why brand loyalty or even brand recognition is stupid in the 21st century. Everything is made in the same factories anyway, so buying the Amazon item with a brand name like "FOOTHSYMPYZT" or whatever is the way to get exactly what you want. Just set the price point to whatever Amazon recommends and multiply it by 1.5 or 2.
• queenkjuul 6mo ago
  > From a shareholder's perspective, the bag that falls apart is the better product. As long as we collectively decide to keep living in a society dictated by shareholders, this shit will just keep getting worse and worse and worse...
• moritzwarhier 6mo ago
  Parts of it read like a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778933 Sam Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness
• dividefuel 6mo ago
  I firmly believe that many goods like this fall into a cycle. Existing products are cheaply made and poor quality, so a new company emerges producing a higher quality product. Eventually word gets out and their sales blow up. But to keep their profits going up, they begin to coast and cut corners. Fast forward a decade or two, and now they're the ones making low quality gear, leaving the market open for a new high quality brand. In short, high quality leads to recognition and growth, and then cutting corners leads to profit.
• jrussino 6mo ago
  I heard advice from Adam Savage on the topic of cost-vs-quality that I've found to be quite useful. It was something along the lines of: When you're first getting into a new craft/hobby and need a specific tool, get the cheapest one you can buy. When you're first starting out, you probably don't really know how to judge quality, and you don't have a good sense for what features/enhancements you actually need (not to mention, you may or may not know you're actually going to stick with the hobby at all). By the time that first cheap one breaks, or you gain some experience/skill and hit your frustration limit with it, you'll have a much better understanding of what you want out of the tool and will be better position to pick out the "best" version to suit your needs.
• PaulDavisThe1st 6mo ago
  While I would not disagree with many of the points made in TFA, I think this is a bad example to demonstrate the problem the author is trying to address. Why? Over the last twenty years, many high end backpack designs have moved towards lighter weight materials and construction, because of trends in the world of backpacking. This means that even in the high end segment of the market, comparing packs to ones from decades ago can be misleading - they are working with different design goals. None of this eliminates the points about cheaper materials and construction at the lower end of the market, but it does make things a bit more complex than they need to be if a different example was used to illustrate all this.
• amai 6mo ago
  I recommend Deuter backpacks. German overengineering at its best. After ten years my backpack is still good as new.
• ChoGGi 6mo ago
  Thank goodness for Project Farm on YouTube
• erelong 6mo ago
  "Make Your Own Gear" / MYOG sites have tutorials on how to make your own backpacks if you want to go that route
• cybercatgurrl 6mo ago
  Global enshittification is the end goal of capitalism.
• msephton 6mo ago
  I still use vintage Gravis Metro (my current one is 20 years old) and the smaller Japanese Gravis Mini Metro (my daily; currently 10 years old, with a few holes appearing in the non-cordura base).
• zombot 6mo ago
  Haven't you heard? Worse is better.
• Anamon 6mo ago
  I suspect there may also be a strong "it's what people want" aspect to this. Why do smartphones barely outlive their warranty period? Check the statistics on how long most people keep their phone before voluntarily replacing it, and it makes a lot more sense. Why invest in the premium components and workmanship to make your phone last 5 years, if 95% of your customers will not use it for more than 18 months? (These numbers are made up, but from what I remember, the reality is not far off from that). I could totally believe a similar thing being at play for backpacks, jackets, shoes, etc. where the people who keep their stuff long enough to even notice it falling apart are a maybe vocal, but small minority.