Is it possible to avoid the continuing decline in quality of consumer products brought on by corporate greed?

When Keyana Sapp, 31, went shopping for a new backpack, the brands he remembered as a kid were just not the same.

He researched the companies, from North Face to JanSport and Eastpak, and soon realized they were all owned by the VF Corporation after a wave of acquisitions in the 2000s. After a Reddit post he made about his discovery picked up traction, he started looking at other types of consumer goods – cookware, shoes, tools, clothing.

“It seems like that was a story that just repeated in every industry,” Sapp told the Guardian.

  • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
    13·
    15 hours ago

    These “watchlist” ones do need reading before making up your mind, as the author puts them there for various reasons.

    E.g I need a new tent so I’ve been looking at Decathlon and found it on the watchlist here.

    #Decathlon

    The world’s largest sports retailer. Twenty-plus house brands own the cheap-and-good quadrant, with 10-year warranties on some gear.

    #Ownership

    Founded by Michel Leclercq and majority-held by the Mulliez family alliance. No external investors, no debt structure. FY2025: EUR 20.7B in sales across 1,902 stores. A 2025 handover put Julien Leclercq in the chair and Javier Lopez in the CEO seat.

    #Why Watchlist

    Ownership is exemplary and the family reinvests rather than extracts. The problem is conduct: a February 2025 Disclose investigation tied Decathlon’s second-largest Chinese garment supplier to Uyghur labor-transfer programs and filmed a 12-year-old working on Decathlon polos. The company confirmed the supplier while denying the Xinjiang subsidiary link. Watchlist until credible remediation is published.

    I’m not happy about this, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid both Chinese manufacturing (or even just Uyghur labor) AND American capital in this day and age. I can see why it’s on the watchlist and for anyone avoiding it, kudos to you for being stronger than I am, but what I’m reading is “no product quality issues mentioned, is not owned by a private equity firm, not American, not publicly traded”.

    But I’m not pulling the trigger yet, so if anyone can suggest something that’s not US owned, is decent quality, and does NOT use uyghur labour or child labour, and is widely available in Europe, I’m all ears

    • dellish@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 hours ago

      Macpac is my go-to generally. They’re New Zealand owned and everything I have bought from them has been really good.