Worse on Purpose

RamblingCTO•43 minutes ago

Yeah not sure. Barbour for example has a few good models that are produced in England. The rest is from China and not up to standard. Well known, but this page just lists it as "approved". Same for carhartt actually.

FinnLobsien•about 1 hour ago

I wonder if there’s an inverse of this: brands that actually got better over time because they don’t have massive brand history to fall back on, or simply because they actually care.

altacc•about 1 hour ago

The site lists "Approved" companies that have not been enshittified by private equity. What springs to mind for me are scissor manufacturers Ernest Wright and Whiteley. They maintained quality, relied on expert workers and aim to keep high quality staff for their career and hire people to learn manual skills.

The result of this is high prices and waitlists for many of their products, which is the exact opposite of what private equity and conglomerates want.

Another interesting example from the UK is Howies. They were bought by Timberland, which then in succession got bought by VF, a big US conglomerate. The Howies brand was small and insignificant globally so the management of Howies were allowed to buy the company back and it continues as a niche

Private equity companies exist in a range of sizes, some buying big multinational brands and others buying small local brands. It's a omnivorous predator and it's down to the owners of companies to resist the temptation of money.

jghn•35 minutes ago

It's difficult to keep track over time, however. Brands will build up a reputation as being the one that's actually good for a particular product, and then for one reason or another reduce in quality while relying on their brand history. And it can take a long time for that word of mouth reputation to die off. The effect is bolstered by people who own older generations of the product citing longevity.

An example that comes to mind is Speed Queen for laundry machines. People in the know now look for *used* Speed Queen machines, but casual searches will still turn up the old reputation.

FinnLobsien•44 minutes ago

Yeah it's quite interesting how most of the decline of great brands came as a result of ownership changes, not complacency on part of the owner/founder.

I've actually found AI a great resource for finding brands that offer great value for money by buying from obscure factories/brands with the same quality attributes as major brands, but without all the marketing spend and brand margin to subsidize.

AnimalMuppet•14 minutes ago

Why would private equity not want high prices and a wait list? That's guaranteed future sales at high margin. Sounds pretty good to me...

lotsofpulp•33 minutes ago

>The result of this is high prices and waitlists for many of their products, which is the exact opposite of what private equity and conglomerates want.

Sounds like the opposite of what buyers want.

M95D•15 minutes ago

Buyers are diverse. PE are not.

M95D•about 1 hour ago

Suggestion: sort/filter by location (EU/US/etc.).

pizzaiolo•about 1 hour ago

This goes well with https://consumerrights.wiki

fwip•about 1 hour ago

As far as I can tell, this is a site for an LLM to vomit out the same basic article with different specific products each time.

roryirvine•4 minutes ago

To be fair, the author works at Palantir, so probably does have relevant experience at making things worse on purpose!

bookofjoe•about 1 hour ago

Methodology: https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/methodology

jackb4040•11 minutes ago

Completely doesn't answer the AI question, nor the "who's paying for this" question. Because presumably it's not a hobbyist buying every tool, mattress, and boot in the world annually.

NoDodgeQuestion•22 minutes ago

WorseOnPurpose methodology page does not answer the question: is it claude vomit or not? Are the articles written partially or totally by AI?

Worse on Purpose

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Discussion (9 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews