alt Hacker NewsYour Backpack Got Worse on Purpose
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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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Product labels should prominently display the parent corporation. Whatever is the top of the chain of ownership.
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)
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/].
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).
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
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.
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
They're expensive, but last a lifetime or more.
- dont see a contact page on your website at all and your archive has only 3 posts 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
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.
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.
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.
That's deplorable. We probably need to dig one or more levels deeper though.
What changed to enable and popularized these bad business practices?
As the saying goes, being poor is expensive.
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.
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...
The irony of composing this article about industrial sameness with an LLM is too much.
Osprey backpacks have worked well for me.
JanSport was always a budget-ish / not great brand from what I remember. I used them, but high quality was never their thing.
AI;Didn't Read (AIDR)
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.
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).
This is some damn irritating writing. This writing irritates me more than a broken backpack seam would.
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
Friendly reminder that antitrust enforcement and deregulation are incompatible
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.
in the old days the brand name was also the company name. now brand names mean nothing.
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.
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.
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