Coach used to be a boutique company. Their purses were very high quality - you paid through the nose for them. And they weren’t common.
About 15 years ago, Coach went mainstream. They outsourced their production to China. There purses aren’t that much more affordable, but you don’t need to go out of your way to buy one - Coach stores are everywhere (there are two within walking distance in Edina Minnesota - one in Southdale, one across the street in the Galleria.) They further diluted the brand by opening outlet stores - and make Coach branded models specifically for the outlet stores and much lower prices (and lower quality).
But they’ve been highly successful doing this.
Tiffany is similar - used to be a specialty high end jewelery. Now found in malls across America where you can buy a necklace for - well, more than you’d spend at Zale’s - but not THAT much more.
A lot of “designer” stuff follows this path. The start as very boutique - with very small sales and manufacturing capacity - then grow their sales - to grow their sales they put their product in more stores - then they need the capacity. And the place for cheap capacity does not translate into ‘handmade Italian shoes.’ (Ugg boots are another one).
True, but Vista was certainly not. I’d much rather run XP than Vista. Hell, I’d rather run Windows 98 than Vista. Pretty much the only Windows product I can think of that’s is more utterly disagreeable than Vista is Millenium.
The original Corningware was made of pyroceram, a super-heated glass product that was nigh-indestructible; its resiliency was discovered when the person developing the stuff dropped some of the glass and instead of shattering, it went “clang”. It was originally intended for use in missile nose cones.
Problem was, after a few years, everyone who wanted Corningware already had some, and it never broke, so there was no repeat business, and sales cratered. As a result, modern cookware bearing the “Corningware” name is made of a cheaper, more-breakable form of stoneware, ensuring future sales.
Sorry don’t mean to sidetrack the thread, but can you explain what you mean by Ugg Boots in this reference?
I had heard a while ago something about an American company trying to trademark ‘uggboot’ here in Australia, where that term is well and truly a generic product name here now.
Good example. When I was a kid, we used to go to the REAL Coach outlet out on the east end of Long Island. That was such a great place. We used to get amazing bargains on top-quality bags that maybe had an insignificant scratch or something.
Which brings me to my nomination–Outlet stores themselves.
Back in the day, outlet stores were actual outlets for irregulars, overruns, and so forth. The stores were few and far between and the stock was really hit or miss. But when you found something, it was a real prize. Plus, outlet shopping was fun because it was a treasure hunt.
Now they have “outlet malls” everywhere mostly filled with stock produced especially for that store. They’re not really outlets as much as cheapo versions of the regular store. I rarely go to them, because I don’t find much that counts as an actual good deal. I do better at the clearance rack in Lord & Taylor. But they always seem to be crowded.
The Ford Thunderbird was a two-seat roadster intended to compete directly with the Chevrolet Corvette, although Corvette emphasized sportiness while the T-Bird empahsized luxury. Three years after it was introduced, Ford executives decided its potential was limited and made the Bird much larger, and added a rear seat. The big Bird was much more successful, although purists hated it.
I can’t give any specific examples, but I undertand that many electronic gadgets that come in differently graded versions, the versions are fundamentally identical. The cheaper versions just have chips that are programmed to provide worse performance or have various functions blocked. The “Premium” versions just lack the extra programming that degrades them.
That was what I opened the thread to mention.
Another example would be nylon stockings; the original versions were much more durable, since nylon is a strong material. But that cut into sales since the stockings lasted a long time; so the manufacturers started making them thinner and more fragile, which is why modern nylons are notorious for runs - they’re supposed to fall apart easy. In tandem with the change they ran advertisements on the virtues of “sheer stockings”, successfully convincing women that the inferior product was more stylish.
The product is worse for who? Yes, IMAX may provide a worse viewing experience for a given audience, but a digital system has a lot of advantages for the movie industry. Distribution costs are much lower. It can even be argued (though not by me) that the public is better served by having more venues available at any given time to see the movie.
I would say that, by definition, a product that outperforms its predecessor is an improvement.
I’ve heard that about HP laser printers - that the engine in cheaper models has a chip to add wait time between pages; and about Sony camcorders - that the same imager is used throughout the line, but that noise is deliberately introduced into the lower end models.
While we’re in Snopes-vulnerable territory, there was a rumour that Intel had developed a cheap CPU that could operate at very high clock speeds years ago, but drip fed only slightly faster chips at a time to maximize profits.
In slight support of this theory, it’s often been the case that whenever AMD launches what appears to be a superior CPU, Intel launches an even better one overnight.
Disclaimer: I haven’t kept up with processor wars recently though. I don’t even know how to evaluate different multi-core chips.
Sort of related to that is this article from Engadget about an Intel program to let you buy an after-market card to enable certain features of the CPU that were locked in the one in your already purchased PC.
How about the History channel, or other basic cable networks that have abandoned their original purpose to aggressively pursue the lowest common denominator?
What was Coca-Cola’s market share, say, three years before the introduction of New Coke versus three years after the “return” of Classic Coke (now in HFCS)?
