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A premium brand that got significantly worse but didn't drop the price? Seems obvious that this is going to be a story about private equity or a similar acquisi
by CobrastanJorji 2mo ago
A premium brand that got significantly worse but didn't drop the price? Seems obvious that this is going to be a story about private equity or a similar acquisition, and indeed it is.
https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ has a giant list of these, with a tracker that breaks down hundreds of once-premium brands and the exact changes that the companies that acquire the brands make to make the things cheaper and worse, capitalizing on the good name of the company until they wear it down completely.
- NoDodgeQuestion 2mo agofwiw, as a giant list might be ok, but writing is ai edited
- WarmWash 2mo ago- Launch amazing brand with tight/negative margins to drive heavy consumer adoption - Sell brand to megacorp/PE for hundreds of millions or billions. - Brand gets "optimized for cost" so buyer gets an ROI. - By the time the public has soured on the brand, the buyout has paid for itself plus profit. The solution would be to launch these products with high margin built in, but then everybody scoffs at the cost and you die in the womb. The unicorn solution is that you actually invent a way of producing the high value thing for very cheap, cheaper than everybody else, so you can compete on price while still having top-shelf inputs. But man, that problem is about 5 orders of magnitude more difficult to solve than simply coming up with a product people will like.
- sdellis 2mo agoThe best solution for everyone is to come up with a quality product that people like, price it fairly, and then don't enshittify it. Win-win!
- jdm2212 2mo agoNot "everyone" -- if you're the owner of a successful ice cream brand who spent a decade grinding in the ice cream game, cashing out the brand equity and getting to live on a yacht might feel better.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- jerlam 2mo agoAnd if you know the new owners will screw up your ice cream brand, you can wait a decade and do it all over again, leveraging your new wealth, knowledge, and connections to make it easier.
- jdm2212 2mo agopretty much the Honest Tea -> Just Ice Tea story :)
- sdellis 2mo agoOr you could just work hard and put your kids through college by making an honest living producing an honest product. Greed is what is destroying our world, and it is also the obvious one-word explanation for what happened to Talenti.
- WarmWash 2mo agoI don't think you are aware, probably because no one wants to hear it, how unbelievably greedy the people you sell stuff to are. If you think corporations are ultimate incarnation of pure greed, and consumers are clear minded rational actors bringing an honest offer to the table...well, start a business and see
- sdellis 2mo agoIf that's really how you feel about your customers, it may be time to get out of whatever business you're in. To get back to the point, Talenti's loss of quality is in no way related to consumer greed.
- jdm2212 2mo agoThe problem that companies like Talenti run into is: a guy starts the company because he loves making ice cream; foodies get into it and make it really popular; once it's popular the average customer is someone who can't tell good ice cream from bad. And so the founder has a very valuable asset (a brand that is popular) but has also lost the thing he loved about the job (making a specialty product for discerning customers). There is nothing unreasonable or greedy about exiting at that point. Let someone who wants to run a mature food business do so, and enjoy a well-deserved payout after years of hard work. All the discerning customers who care deeply about quality move on to the next thing, and normies who just like the brand name won't mind the changes.
- WarmWash 2mo agoI'm not sure if you are kidding or not, it would be a funny sarcastic remark in the right circles, but if serious, this exact line of thinking is exactly why things like indie-go-go and kick starter are just absolute meat grinders of starry-eyed individuals.
- dnautics 2mo agoa lot of these products have been around for too long for it to fit the model you're proposing
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- colechristensen 2mo agoAnd you must ask yourself, is the ability to sell your company to another company a benefit or should there be considerably stronger hurdles for this kind of thing?
- TuringNYC 2mo ago> And you must ask yourself, is the ability to sell your company to another company a benefit or should there be considerably stronger hurdles for this kind of thing? Distribution is a huge problem for small companies. So you almost have to sell to a bigger firm to get beyond a certain size.
- inigyou 2mo agoor partner with someone who can do distribution? I don't see why that necessitates selling the company. It's like saying the story in my game sucked so I sold it to Disney.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoThe modern SV corporate model is: - PRODUCT: The corporation - RESOURCE: The users of the corporate software/hardware (which is actually resource feed) - CUSTOMER: Investors/VC/PE/Megacorp
- nh23423fefe 2mo agowhy would ask myself that, i have nothing to do with the owners or buyers.
- chrononaut 2mo ago> worseonpurpose A lot of irony in that name with all the written AI slop.
- roryirvine 2mo agoQuite apart from the extreme sloppiness, the person who runs it is a "Development Strategist" in Palantir's sales team. I'd suggest being extremely wary about signing up with them.
- srmatto 2mo agoWow nearly every mattress company I can think of is on the avoid list there.