The factory was a real place; the frames were made of solid wood and plywood, there was a sewing floor and even one (incredibly kooky) person whose sole job was to stuff the pillows. This guy was in a little room full of feathers all day, and they'd follow him around to the cantina and bathroom like a cartoon character.. but I digress.

My job there for a while was to make the sofa legs -- that was a sixteen step process, and they didn't even trust me to glue the boards together, just to do the cuts and shape the pieces. Sand and stain and wax and polish, yes sir!

They had a dedicated delivery crew, and what the article mentions about packaging is true -- things would be blanketed and wrapped up just the right way, then tetris-ed onto the truck. Sitting shotgun on that truck and hauling sofas up stairs and through various spaces was what I did after making the legs got too boring.

These sofas sold for $3000 ~ $4000 and up, and that was at the break of the millennium. I think the cheapest chair they had was around $2000. I should really swing by the showroom and see how much these are now -- and whether they're still made like they used to be.

The was a great company an old colleague of mine started called Interior Define that sourced custom furniture from China for a BluDot price but much higher quality, but they did not survive the pandemic and have since been sold in bankruptcy to a company that has reduced the quality to par

Having done a lot of DIY projects over the last decade, I've really shifted my view of OSB. Originally I would lump it in with particleboard, but I've since drastically changed my view of it. Particleboard is, truly, junk. OSB and plywood are both pretty good products, and for some uses superior to hardwoods (dimensional stability, for example). High quality plywoods are amazing products. OSB for structure or underlayments are really quite good.

> Frame: Plywood, Polyurethane foam 30 kg/cu.m., Particleboard, Solid wood, Fibreboard

An example of something that looks well-built is the Skogsta dining table [1].

> Table top: Solid acacia, Clear acrylic lacquer, Clear lacquer

> Leg/ Rail: Solid acacia, Acrylic paint

(Though the oak version, which costs more, is oak-veneered particleboard.)

Many Ikea things aren't designed to last. That table has cross-beams, so it has a better chance surviving a party where someone leans heavily against one end of it. Something like Mörbylånga [2] looks like it would collapse.

I would give the furniture on display a good shove to see how sturdy it is.

[1] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/skogsta-dining-table-acacia-704...

[2] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/moerbylanga-table-oak-veneer-br...

* Furniturewise the bathroom furniture, especially GODMORGON are ok. I think because they have to survice contact with humidity.

* The HILVER bamboo legs are that good, that we kept them even after getting rid of the cardboard table tops.

[0]https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/butcher-block-countertops-464...

It's very sad that they're not made anymore. I guessed it just was not imported here due to its prohibitive cost, but not being able to find it on the other side of the pond is saddening.

Unless there is a drop of moisture, then you throw it all away.

It’s so depressingly wasteful.

I'm using it for my next workbench top.

But as with all things, I'm certain some producers are using raw/virgin materials. Probably from wood that is dirt cheap.

  Unless there is a drop of moisture, then you throw it all away.

I went with IKEA's Sektion cabinets to replace some forty year old particleboard cabinets that warped after years of water damage from a burst pipe. They came with a twenty-five year warranty so there's clearly some expectation of longevity.

If I'm building something I try really hard to avoid it, I can only assume the dust is really toxic to breath in and I don't have money or space for a fancy dust collection system.

Baltic birch would be stronger, no doubt, but that's 3 times the price and I am not exactly storing a geode collection up there.

Where? I went around furniture stores and found it hard to discern any relationship between price and quality.

It's made from solid wood and stuffed with real feather down. It's several years old now and has shown no signs of aging.

We have a sofa, coffee table, bed, nightstands, and some wall sconces from Room and Board. I am very impressed with the materials and build quality; I can tell everything will wear well and age nicely. Worth the investment, highly recommended.

The down feather pillows didn’t do well—lots of feathers made their way out of the pillow.

It's not cheap, but easily much higher quality than anything else in the same price point.

The TV stand I bought from there shows no signs of warping a few years later and has had a 70 pound TV sitting on it the entire time.

The pricing was also pretty reasonable for solid walnut that was made in the USA.

It's a fun memory renting a box truck, driving to the industrial heart of LA while listening to Will Wheaton narrate "Masters of Doom" to pick it up.

You can still get quality, you just have to pay for it.

I have long been thinking about the idea of saving up for a while and doing a big re-furnish trip down to North Carolina with a moving truck.

My wife and I have one of their sofas—it's quite nice, although our lives might've been easier with one of the Burrow-style sofas that are easily disassembled for moves.

I have at least 20 various pieces of furniture from IKEA that have lasted more than 10 years, some even closing on 20, even after multiple moves to various college dorms. Dresser drawers, dining table, sofa, bed platform, sit stand desk, etc.

I do not think I have ever thrown something out for breaking. Maybe gets scuffed or scratched up or chipped, but you can mostly use one of those latex paint touch up markers and make the damage nearly invisible.

You got in when the going was good. I think you can still buy decent enough stuff but having moved a few times myself and then friends and family a lot of the newer stuff is one time use, don’t pick it up, don’t look at it cross eyed, kinda stuff and it shows.

But I will say isn’t the last step in the assembly process the 10% probability that you’ll have to do some disassembly to reverse a piece that’s not quite put together correctly?

Same sort of thing applies to nearly all their products. Yes they sell cheap crap -- that still serves its purpose mind you -- but they also sell slightly more upscale furniture that'll actually survive a couple decades.

And it's not like going for a "normal" furniture store is any guarantee either. My previous couch was from a regular furniture store and it broke right in half at around the 5 year mark. Upon inspection one of the cross members was significantly tapered, still had bark on it and everything. On one end it was a solid 2x4, on the other it was barely a 0.2x0.4.

Agree, but still I just replaced a Billy bookcase that was over 15 years old and moved in 5 different places with me. It was really ugly looking in the end, and due a replacement. But even Ikea in more recent Billy they replaced metal parts for plastic ones and the "wood" seems even worse.

Although at the same time, I think I'm on my third MARKUS chair because of the gas spring leaking. Thankfully they do have long warranties, so you can exchange them if it doesn't last for 10 years.

I was able to fix quite a few items of furniture and electronics recently, but if you add cost of parts and labour of a professional, it’s just cheaper to replace

[0] https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack

How did you discover this?

Also it’s light, and makes moving much easier

I’m a huge fan of Lundia shelving. It seems to be strong enough to hold anything, it’s adjustable, comes in millions of sizes and looks good imho.

https://lundia.com/

Hope they haven't been revived by a VC fund that lacks their vision of quality and long lasting furniture.

Same sort of issue with cool remote controls. For example, la-z-boy has pretty good controls - remotes have better designs, have lots of adjustments, and motors seem to move faster. And they too fail the partner test - "that looks like old fart stuff"

I kind of like some stressless recliners.

oh, there is one class of furniture that has a lot of control - the massage chairs. Except they seem to be furniture you want to hide from everyone, they fail the "normal human being" test.

maybe I need to know pointers to other furniture/designs?

It's also expensive as all hell. I grabbed a "man-cave" style two seat recliner with middle seat that transforms into a cup holder: that set me back over $4000. Worth it.

We found a lazy-boy type glider/recliner... it doesn't look as modern but boy is it so comfortable with a newborn.

(It probably invokes other stereotypes. I don't really know, but either way, you'll be too comfortable to care.)

Feels 60's to me.

ETA: Basically unchanged since 1956 is why!

Solid hardwood with carvings all over, legs shaped as claws etc.

But frankly it looked horrible in a modern home, and wasn't all that comfortable to sit in.

So I sold it to a carpenter who was renovating an old wooden building in the remote north (Iceland) to have an interior that would fit the year of construction (I believe around the year 1905).

Kind of like the idea that it is now in a much better place.

My furniture is all cheap particle board shit because I can't afford anything nicer because I'm spending all my money on a mortgage, food, gas, and student loans. I don't think it's a matter so much of nobody wanting to make good quality products so much as all the companies that did do that and priced their products accordingly are running out of customers, because we're all getting strip-mined by the rest of life's expenses going up all the goddamn time. I would love nothing more than a gorgeous, well made sofa that will last me a solid chunk of my remaining life, but where the fuck am I getting the money for it?

It's the boots theory of economics applied to everything. I'll spend $7,000 on sofas before I die and still have a sore ass.

I do and did, but I live alone. I'm guessing you're supporting a family?

of course, cost of living is also a huge factor. A $4000 couch is pretty much $4000 everywhere. But someone in SF vs. the Southwest (both making 6 figures) have very different rent and general life expenses.

Maybe the fact that no one thinks this way anymore explains why everyone complains their six-figure income is constantly eaten up by replacing cheap shit.

And that would have knock on effects for huge societal issues like climate change. Imagine how much cheap shit wouldn't need to be made if so many people weren't deliberately kept on the edge of poverty so as to foster consumption practices that make stock prices go up?

But also - I think the 1950s-80s were a complete abberation in which working middle class people could afford a better lifestyle every year. Not "every generation before" ours could afford a house and two cars on a factory income with a pension. Really only one generation got that, and it was mostly due to winning a world war that left us the world's only major supplier of everything, able to project military power and gobble up all the cheap oil and raw materials. Previous generations had no such thing. My grandfather grew up without indoor plumbing. He also worked 12 hours a day. He couldn't afford a modest house until his late 30s, which was after the war. Go further back and look at the stock bubbles and robber barons of the 19th Century. The wealth and pay distribution we have now is closer to historical norms than anything in the 1960s was. The major difference is our baseline quality of life is higher in the sense that everyone can afford a cheap couch (if they want one). I have to think economically like my grandparents, not like my parents.

People like my grandparents built this country by saving and sacrificing their comforts. People like my parents, boomers, got an incredibly easy ride. Now their kids expect it to be that easy. But cheap money can't go on forever, and it's cheap money and a two-car suburban family lifestyle that did all the environmental damage of the mid 20th Century that we're still trying to slow down or reverse.

tl;dr saving and buying the better couch is a more effective means of changing the status quo than complaining that everything is harder for our generation.

One can value form over function, especially if there’s a specific style that the rest of your house uses. If your entire house is decorated in a contemporary style, then a traditional sofa is just going to stand out like a sore thumb.

I already said “One can value form over function”. Each person has different needs and wants out of their furniture. Just because you don’t value form doesn’t mean it’s some unbelievable or “indefensible” concept.

I don’t want my house to look like it came out of the 1920s. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If you think otherwise, then more power to you, but don’t hoist your beliefs and preconceptions on others.

GP said > I think the problem I've noticed is - the furniture that is built to last very frequently fails the partner test - "that looks like old fart stuff".

This is a problem of taste alignment, not of preference. A person having a taste for the generally poor quality well marketed bit of goods available.

So, like I said. If one develops a taste for a certain type of trendy furniture that is poorly made, it's a personal limitation.

Just because you don’t agree with someone’s preferences does not mean they’re wrong. I hope one day you’re able to understand that, because you clearly don’t.

Until then, we have nothing more to discuss.

How did I know? I didn't. But it related to my own story about buying the one really high-quality piece of furniture I own.

Lmao. There's some jobs like that. Always heard (less surprisingly maybe) the morse code operators on ships tend to be kooky as hell too.

Pay for quality. It saves you money in the long run.

Unlikely. Our sofa is like $300. Let's say it only lasts 3 years before it shows wear or we get bored of it and get another $300 one... your $5k sofa would have to last for 50 years to 'save money'. Not to mention the opportunity cost of those funds.

Pay for quality if you want quality, not in an attempt to save money.

A $300 couch could last many moons in a house with no terrors.

*tetris-ed and Sokoban-ed onto the truck

(Sorry, couldn't help myself)

A decade ago, I shopped for the first time at the most famous furniture store in this part of Texas: Gallery Furniture. Growing up anywhere within an hour or two of Houston in the 80s, Mattress Mack was more recognizable to a kid like me than any news anchor or any other television personality. Before the 80s was over, I'd probably seen him hop in the air hundreds of times with a fistful of dollars, talking about how Gallery Furniture will save you money, and he's still going strong today. He even toured big city and small town schools warning kids about drugs. Anyway, I had gotten by for years on hand-me-downs and IKEA furniture, but it was time to replace something ratty, and I walked in there with a vague impression that it might be more pricey than other stores. They told me it was all made in America (some places up north like Indiana?) and when I was asking about cheaper sofas that a guy over 6 feet tall could comfortably nap on, they pointed me to one they said was made locally in the Houston area. It was very long and had a very simple design and had firm foam that wouldn't sag (something I had asked for), and they let me have it for $500, and it felt like much better quality than a lot of the prettier stuff in other furniture stores.

A couple years later when I got married, we were looking for a nicer sofa, and I figured out that the local furniture maker that Gallery Furniture had been selling was called Living Designs Furniture and had a factory in the East End:

https://www.livingdesignsfurniture.com

Their factory's showroom was very bare, but it was full of pieces, including a colorful chair in the shape of a stiletto shoe! We found an elegantly shaped light gray sofa long enough for me to sleep on, and again with high quality foam, and they built one with some slight customizations we wanted for $1,081 total. Unreal, because we have a white sofa from IKEA that isn't much less, but the quality is on another level!

I'd really like to see a resurgence of products like this in the USA. I've heard of some custom sofas costing several thousand, but somehow this local company is managing to sell at a lower price point. 18 years ago, a buddy of mine was living in Charleston, South Carolina. He had talked to a local high end furniture maker about doing a 3-year apprenticeship to learn how to make fine furniture, but in the end he knew he'd make very little per year in wages (he estimated $35,000 or so). Instead he pursued another dream and went to Napa Valley for a one-year course at the only open-wheel racing mechanic school in the country and ended up working on an Indy Car team for a dozen years. Hopefully more guys like him can find the furniture maker route feasible in the future if American consumers can escape the throwaway mindset. The average household doesn't need expensive Amish Craftsman offerings. A lot of people could afford this local furniture maker we have available, but I understand it could be a risky business venture to try to compete with the stuff shipped over the ocean.

And nowadays something expensive is no longer guaranteed to last.

This is why I value old things so much:

I have an old chair to work with, it's not a good chair, but it's better than anything new. I did a restoration instead of buying a new one because the new one might not last long.

I have a 10 year old car, I'm scared to buy a new one with the bizarre stories about new 3 cylinder engines breaking (throwaway engines?)

I try to use old things as much as possible. I stopped using an old Android when SSL stopped working. It's not a matter of lack of money, it's a lack of confidence in new things.

The last brand that I gave some value to was Sansumg. My last cell phone... THEY FORGOT to add a piece to fix the flat cable for the on/off button. And twice the on/off button stopped working, and twice I sent it to technical assistance. The third time I opened the phone and repaired the button myself. My two Sansumg TVs break a few days after the warranty ends.

My sofa broke in less than two years.

It's all too easy to see the past through rose tinted glasses. Also remember that the "built to last" stuff from the past is often an example of survivorship bias.

You know, like Apple does.

Did you use tube radios? They broke all the time.

The difference is that they weren't intentionally horrible, they were limitations of an era.

But at some point, devices start to last a long time. My parents' first refrigerator ran without problems for over 10 years. I've had far fewer problems with CDS and CD players than with cassette players.

And we used to have a lot of low quality items, but now it's much harder to find good quality items. And brand means almost nothing. Even Apple has been selling notebooks with horrible keyboards for years. I'm just using an Apple Notebook now, I've been waiting for years for them to change the keyboard.... The Nitendo Switch Joystick has a drift problem and Nintendo ignores it...

There is no reason for a new Samsung TV to break after a year of use. Or LEDs. Or power switches. It's not a technical limitation, it's a choice.

The quality of everything is trash. And if you want something that has the type of quality you used to get 30 years ago - you're going to pay close to 4-10x as much.

Everyone is selling trash for cheap. We live in a mall of garbage.

Nokia phones weren't as durable as you remember. A Nokia phone would hardy last 2 years with limited use, either the battery or power connector would die quickly. iPhones get way more usage than Nokias and they easily last 3 years.

Also I've literally never had a LED bulb die on me.

still are as so many see to be purchased and then running the ground for short term profits

When these conversations happens, I always wonder why people want some of these items to last forever.

Are you going to stick with that 10 year old plasma TV? Great. I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast. Furniture is a bit different, but my parents had all kinds of good, long-lasting stuff that no one wants because it's out of style.

Our cheap ikea couch keeps lasting, preventing us from buying a nice, new one. We can't throw it out of it's not broken.

It is long known that companies who sell good quality products go out of business after a couple decades at most, they saturate their market and because no one needs to renew, the company dies.

Ironically ikea HAS to sell quality (for price) because they are such a big brand. Their stuff is great quality for price, so people keep coming back for upgrades, when they can afford it.

I think the proliferation of subscriptions in modern life has contributed to quite a bit of anxiety.

Life is about being happy.

I get it though: for 90% of the stuff I watch, I couldn’t care less about the quality. Much if it is on a small screen or in 1080p.

… but movie night with my wife/kids? Those are the nights I am grateful that the picture quality in my living room is untouchable by a theater. Those are the moments I, personally, live for.

My friend had a NEW Ford that went to the workshop more than 10 times in the first year of use. It's about trust that I will turn on the device and it will work.

> I want new tech

Buy it. I met people who sold their old iPhone and bought a new model every year, nothing against that. My problem is if the IPhone in this first year broke two or more times like my Sansumg.

I daily drive a 96 Toyota. My son's dd is a 63 Dart. Just picked up a 92 Buick with 35k.

Absolutely. It cost me the price of a power supply repair. The display is beautiful and the interface is crapware free.

> I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast.

True! Advertising tech is ever evolving.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39687566

That is very surprising. Mind explaining what the issues were?

Perhaps not. But I worked retail and some people could find a problem with anything

I have bought many (6) smartphones and non has broken during my usage and also after I passed them to others.

We have 4th TV at home and each one was fully working when we replaced it after ~ 10 years. Current one (Sony), our first LCD is from 2012 and works perfectly (with just new set top box).

I have bought/got many laptops and any of them has broken. I have laptop from 1996 or 1998 which still works. There were software issues there, but they are fixable by update. (I have never bought Acer or Asus though)

We quit repairing washers when we bought a 20yo Whirlpool. Same story for dryer except it's a 1988 Maytag.

Only buy CRI 95+ (99 if you can find them). Not because of the color rendering quality (although that is a great benefit), but because they will tend to have appropriately derated other parts of the circuit, which are the elements that fail. They can do this for that product because at the more upmarket price, they can afford the additional 0.02 in COGS.

As to Nokia phones, well yeah. I understand there is a real market for them now, since they found they are very effective black box flight recorders.

But, they cost £3 each and leaving them running 24/7 will cost you less than £20/year.

I suspect most people simply forget how often highly-used incandescent bulbs had to be replaced.

Sure there is. I bought a case of Sylvania LEDs in 2019. They're used a few hours a week and I've tossed 5 of the 15 I've installed.

Companies can always manufacture garbage if they don't care, but LED technology is fantastic.

The whole thing is just stapled together OSB.

I ripped the dust cover off and added 3 new frame stretchers made from 2x8 construction lumber (and tied other loose joints back together) and its done pretty well since then: https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3 (wish I'd gotten a few more pictures, but I was tired by this point). Just shocking how terrible the construction is.

High quality Scandinavian-style plywood probably would have lasted decades.

Nice materials + pretty design does not necessarily result in a good product.

But they didn’t think very hard — see my other comment. I don’t think a single solid piece of hardwood would have performed a whole lot better. Either metal reinforcement or plywood or much more carefully considered joinery was needed.

The problem with knots is that they resist drilling and screwing. The problem with new growth is that the pith is the weakest part of the wood, and new growth has the most pith.

Still, it's not a weak and terrible pos wood-like material like 1990's MDF, it will probably be ok for most uses as long as the grain direction is respected in regards to shear direction (typically you want the grain direction to run perpendicular to the shear forces) and everything is properly braced.

So the grain needed to run horizontally in the horizontal part to support the bending load. It was probably best for the grain to be vertical in the vertical part, although that was maybe less critical: that section was mostly in compression. It probably also looked better that way.

In any case, the actual construction put a finger joint in the horizontal section just past the turn, so a tiny bit of vertical grain wood extended horizontally over the turn. And several of the legs cracked just along the side of the finger joint, and one failed completely after about a month of gentle use.

The design plausibly could have worked if the joint went diagonally through the turn or was below it. But plywood is strong along both in-plane axes, and the legs could likely have been cut in single pieces from sheets of plywood with strength to spare.

Attractive plywood, even from hardwood species, is readily available. The plies are visible along the cut edge, but this is actually a style people like, especially in Scandinavian furniture. Even IKEA sells some nice chairs with plywood elements, at entirely reasonably price points.

Teak especially is so good at dealing with water that it was harvested to near extinction in the 19th century just to build ship's decks and cabins out of it.

Having done a bit of woodworking as a hobby, I would say that hardwood could be inappropriate if it is used for an element that is purely structural, internal (and thus will be hidden by external features) and there are cheaper alternatives that are just as good, or stronger materials available and we are talking about a critical structural element.

That's a pretty abstract answer but it's always going to depend on the specific project. Sometimes a piece of furniture has no hidden internal structure, or the appeal of the furniture is that it is all bare wood and you want it made entirely out of a beautiful "furniture grade" hardwood. For certain upholstered furniture, such as many sofas, using expensive materials for inner framing could not only be superfluous and add unnecessary cost to the piece, but in certain circumstances there may be better materials available even if you could make a perfectly adequate structural support that will last a lifetime using expensive hardwood and the right joinery for critical stress points.

I read amulto's point as being "expensive material and fancy joinery doesn't matter if you have a weak design."

Especially when thin, wood is surprisingly easy to break, and it doesn't handle being pulled on very well at all.

Sine qua non is Latin.

To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Who could forget the Rolls Royce Silver Mist? Mist in German means dung, manure or shit. Someone thankfully noticed before it was released (Frankfurt motor show) and it became the Silver Shadow. Then there was "Consignia" ...

Here in France, the daftest I've seen is the Audi e-tron, with etron meaning turd... Though it's been out of common use, so Audi just left the name as is.

They later changed the name profusely apologizing to Italian users.

When I lived in Hong Kong, I once saw a boutique grocery store that had a wooden hanging-sign/plaque, and IIRC it was 1997 and the sign said "Since 1996."

Far more amusing were the businesses non-ironically translated as things like "1000 Golden Fortune"-something-or-other.

There's quite a lot of history involved too so that I suspect there are routine translations between the various Chinese languages eg Cantonese and Mandarin to English which might be a bit behind the times but they still work despite sounding a bit twee nowadays to the relevant ears.

I say: "viva la difference".

The brand actually existed.

We know more now (and could afford better) whenever we have to finally replace this, but $2000 is a not-insignificant investment that shouldn't be a complete piece of crap.

But I have no idea where to go for this. The overlap between junk and luxury is too large nowadays.

I've noticed a very prevalent "hail corporate" subculture on reddit that put me off believing anything anyone said.

For quality modern furniture, the only game in town around me is Room & Board. The last couch we bought there was ~$6k[0]. It's a lot, but we'd honestly been eyeing it for almost 20 years and it'll likely be something we have for another 20 years or more.

https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-lovese...

they seem to be slightly better made, but for SO MUCH more money. They have huge stores devoted to their products. Are people really spending money, and that much, on coolers?

replace your entire question with Apple and you'll see the answer as a pattern.

Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality. Consider a Toyota vs a Kia.

These things are often correlated but don’t have to be.

Okay, if we want to limit ourselves to economics jargon rather than vernacular.

>Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status

No, practically it means poor people aren't buying them much. Only some luxury good purchasing is related to status signaling.

>Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality

I'm not aware of a context where that would be the standard definition, though in some contexts it may be the excess portion of the price.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-premium-lu...

https://medium.com/swlh/dont-confuse-luxury-with-premium-8-k...

https://imgmodelsblog.com/luxury-and-premium-comparison

Or, if you want to listen to techies talk about it, listen to this episode of Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/lvmh

That's always been the case though. There has always been junk marketing itself as "luxury" to milk the nouveau riche. It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. It's not like the brick that Supreme sold was made of some sort of magical clay. The luxury purse companies don't burn their leftover product to protect some secret of Dr Who purses that are bigger or magically organized on the inside, but because the entire value of the brand is "I can afford this and you cannot"

Luxury has ALWAYS been about signalling and displaying status and power. It's always about rubbing the prole's faces in their supposed supremacy. Remember, they have money because they are better than you, definitely not because there are systems and structures in place that make it easier to get rich for the already wealthy and connected.

Unfortunately it seems so many people really struggle to understand that while quality often costs a lot, costing a lot does not imply quality in any way. If you can afford to spend oodles on marketing for your product, you probably aren't spending as much on quality as people assume you would.

Not sure why Coach was chosen for this example - I don't believe they are expensive; last I checked they were in the range of $200-500, which doesn't seem egregious as the actual luxury brands (ex. Hermes, where the entry level bags are $4,000).

That said, I feel there is a real difference in quality at various price points, and focusing on the material ("magic leather") is wrong. When I'm paying a premium I'm usually looking for in the dimensions of construction, and usually that means paying an actual professional who may charge $100/hr, vs 19 year old in Bangladesh. The two might be using the same material but the price difference comes from the person assembling the item.

The problem is you have a ton of companies (even "luxury" ones), that in an attempt to juice their stock price, have also focused on getting costs super low and are now using the same factories as junk brands but just slapping their logo on it. Even products of the same brand can vary wildly in quality depending even on the year it was made.

I have jackets from "luxury" brands that I bought 10 years ago that still look brand new for thousands of dollars (and probably saved money in the long run), but buying a similar item new or even trying to replace it is impossible.

Other brands are catching on. I hear Porsche (or at least some dealerships) have started gatekeeping 911s this way.

This is a very ironic comment to have made in a thread about how cheap things aren’t as good as they seem once you look a bit deeper.

A Toyota Corolla probably ticks more boxes for the average person than any Porsche if cars are not your thing.

Your model 3 can't handle a corner. The reason car enthusiasts like Porsches is that they handle particularly well.

Even their models that share platforms with “lesser” brands in the corporate stable go through a lot to differentiate them.

But if you don’t care about cars or enjoy driving, then all of it is a moot point and probably meaningless to you, and you might as well enjoy a Toyota Camry and call it a day.

Daily reminder that your "super cars" are worthless. Merging onto the highway is far more important than "winning in the corners".

And, also, if you like driving, and sometimes drive for fun, curves are way more fun than freeways. None of this has anything to do with supercars, either. My boring mom-car has more than enough power to merge safely. It's (surprisingly, to most people) faster (acceleration and top-speed) and (impressively - ICE tech advanced so much) more fuel-efficient than my almost thirty year old Miata. But, obviously, I enjoy the latter 1000x more than the former.

I guess this makes me a car geek. That's fine. I do enjoy driving my super-basic, entry-level sportscar. I have less than zero interest in supercars.

A 911, even something like a GTS or Turbo, is peasant-class compared to that.