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.

  • WesternInfidels@feddit.onlineEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Yeah their criteria for what’s good or bad seems to be very subjective

    Perhaps, but consider that your observation is only possible because they’re being transparent about their product, in contrast with the manufacturers they’re profiling.

    I’d think any criteria they came up with would seem subjective to someone.

    Speaking of Hoka, there is a blog post about the shoe situation in particular, which points out that shoes are a special case and why the strange manufacturing system behind them matters:

    As an avid runner who has also noticed radical fluctuations in quality between pairs myself, I was excited to dig into this category. The research revealed a mechanism unlike the ones we typically cover. There is no private equity firm to point a finger at in this story. No debt, no flip, no rollup.