I don't immediately discard an item because it's made in China, as I know of some high quality items made there. Most Apple products, some Xiaomi products or Meermin/Feit shoes.
However, I tend to be very skeptical about its quality. Moving manufacturing to China is most often done to reduce cost. The only industry where it's not done due to cost, but supply chain issues, is electronics.
And with cost reduction comes lower quality. Higher tolerances, zero pollution standards, etc. In particular, most items I got from China have this terrible new plastic smell that is almost intoxicating. Same for some clothing dyes. Studies show formaldehyde concentrations are really high in Chinese homes, and I'm not surprised.
Hence, a few years ago I made a resolution to raise my standards and avoid those things. But it's a lot of trouble to find high quality items these days. I want to own few things and keep most for the rest of my life. I have slowly curated such a list, but it's as I said you need to go out of your way and often get custom things from niche brands.
Once a big company in a particular industry moves to China, most will follow shortly. It's game theory. The average customer couldn't care less about things I mentioned above. Sadly, it's all about price.
tl;dr As a consumer I miss much better reviews and reports on product quality, safety and repairability. I feel that'd improve the situation where most industries localize to China to cut costs at the expense of everything else due to information asymmetry.
That's not entirely true. In the EU, there are lots of tags that guarantee product safety. CE marks (for electronics), OEKO-TEX (safe textiles), GOTS (organic textiles), etc. The US has some equivalent ones I am less familiar with. In fact, both OEKO-TEX and GOTS are global standards.
Some Xiaomi products have not been imported to EU because they failed to obtain CE marks. And you'd never encounter a product that smells formaldehyde with an OEKO-TEX label.
But I agree the information is quite asymmetric. As a customer, I want to know a lot more about how products are made. And I want to be able to repair them and source replacement parts.
China executed people responsible for adding an industrial chemical to baby formula [1]. Without debating the merits of capital punishment, I think the issue is the lack of consistency in supple chain management. The only model I could compare to would be Costco, who is pretty good at curating products customers will like (and the quality is usually good IMHO). Trust sells, if you find buyers who value trust.
I don't know whether they were just scapegoats. But if we assume the worst, that they were, it's still a big cost. Having to find scapegoats to pin the blame on while keeping morale of other employees up, I'd imagine that isn't easy. People will be scared. They will wonder whether they are next in line for scapegoating. They will try their best to stay away and cover their asses. It will raise costs to the point that no one will try this again.
I don't know about manufacturing. But for food products people get prosecuted all the time by trading standards.
My friend who works for them has a lot of interesting stories to tell. One story, she visited a local pub and asked for a dairy free ploughman's, the waiter asked if she would like butter on her bread. My friend waited for it to be added, then she put the whole meal, plate and all into a plastic bag and took it away for analysis. The pub got fined and another visit from trading standards.
>the waiter asked if she would like butter on her bread. My friend waited for it to be added //
I've heard stories like this before. It sounds a bit stupid on the part of Trading Standards (TS).
Waiter: "Do you want butter"
Customer/TS agent: "Yes, please"
Then the TS agent prosecutes you for putting butter on their food. Well why did they ask for butter. I mean, I realise that people are sometimes absolute idiots but I don't think you should prosecute restaurants for serving what you ask for.
A story in our local press was that the TS agent said "no peanuts for me as I have an allergy, I'll have the lamb bhuna, ..." and then they ordered a load of dishes - as you would for a family - and they included in their order "chicken satay". They specifically asked for it.
Guess what the restaurant did, they gave them what they asked for. And Trading Standards prosecuted them and made them out in the press to be evil.
Now to me it sounded like the person was ordering a bhuna with no nuts and a load of stuff for other people, if they're stupid enough to order a nut dish isn't that their own fault?
I don't know what's happened to personal responsibility but the expectation for businesses to coddle people has gone too far IMO.
Sounds by that story that the other orders were intended for the other people eating given that the peanut free order was explicitly made. So I can only assume the waiter assumed the rest was an order for the others? Maybe that assumption may not (legally) be made and a warning needs to be made for everyone at a whole table? Either way that seems like a bit of a gray zone. Sounds almost like the point was to trip up the waiter.
When you are really allergic to peanuts, it can be an issue just to sit at a table where someone eats peanuts. A waiter should know this. Unlike many other things they deal with, it's literally a matter of life and death.
...Wait. Your friend asked for no dairy, then said she wanted dairy anyway, then got people in trouble for that?
Am I missing something important here? This sounds like a textbook example of soulless, arbitrary bureaucracy that benefits no one but bureaucrats and their enforcers.
This sounds like someone (your friend?) had a quota to fill by any means necessary, as opposed to actually enforcing consumer standards. Rather shameful, IMO.
I guess you can get non-dairy spread, mayo, salad cream, etc to put on. It's not her being sneaky and trapping people, it's just that people are dumb.
"You're offering me butter when I specifically asked for dairy free?"
"Yes" Adds butter. Bosses all slap foreheads in frustration.
Lack of training. Stupid people. I dunno. She's got a lot of stories. The animal neglect are the worst. The pub food ones are the amusing ones. She gets a lot of food poisoning from dodgy food.
I, err... don't know how to feel about this. Entrapment at its worst?
I'm all for labels, safety, and verification enabling people to be informed, consenting adults.
But if you asked to have butter on your toast, as an informed consenting adult, you get butter on your toast, and it ain't anybody's fault but your own. And I'm a liberal socialist pinkie commie Canadian, not even a redneck gun-tottin' libertarian :D
There must be / I hope there is something I'm missing from the story...?
Are you talking the Conformite Europe Mark? Or the all but identical China Export Mark?
(Now I'm expecting some Bitcoin "investor" to jump in with "blockchain all the certification marks!" as though that'd solve the problem of people not caring...)
'The Commission responded that it was unaware of the existence of any "Chinese Export" mark'
This legend has to stop. CE is a self declaration marking, and it's just people applying the CE marking when they have not respected the relevant standards.
Of course such tags are completely irrelevant without the effects of the jurisdiction that aims to secure their authenticity. In particular, when buying online from overseas you have very little guarantees of what you'll actually get, unless you are familiar with the brand and/or merchant.
Things are different when buying domestically at a retail store. Retailers have supply chain or import the products themselves. Importing and selling products that violate safety standards, or products that show safety marks like CE without authorization, is not in the retailers' best interest, since the Customs Agents will come down hard on them. As large monetary sanctions are the only effective way to deter corporations from breaking the rules, the fines/reparations are proportional to the volume of the illegitimate products sold.
Not to speak of the civil liability when some kid gets electrocuted thanks to the hazardous phone adapter your company imported.
On that same subject - it was interesting to me how much better fresh produce was in Italy. In no small part I think this is due to the fact that people have a pretty good ability to distinguish the quality of a lot of traditional foods there.
In the stores, the produce isn't usually as neat and tidy and pretty as in the US - you might even find a few bad bits and pieces, but by and large, it tastes really good.
A lot of that will depend on where you are and where you're shopping. For example: even in the Bay Area it can be hard to find garlic grown outside of China despite Watsonville and Fresno growing a ton of garlic. American-grown ginger as well can be extremely difficult to find as well. Same with avocados and limes. The Southern Californian climate is well suited to both avocados and limes, but most I've found out here are sourced from Mexico or South America (except for the 'specialty' avocados).
I'm not surprised. Local fresh produce tends to be the way to get much better food products.
What I would like to see is a curated list of all common objects we use daily that have the properties I mentioned above: high quality, safety and repairability.
Places like r/bifl and manufactum.de are good starting points, but they are far from complete.
It's not necessarily local - these aren't what I'd call high end or "hipster" type markets, just regular supermarkets. They'll bring in stuff from southern Italy, or Spain or wherever is convenient.
But they do pay attention to quality because their customers want that.
I'd still argue that's quite local. In most Spanish supermarkets, stuff tended to be local or from nearby EU countries. Although now things are degrading.
My favorite UK supermarket sells organic pine kernels from China, at a ridiculously high price. That's not local, nor pine kernels are typical produce from China. It's just seeking high margins.
Soil composition, fertilizers, vegetable strains, and weather conditions all impact taste. Tomatoes from my garden made from heirloom seeds taste significantly better than best boy, beefsteak, or even tomatoes on the vine. I've had tomatoes from Italy, in Romania if all places, and can concur that even the produce exported tastes worlds better than what you can buy in the average US supermarket. I'd wager that the type of produce grown in the US is the culprit as it tends to be more important to have shelf stable and attractive produce than tasty produce. Stuff from my garden or the farmer's market is comparable to produce I've had in Europe.
You can find heirloom veggies and less industrialized produce in American markets — but part of the reason they're not quite as popular is that they don't ship as well or have as long a season. Fuerte avocados, for instance, have a season of about six weeks. They're delicious but towards the end of the season they're not that great.
Of course, living in the Bay Area I'm spoiled by the selection. It really is better than a lot of other areas. In contrast, Portland, in particular, stood out as having consistently mediocre produce available (and New York was surprisingly good even in the middle of winter).
New York and a good chunk of the Northeast get a lot of produce from Canada year round. New York is also a major port city with fresh food coming in daily. I can't find any heirloom anything in my local market, not a big enough draw. The farmer's markets are great though fresh from field to table and usually great prices from great people. In the Bay area you actually have a really nice pipeline to farmers which probably explains the great produce. Portland seems like it might have a rain problem with would limit produce to tolerant it greenhouse crops, especially tomatoes which do poorly in tons of rain. Even lettuce needs to dry out lest it rot.
Yup. I worked at a company selling enterprise equipment, and they were absolutely opposed to entering the consumer market precisely because low-information customers push everyone into a race to the bottom.
There are notable exception to this in most industries, but it’s got to be a hard path to walk. Somewhat amusingly, most people’s favourite brands tend to be the more quality ones, if my circle is anything to go by (which is a trap). If it’s what they buy is a whole different thing.
> A step further, it seems most people's favourite brands tend to be ones which were high quality in the past. Its a rare situation where that quality continues as mass market appeal arrives.
Yes, I think this is a typical brand lifecycle. Somewhat niche brand gets famous due to high quality and appealing image. Brand gets bought by big group, with a lot of expertise in distribution and marketing. Quality goes downhill, prices skyrocket. Brand eventually loses appeal.
The LVMH Group does this all the time. But arguably, they don't lower quality too much.
The whole Kenmore/Whirlpool/Maytag/Jenn-Air/etc branding joke is that they switch which brand is the good one frequently to sucker people into buying garbage so you really have to be careful and do your homework for every single device. Have a great white Whirlpool dishwasher that replaced a near identical looking model. Apparently the motor and a few other parts were significantly different as while the prior model only made "the energy star sounds" it frequently clogged and never cleaned. The new one is a champ, uses less energy, less water, cleans everything, fits more dishes, and never clogs and I'm pretty sure it was cheaper than the previous model. The previous house had an amazing portable dishwasher I'd plumbed in. I had to replace the motor once and the impeller twice (user error) but the thing was over 20 years old and still ran like new. They certainly don't build them to last like that anymore.
I've tried buying upmarket items as my income has appreciated, however I haven't always found the additional cost worth the price. The KitchenAid mixer we purchased was worth every penny, but other high cost items like Pampered Chef haven't been any better than what I can purchase at Target. I'm definitely in the spot of trying to find durable, quality items at any cost as I need to plan for them to not break down when I'm gone. I don't want my wife and daughter saddled with constantly breaking garbage that I'm not here to be able to fix.
I was just reading the book "The House of Morgan" and it describes how companies are purchased when they don't maximize short term profit. The bankers and executives make sure that they make millions in the transfer, and then the brand is cheapened to get more profit, usually at the expense of the customers and employees, and then the company is sold again to get more millions for the executives and bankers. They don't really care if the company goes under or they destroy society as a side effect - it is all about making more millions for the already rich principals.
I jokingly call this MBA disease as a nod to Dutch Elm disease; the parasite sucks all the nutrients it can out of the host, killing it and then moves on. It’s the reason I don’t expect to enjoy Whataburger for much longer now that it’s been purchased by a Chicago investment house.
For instance Whataburger uses fresh eggs and scrambles them on site. That’ll go by the wayside in favor of McDonald’s-style pre-made and pre-packaged eggs generating waste and lowering quality. But it’ll make the food easier to replicate nation wide creating shot term profits from growth until consumers have the predictable “I don’t see what all the hype is about” reaction, damaging or possibly destroying the brand.
LVMH are mostly luxury brands. They only do high-end and way above that.
When the standard price for a tshirt is something like $50, they don't need to worry about manufacturing price or cheaper competition. That's a different business entirely than primark selling $1 or $2 tshirts.
A step further, it seems most people's favourite brands tend to be ones which were high quality in the past. Its a rare situation where that quality continues as mass market appeal arrives.
Irwin tools, Klein tools, Blaster Corp products, John Deere stuff, K-Bar, Leatherman, Ogio backpacks, and Patagonia. I'm sure there are others but these brands have held up well for me over time. It's definitely a short list. Lowe's Kobalt brand seems to be good for now but Craftsman is junk now, most major appliances are garbage, every television manufacturer I can think of has garbage QA, aside from Samsung and apple I can't think of a reputable phone brand sold in the US but even Apple quality has lessened a bit and Samsung has the exploding battery issue. It's gotten really hard to find quality that isn't hand made.
Yeah, this is kind of the entire point of trademarks - to let non-professionals get enough information about quality to make decisions on some basis other than just price.
Good point. This is where public online reviews come in. It's a bit tricky with amazon, because for some products different sellers source slightly different versions of the product (or just knock-offs), but in theory open online review is a revolution for the customer-quality information gap.
Why reviews are horrible, even (especially?) on Youtube:
SO HYPED ABOUT THIS PRODUCT. CAN'T WAIT UNTIL IT'S RELEASED (5 stars)
(brand) hits it out of the park again! Thanks for the review model, paid trip to Hawaii, and sweet t-shirt, (brand). This makes all (other brands) obsolete! Hail Sony! (5 stars)
This new model makes the old one look like trash. A new era has arrived (5 stars)
(One year earlier on the previous model): This new model makes the old one look like trash. A new era has arrived (5 stars)
Used it for 5 minutes, I love it (5 stars)
I've never used it but (YT celebrity) said it's good (5 stars)
(paid spam review) (5 stars)
(review of another product) (5 stars)
Good and knowledgeable review that has an honest view of the strengths and weaknesses of the product. Might have a mix of broken English, bad production values, or be by a kid with a squeaky voice or someone who looks ugly: 3 stars
WAS HYPED ABOUT THIS BUT SICK OF WAITING (1 star)
Great five-star product but (random seller) sucks / was slow to ship it / wouldn't take my return! (1 star)
It broke when I dropped it out of an airplane (1 star)
How do I turn it on? (1 star)
(complaint about related but different model of same product) (1 star)
This is part of the reason why AvE's BOLTR series is so popular. Buy a tool for money donated on patreon, take it apart, tell us how it works and how it will break, test it a bit. Explicitly tell us "this is no fucking good at all" or "this is pretty skookum".
It seems like there is a viable business model underlying this, that shoulf translate to other product categories. The hard part is building an audience that trusts you.
tariffs are a poor instrument for anything except raising the price of incoming goods so that your local industries can compete. And then you're still "picking the winners and losers" by selectively applying tariffs. It's a tax that hurts consumers and helps industries. There's a place for it in well measured smart economic policy, but in almost every case it's better to use a tax (like carbon tax) than a tariff. Essentially that's what a tariff is, but calling it a tax and giving a good reason for it is a lot less likely to cause retaliatory tariffs.
"It’s about price because consumers can’t measure by anything else."
They can, but it's obviously the biggest signal.
But let's not confuse the plight of the middle/upper middle class who can afford to start to invest in aspiration, and make other qualitative judgments about things like supply chain.
China+Wallmart have made entire categories of goods and services available to regular working people, at prices they can afford. The consumer surpluses have been vast.
However much we may not like all of the ugly bits that come along with that new reality (and there are many) - we often forget the immense surpluses they bring to quite a lot of people.
Most people don't have a lot of money and are very price sensitive, and being able to afford 'stuff' can in many cases improve their lives quite dramatically.
Anecdotally, I've been helping to create a physical product for mass consumption, and this has really hit home with me in our earlier trials and feedback from customers. Without getting into specifics, the 'simple' version of our product at $40 is accessible to most. The fancy version at $80 will be beyond the reach of most. Margins will be what they can be, but for the first time in my professional career, it dawned on my quite clearly all of these folks clamouring for our product for whom we would have to say 'no' to, because of price point: they are not going to be able to get the little bump in lifestyle. It was the weirdest bit of 'capitalist equality/opportunity' logic, but I really felt bad that we might have to tell all those folks that they 'can't have it'. All things equal, I want to make it as affordable as I can because that brings a lot of benefit to people.
So yes, after 20 years of this China-Wallmart global supply chain powerhouse ... maybe we should start to take stock of all of these externalities, but let's also not forget how much of the surpluses go to those who need it.
Now consider that there are still 4 billion people who are going to 'come online' into basic economic prosperity who are going to want and need 'stuff' to!
I hope we start to figure out plastics, waste, pollution, but we also want to make stuff accessible.
There seems to be a major difference in you trying to make a good, quality product which have yet to have benefited from economy of scale and cheap knock offs that are often dangerous, misleading, or just plain cut corners. For a large number of people and products this isn't actually a problem, like you say. Harbor freight had an excellent business model in just this but they are very up front about it. You're not buying the best wishlist quality, you're buying the best quality they can find at a specific and accessible price. That's adding efficiency to the supply chain, which is most of what Walmart does. Don't sell yourself short that your first product iteration isn't there yet. You'll find ways to improve and lower the cost of the product in safe and efficient ways over time.
“It’s about price because consumers can’t measure by anything else.”
Neither can statisticians so that’s why I don’t put any trust in CPI numbers (“inflation”). They don’t even track amount sold (I.e. did the 355 ml pop become 340ml?) how are they going to track quality???
CPI is difficult and flawed, but they do try to account for size. Soda is pretty consistent in size (12oz can), but, for example, yogurt which can come in a variety of sizes is added to the CPI per 8oz. The hard part is how you measure the quality change. The market is flooded with high end higher quality yogurts. Yogurt shelves in the grocery store look very different than they did 15 years ago before Chobani kicked off the Greek yogurt crazy, and completely different than 30 years ago before USDA organic certification.
I think this is one of the few places where blockchain would be more help than hurt. Provenance of materials, location of manufacture, even tolerances and standards applied could be tracked across multiple independent companies. Of course, enforcing what goes on the blockchain would be a whole different can of worms. This sort of tracking is important in manufacturing standards (ISO9001). Coupling non-central control of the manufacturing record would be very helpful implementing standards like ISO9001 and allow third party analysis of "manufacturing quality" and "environmental impact" ... even better if it can be integrated into manufacturing instruments that can register a step automatically. Shipping and supply companies are looking heavily into these types of applications.
When the internet was young and I was wide eyed optimistic I thought reviews and ratings would solve this problem. It didn't. Then amazon came along and promised a similar panacea, user ratings... but again it didn't quite happen.
I feel twitter suffers the same problems. Who is genuine? Who has unbiased knowledge? Who can tell me the truth about a product? Can I know your credentials online without knowing your name? ((Imagine twitter posts being flagged "This person has no qualifications and has failed a basic maths exam")) -- idea - online exams with my results cryptographically signed.
Block-chain seemed to offer some sort of solution. Maybe if we had trusted manufacturers of components, then these components could be tracked (along with pollution, carbon miles, labour policies, etc) all logged in the block chain. A bit like "fair trade" but for other items. Easily checked using your phone/bar-code before purchasing.
Blockchain does not provide any verification of trust, nor can it. It provides verification of number crunching transactions alone, as well as an immutable store of that number crunching. It's actually notoriously poor for trust compared to traditional systems, as there is no way to mediate in the case of fraud once a transaction has occurred.
>But it's a lot of trouble to find high quality items these days. I want to own few things and keep most for the rest of my life.
I concur on both fronts.
Might I suggest you check out thrift or second hand stores?
I have a collection of old aluminum cased power tools made in the mid 20th century in North America, and I think the most I paid for any one of them was $12 CAD.
They look amazing.
You can take them apart quickly and easily if you need to re-grease them.
You can re-wind the motor if you somehow manage to short it out.
They don't need a warranty, as they have proven themselves over the past 50+ years already.
Etc.
We've made a LOT of quality products over the years, many of which make their way into thrift stores sooner or later.
Paying 10% of what something would cost brand new, and getting quality that is typically 10x greater than the brand new version is a steal imho.
Take a bit of care with those... When I was a kid I was using my granddad's orbital sander - with a beautiful alloy body, when one of the brushes _finally_ wore right through, and the spring and pigtail popped out of the brush holder and put the live 240V AC conductor into the casing... (Not at all helped by the fact I was using the extension cord from the double insulated electric lawnmower, which had earth pins on the plug/sockets, but no earth conductor in the cable...) My arm waved around uncontrollably as I couldn't release the grip in my hand - until it _finally_ bashed itself into the boat I was sanding down and hammered it out of my hand. I have no idea how I came out of that unscathed...
I will admit that my drill has had the grounding pin cut out of it's once-3-pronged plug.
Apparently it was common for contractors to cut it out as many of the houses they were working in didn't have grounding sockets.
I've only used it a couple of times, after checking it over mechanically inside, so I'm not too worried about it.
The beautiful thing about old power tools however is that replacing the power cord is as easy removing 4 easily accessed screws in the outer cover, removing the cover, then removing 3 further easily accessed screws that connect the plug to the electrical system of the drill.
Which as you remind us, I should probably do sooner than later.
Thanks for the story, and thankfully you still have an arm to type with!
With the grounding pin absent, even a small amount of leakage can result in the enclosure of the tool being anywhere between mains and ground potential. I'm neither an electrician nor an engineer, but I suspect that the newer "double insulated" standard is a worthwhile improvement.
Either (or both of) roper grounding or a residual current detector would have made that day of mine a lot less exciting. I'm still happy using metal-cased mains powered devices, but I'm somewhat more careful about checking those two things before I hang on to them tightly these days...
In the UK most 'thrift' or charity shops are hollowed-out since they realised they could make much more money selling valuable items online in auctions. Since then they have a national audience and not just wall-ins from one town.
Especially so with newer Chinese made products actually adding lead weights inside their cheap plastic cases to make their cheap products feel as though they were cut from a heavier cloth.
Some rules of thumb that I have when it comes to buying old power tools are:
Does it look like something your grandfather might have owned?
Is it of all metal construction? If not, are the plastics of a high enough density to make them almost as indestructible as metal?
Does it plug directly into the wall? And does it work?
If you can answer those questions in the affirmative when it comes to any power tool, chances are it is of good quality.
The best way by far imho however is just to get out there and start looking.
After a few months, you'll begin to notice lots and lots of exactly the same items showing up in the same shelving sections.
The same kettles, the same breadmakers, the same drills, the same table lamps, most all of them having been made in the past 20 years and currently knocking on death's door.
Once you've seen enough of that crap, when a quality item displays itself in front of you, you'll know it's a great deal and snap it up with excitement.
Also - keep in mind a lot of places you find these things they're _really_ cheap, so it's often perfectly fine to buy one that is _probably_ good, then pull it apart when you get home to check it's interior and construction. If you only dropped $5 at a thrift store, it doesn't hurt too much when you find its actually shitty plastic with a lump of rusty steel inside - and you just trow it out...
Plenty of items that I have purchased and been unhappy with personally have found their way back to thrift stores.
I try to donate primarily to the more local actual charities that do a lot of good in my community like the salvation army, but I have no problem donating to for profit thrift stores either as I am in them often and I can see the great things that they're doing for a very large number of less wealthy people.
Salvation army isn't a non-profit in the strict traditional sense of the word, they are a church that happens to do a lot of worthwhile charity, The church part of their mission has led to some controversy regarding how they treat members of the LGBT community. While each individual office is different there's been a consistent thread of this running through the organization in line with their belief system. If that's not a concern to you then disregard, if it is you may want to consider how your donations and purchases are being spent.
As for finding thrift store items in general, you can find some great things in need of minor tlc, especially hand tools. I tend to use my battery powered told for most things these days that are have tools so plugged tools aren't my forte but I still have a drill I bought ages ago that's lasted me numerous projects and years without failing. It's kind of remarkable how well built some tools are.
>If that's not a concern to you then disregard, if it is you may want to consider how your donations and purchases are being spent.
That is absolutely a great concern to me, but the fact remains that there are at least 10 homeless shelters and soup kitchens in my area funded completely by the salvation army.
While savers et al might be more supportive of the LGBT community, salvation army is literally putting a roof over hundreds of heads who call my city home every night, which is why I choose to support them.
I don't deny in my comment that they do good work. It's absolutely a double edge sword and not an easy or clear cut case of what's right versus wrong. It's well within their rights to choose how to spend their money and I wasn't attempting to assign moral or ethical judgement, just to bring up the point that if it's a concern then your money and time might be better directed elsewhere. This isn't a case of some monolithic evil organization demanding intolerance on high, but as part of their belief system it has led to multiple occasions where people have been thrown out of facilities, denied services, etc. It's up to everyone to find the line with which they are comfortable, especially in areas like this where the best use of resources might actually be giving to a cause that could be antagonistic to another cause one supports.
While lots of cheap bicycles are made in China it's also where practically all high end carbon fiber bikes are made as well. Just like we discounted made in Japan a generation ago, we like to do the same with China today. It's true for some industries but just wishful thinking for many. Look at what's happening with Chinese cars for an example of rapid manufacturing improvement
"cheap" versus "high-end" is not as clear a distinction as it seems. In fairness, it depends what you're looking for.
Carbon Fiber is lighter, ok, so call that the high-end one. But in reality, their durability is lousy -- in addition to being mostly-ruined by a crash, they do deteriorate over time. I know this first-hand as a colleague repairs carbon fiber frames [imagine lots of epoxy and carbon wraps], so I see a huge gamut of failures. Most of the frames coming in are probably 2-8 years old? Will be interesting to see how they 'wear' in the 10-20+ timeframe.
This, in comparison to steel frames, which have fantastic crash resistance (one of my frame's toptube has a huge dent in in for years no problem, and, another friend, a racer, finished a multi-day stage race with the headtube angle crunched-in after rear-ending a car early in the race). Also, provided they're rust-proof'd the frames last decades and can be repaired, modified.
I've been to ?a? ?the? Giant factory in Taiwan seeing them manufacture steel frames -- it was amazingly simple and primitive and mass-scale factory way out from Taipei, in the countryside.
I suppose another win for carbon is it enables lots of weird/cool frame shapes. There are shaped steel and aluminum tubes, but nothing like the options in carbon.
I think the weight advantage of carbon is lower than you'd expect -- high-end cromoly-steel frames are made from suprisingly thin tubing that is very sound.
Anyway, I am clearly a fan of steel frames and more randonneur-style riding. If I was into triathlons or time trials, I'd probably reply differently. And I also increasingly dislike throwaway culture and I don't believe these carbon frames hold up in the longterm.
I have this vague idea of starting a "buy it for life" type store, everything with a 10+ year warranty, plus required maintenance stated clearly for each product. Sell tools, clothing, kitchenware, appliances, whatever.
Is there anywhere like that already? I'm in New Zealand but I'd like to hear about international examples even if I couldn't shop there.
Manufactum (if you talk about the German company or division) sells mainly feel good stuff. I bought some and I wouldn't classify it as high quality items. They generally have a very good finish, that's it. I certainly wouldn't shop there for high quality.
Thanks, Manufactum looks great. As you say though, everything looks plenty solid and reliable, but as far as I can see they don't state any sort of actual warranty/guarantee.
Particularly I miss low-spec, high quality items. I want a good laptop for writing, it has to be only powerful enough to run emacs and a browser. but it has to survive being trashed around and the battery must be available 10 years from now for replacement. Good luck finding that kind of product...
I think at this point new Chromebooks can all run Linux software natively - so might as well just use normal emacs.
Actually I have emacs running on Android as well. I don't really use it often - but it works fine. Maybe if I bought a little Bluetooth keyboard I would play around with it more.
There's another company out of the US called Grant Stone who makes shoes in China. They are some of the best constructed leather shoes I've ever seen. Lots of people compare them to Aldens, which are double the price.
A counter example is solar panels. China makes most of the worlds solar panels, and Chinese engineers design them, thereby proving under the right conditions the Chinese can put together a world class manufacturing chain without anyone else. Evidently Chinese engineers are as good at their jobs and any other engineer on the planet which is to be expected given the number of them they churn out.
Given that, what's surprising is Solar panels are the exception. Push bikes are a great example. I'm pretty sure there are more electric push bikes in China, possibly more than the rest of the world put together. All are designed and built in China. So you would expect with that much volume and competition the best ebikes would come out of China. But that's not what has happened: Chinese designed ebikes are crap.
There was a Australian documentary about China and the Chinese mentality called "Two men in China". One of the presenters was previously Australia's Chief Scientist. It's both hugely entertaining and very informative if you can find it. Anyway, they presented a typical Chinese house. It as small and cramped by Australian standards, but everything was shiny and modern. Only there was a problem: the cupboard doors were falling off. Apparently this generally happens after about 6 months. Doors fall off, carpet comes up, roofs leak, electronics breaks, LED lights that should last 50,000 hours died after 500. No one seemed overly upset by this turn of events. No one was demanding someone come back and fix it. It was just accepted.
The difference then between the solar panels and the ebikes isn't the capability of the designed or the manufacturers. Of all things, it's the difference of the consumer. Where the Western consumer pushes back hard when their solar panels don't work (and by push back I mean law suites, legislation, and ultimately people going to jail) the Chinese consumer allows the manufacturers to get away delivering crap and lying about it. Who would have thought discerning customers were a key ingredient in making a great manufacturing nation?
Giant contract manufacturers bike frames for many brands that are considered “high end”, including Bianchi and Trek. So it’s not like they’re known for low quality.
I avoid things shipped directly from China or HK, but happy to buy something made in China from an Australia store so there is some guarantee of quality and safety.
This is the problem, but not how you are stating it.
If CEO's didn't make 300x the lowest paid employee, and "shareholders didn't demand" exponential growth quarter after quarter, then the price to be 'Not made in China' would be reasonable.
Fix these problems then the damages caused by seeking "cheapest possible AND cheaper" would be non-existant.
*NB: I am a shareholder. I want my investment to MATCH inflation not magically exceed it. If everybody stops being so greedy this is possible. (I wouldn't need to buy shares if my company and government didn't fuck up Retirement Benefits.)
I think it's more complex than that. It's not _just_ the CEO and investors greed. People's time in "1st world countries" is more expensive because _everything_ is more expensive. There's pretty much no manufacturing left here in Australia, because the wages on offer for "factory jobs" can't pay rent or buy food in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane. And if you _did_ pay your "factory workers" in Australian cities enough to rent/buy a home there, your base assembly costs start out at more that the manufactured-and-delivered price for the same item from China. Automation will help fix one end of that problem (the cost to manufacure side), but will make the other end worse (even fewer jobs for lesser skilled workers).
I don't _like_ that fact that global economies and inexpensive shipping have made arbitrage of inequity a real business profit driver. But the reality is that a bunch of people in China are prepared to work in factories making widgets for less money than anybody in Australia - and moving shipping containers full of widgets is _way_ less expensive than the difference.
>If everybody stops being so greedy this is possible.
Problem is that we, as evolved creatures in a world of scarcity, are hoarders by... nature. Greed is just a morally misguided way of hoarding. So, waiting for people to stop being greedy is much more difficult than just making the right moral choices.
Is a person struggling to make rent in New York or San Francisco or Sydney being "greedy" when they demand more pay than workers with equivalent skills in rural China or Vietnam or Bangladesh or Rawanda?
Global economies mean that while some things stay rooted in local pricing (like the food and shelter at the top of Maslow's hierarchy), while other things can be _way_ more valuable if you stuff them in a shipping container and send them to the docks of Oakland or New Jersey...
If I can house and feed my family for $US10/month in Rawanda, and my neighbours can only afford to pay me 30c for my widgets, but they can sell for $100 in San Francisco, of _course_ I'll jam 100,000 of them into a container and pay $5,000 to send them there...
That'll keep working great for the Rwandan guy - up until his kids decide they want iPhones and cars and university degrees, and the costs of their expectations increase until they cannot afford a manufacturing-based economy to fund them either...
BS, if it wasn’t about consumers going for lower prices, the market would be packed with high-end manufacturers. People want cheap shit at Walmart regardless of how much the CEO of Alphabet makes.
Giant is a Taiwanese company. I've had quite a few of their road bikes and mountain bikes over the years, and they have all been excellent - superbly designed and built. All made in Taiwan too - it seems only their cheaper frames are made in China (https://cyclingtips.com/2015/02/a-tour-of-giants-taichung-fa...). From what I've heard, a majority of the world's high-end bicycle frames are manufactured by Giant and Pacific Cycles in Taiwan, then re-branded.
Re-branded isn't quite correct, they are a contract manufacturer, so they are made specifically for the brands. Rebranded makes me think of open mold or catalog frames.
Many bikes for other brands (if not most) are made by Kinesis out of Taiwan, which may be what you are referring to. Although the company was founded by Giant employees it is not the same company as Giant itself.
Yes. I think taiwan was/is a leader in Carbon Fiber. 90s carbon-fiber-glued-to-aluminum bikes were all made from CF tubing that was made in taiwan, by Giant (that last detail I'm a little less sure on, made in taiwan for certain). Specialized, Trek, and Giant all had very similar bikes available at that time, conventional geometries with Shimano 600 (I've got one, I love it). Modern monocoque designs are a little more diverse in design, but I think all but the highest end are made in taiwan.
It's just a click bait title, especially since the last sentence in the article is "If America “decides to remove the 25% tariff, we will move the production back to China right away,” Tu said."
Doesn't sound like the era of Made in China is over if they're itching to get back.
Yeah, not sure about how they're measuring. By market cap, Shimano is about four and a half times larger. P/E is very close between the two; Giant's PY return is about 77 times better than Shimano's.
Fair enough, I just couldn't think of any other manufacturers even in the industry that make more parts or complete bicycles (that I can actually buy) than Giant does.
Shimano is the world’s major bicycle-component manufacturer, but they do not do much production of frames or complete bikes, and Giant certainly leads in that regard.
Opinion articles are - by convention - designated as such. This allows journalistic institutions to distance themselves from things that are insufficiently sourced or are overtly one-sided.
This doesn't fall under that umbrella. It's presented as a piece of economic foreshadowing that Trump's threats are impacting the viability of China as a global manufacturing hub. Which, ok, prove it! Don't give us one company's stated stance, show the numbers. Give us more sources.
We just moved and needed to buy some new kitchenware. You would not believe how difficult it is to find so much as a spoon that is not made in China. Even from any name brand, even in a "fancy" store like Williams-Sonoma.
Thank you. Looking Japanese stuff is a great idea. They are one of the few places to still keep some manufacturing "in-house."
Searching is hard and companies are not always fully transparent about their process. E.g. "Assembled in the USA" for a frying pan could mean that the pan and handle are made in China, but riveted to each other in the USA. Sigh.
For nicer kitchenware, shy away from retail stores in general. Search out brands, find what nice restaurants are using - some fancy restaurants seek out small, artisanal manufacturers for sure.
I remember Jungsik had all dinnerware from Korean artisans. Nice stuff.
Assumption (partly from personal experience) that products may be more likely tainted with unknown or harmful substances for the sake of cost cutting somewhere in the pipeline.
I feel your pain, recalling the last time I moved out. Buying anything on Amazon is a disaster.
Friendly tip. Go to a local supermarket or department store and get what you need there. The item will for sure come from a normal manufacturer/brand and satisfy the local regulations against toxic plastic and stuff, even if it was made and imported from china.
Pretty easy to find this kind of stuff in the UK, e.g. a lot of cutlery used to be made in Sheffield which is near to me and there still seems to be a demand.
Ironically, the pic at the top of the article has many bikes painted "Trek" in the background despite the caption saying it's Giant's facility. In truth, pretty much every major bike manufacturer makes their frames in Taiwan, often in the same facilities. Decals and branding are applied after.
There's a huge amount of manufacturing know-how and infrastructure around bike manufacture in Taiwan, especially around carbon fiber manufacturing. You can even go buy a carbon frame design in Taiwan, you pay more for the design if you want it to be exclusive.
Therefore, it's not terribly surprising that they moved to Taiwan. If they were moving to the US that would be something.
For those interested in MTB, guerrilla gravity is designed and, as far as I know, built in Colorado. The reviews of their bikes (even aluminum frames) are resoundingly positive. Considering the price points they’re not one to overlook.
I own a 2017 Giant and it was made in Taiwan. They've always made their bikes in Taiwan. In fact Taiwan is the performance bike manufacturing capital of the world (largely thanks to Giant). Giant have carbon manufacturing techniques and knowledge that is renowned as the worlds best. All of this always happened in Taiwan.
It's "over" until it isn't:
> That’s why Giant is open to reverting production to its Chinese plants if the U.S. and China are able to hammer out a trade deal. If America “decides to remove the 25% tariff, we will move the production back to China right away,” Tu said.
If you know the bicycle industry, what's interesting is that Giant started out as a Taiwanese based manufacturer, and is probably going to go back there for some things. And to other places like Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia.
They are actually not very much different from the top ten largest Taiwanese motherboard makers. All the motherboards used to be made in Taiwan (Hsin-Chu City, etc). For lower labor costs and other things they moved a lot of production to mainland China and kept the design/R&D/HQ in Taiwan. Now some things are going to go back the other way.
Even the parts still made in Taiwan are often made by imported labor, last time I visited a bike factory, many signs were _only_ in thai. Taiwanese labor is just too expensive to hit the margins targets US bike manufacturers are looking for. It looks like the shift that's been happening toward SE Asia will just accelerate.
a large number of taiwan based AC-to-DC and DC/DC power supply manufacturers (Delta, Zippy, etc) have opened factories in Thailand. If you look at the ATX power supplies sold on newegg for instance, there's about 60 different brand names, actually manufactured by about 12 different companies. I'd say at least half of those have moved manufacturing outside of mainland china because they have better labor/cost of operations opportunities elsewhere in developing parts of southeast asia.
This is actually weird to me. It seemed like it should be possible to stamp out bicycle frames like a car, so I researched it. Such a bike does exist, but is extremely expensive, which seems to defeat the purpose. Is it really not possible to streamline the manufacturing beyond welded tubes?
Not an expert but stamped parts are pretty weak from some angles, but perhaps you meant cold forged which is how aluminum bicycle cranks and some other parts are made - pressed using 100,000 pounds (or some big number depending on material) of pressure, this of course only works for mostly solid items. There is a huge cost in making a cold forge and a limited number of times a mold can be used before a new mold has to be made due to wear and tear. Frame quantities in the exact same shape are not that big, though, manufacturers do seem to come up with new models every few years. Making a frame from a solid piece of metal would make it very heavy increasing the material costs substantially, and counterintuitively - weaker than a tube for this application - there is a strength from the shape of a tube that a solid piece of the same metal does not have and if my memory serves right, the larger the inner radius, the greater the strength (of course you can make a tube so thin the first mishap with a vector in the wrong direction crushes it, but that's a different problem). I recall there being a magnesium frame that was a one piece thing a long time ago.
Lots of aluminum bike frames are already made from hydroformed tubes. Anything that looks like it wasn't just made from pipes, is molded. The question is whether making a frame from a smaller number of molded parts is cost effective. The different parts have to be of different thicknesses, and there's just the geometry puzzle of how to do it without ending up with a big seam that has to be welded anyway.
Early Schwinn frames included parts (head tube, bottom bracket) that were formed from sheet metal. One thing about making tubes from tubing is that there's very little waste.
Which parts of a better quality Giant bike are made in China, anyway?
Maybe they hare having the Giant-branded frames made in China? (I'd be wary of this stuff, if true; a crappy frame can break and kill you.) Or perhaps tires. Kenda tires (Taiwan brand) are likely made in China.
Nothing that you actually hang onto a frame to make a bike that is worth a damn comes from China: cassettes, rings, cranks, hubs, bottom brackets, shifter, brakes, rims, you name it. Only low-end garbage like SunRace cassettes, ProMax brakes and whatnot.
Bike all around the world are typically the same in this way. The "brand" part of the bike goes into the frame, and then what's on it is third-party components from familiar brands.
Some Shimano stuff is made in places like Indonesia. I don't recall having seen a "made in China" stamp on it, though.
If the recent tariffs are cited as the main reason for not making things in China, wouldn't things naturally reverse themselves when they are lifted? The tariffs strike me as an artifice that can't be sustained for a very long time- what is their lasting effect that changes the economics of manufacturing things in China?
Or what if China will play dirty and devaluates CNY against USD to offset the tariffs? This will be extremely bad and potentially means another escalation to the trade war...
Already a lot of popular brand frames were made in Taiwan.
Also, if enough manufacturing shifted to Taiwan, that itself might prompt a certain "stable genius" to add them to the list of tariff countries. Or China might become aggressive enough toward Taiwan that he would lump them with China in tariffs.
> Tariffs are adding $100 on average to the price of bicycles made in China and exported to the U.S., compared with those made in zero-tariff areas, Tu said, explaining the rationale for the switch to the Taiwanese site.
Perhaps if manufacturers will move out of PRC into nearby countries it won't have a large effect on prices for consumers and businesses in the US, but at the same time will force China to make structural changes in adherence with the rules of global trade and human rights. Too bad Trump has alienated traditional US allies - if major economies teamed up in this effort it would have been a much easier goal.
For example, the EU has acknowledged that their unflappable trust in the US alliance can no longer be depended on. And they are taking steps to move towards a more independent posture in particular on defence.
The one idiot that the rest of the world ignored was Georg W. Bush. By electing a second, worse idiot the US has demonstrated to the world that they are no longer a viable long term partner.
The feeling is mutual, why do you think we elected Trump?
Americans are sick and tired of America paying for the rest of the world. Enjoy investing in your own military, if you get invaded I hope the U.S doesn't lift a finger.
The "traditional US allies" have been the least help in this. The U.S. government hasn't done enough to support Taiwan in my opinion, but U.S. relations with India, Viet nam, Korea, etc. are exceptionally good. Among them surely is a replacement for some of the scale and industrial power the PRC is unwilling to provide on reasonable terms.
The U.S. relationship with China is dominated by imports, so India restricting some imports from the U.S. (keeping in mind that China imposes far more severe tariffs on most U.S. goods) is not completely crazy.
Maybe the U.S. can, but it seems that some people still think it's more efficient to go elsewhere, and in the near term I don't see that opinion changing.
That efficiency can be eliminated with tariffs, just as much of the rest of the world does. The only safe place to do business, is in the country that you're selling to. That should've never been encouraged to get away from to begin with.
Bicycles are something that you need to be careful buying. Don't buy a BSO - a Bicycle Shaped Object. Just because it looks like a bike, doesn't mean you can comfortably ride it. An entry level bike is about $1200. You can comfortably ride it for hours, or up hills, carry a heavy load, it won't easily break, and it'll have a smooth ride. I feel bad for people that go out and buy a BSO; BSOs ruin cycling. We need to have laws in place to prevent crap from reaching the market.
I have to laugh at this. In Japan, my Chinese-made bicycle is bulletproof and entirely functional. It cost $150, shipped to my front door. It’s a folding bike with 9 speeds and disc brakes. I’ve ridden it day after day for years. It spent two years without shelter in the elements. It won’t win the Tour but it is a winner in every other way.
You can tell me the environmental impact was horrendous and I would believe you, but the quality of this bicycle can’t be denied.
You don't see many of those in the US compared to places like Europe or in your case Japan.
Probably because there's less of a market for them in the US.
What the OP is probably thinking of is the crappy bikes you get at supermarkets, where the quality is really not very good, and they're assembled by someone who is not paying attention. Sometimes they try and look like a more expensive bike: front shocks, lots of gears and so on. The commuter bikes in Europe were, on the other hand, built with that in mind - big fenders, more upright position, and fairly rugged if not lightweight construction. You wouldn't mistake them for a bike you'd want to go on a long ride with.
They get rebranded in Japan, so I’m not sure about the original maker. Try looking at bikes on Rakuten’s japan site, and maybe you can trace some of those bikes back to their source in China?
An entry level bike is not $1200. Thats a mid range high quality bike. If you trips are short you can be totally fine on a $400 road bike. I would just avoid department store bikes that are typically under $300 but are built to look like high end mountain bikes. The suspension on them is totally useless and makes it ride worse than a bike with no suspension.
Yeah, there are lots of basic, good quality bikes in the $400-500 range. People just need to go to a real bike shop or a place like REI with a good bike department and helpful staff. It is true that once you drop to the $200-300 range, there is a lot of junk to avoid.
My current bike is 10 years old. I bought a $500 hard-tail Marin mountain bike to use for commuting, expecting that it would be able to take some abuse. My wife has a similar vintage bike from the REI house brand at the time (Novara) and it seems of similar quality. I am pretty sure both have Giant frames under their paint. These aluminum frames and disc brakes are a revelation compared to my previous long-term bike which was a lugged-steel Bridgestone with cantilever and cam rim brakes.
I have been almost negligent with maintenance, mainly just oiling the chain and replacing tires and tubes. I don't miss re-packing the bearings and freewheel like my old bike. I am not sure how much that is due to modern tech versus changes in my riding habits. I haven't left the asphalt with the current bike.
I did have to have a wheel re-spoked once after I pounded it in a deep pot-hole with narrow street tires mounted. My Shimano trigger shifters are near the point of needing some kind of major tune-up. I think I would have preferred to keep the simpler indexed levers from the 1990s, as they required a little more operator skill but were less finicky.
In addition, being self sufficient for maintenance can turn practically any bike into a good working bike. I ride old bikes, but have tuned them to perfection.
I don't immediately discard an item because it's made in China, as I know of some high quality items made there. Most Apple products, some Xiaomi products or Meermin/Feit shoes.
However, I tend to be very skeptical about its quality. Moving manufacturing to China is most often done to reduce cost. The only industry where it's not done due to cost, but supply chain issues, is electronics.
And with cost reduction comes lower quality. Higher tolerances, zero pollution standards, etc. In particular, most items I got from China have this terrible new plastic smell that is almost intoxicating. Same for some clothing dyes. Studies show formaldehyde concentrations are really high in Chinese homes, and I'm not surprised.
Hence, a few years ago I made a resolution to raise my standards and avoid those things. But it's a lot of trouble to find high quality items these days. I want to own few things and keep most for the rest of my life. I have slowly curated such a list, but it's as I said you need to go out of your way and often get custom things from niche brands.
Once a big company in a particular industry moves to China, most will follow shortly. It's game theory. The average customer couldn't care less about things I mentioned above. Sadly, it's all about price.
tl;dr As a consumer I miss much better reviews and reports on product quality, safety and repairability. I feel that'd improve the situation where most industries localize to China to cut costs at the expense of everything else due to information asymmetry.
> Sadly, it's all about price.
It’s about price because consumers can’t measure by anything else.
Eg. I can’t tell which of two products is manufactured to higher standards, nor which one isn’t infested with formaldehyde.
Until consumers are able to determine those other factors then yes sadly it is all about price (and marketing).
That's not entirely true. In the EU, there are lots of tags that guarantee product safety. CE marks (for electronics), OEKO-TEX (safe textiles), GOTS (organic textiles), etc. The US has some equivalent ones I am less familiar with. In fact, both OEKO-TEX and GOTS are global standards.
Some Xiaomi products have not been imported to EU because they failed to obtain CE marks. And you'd never encounter a product that smells formaldehyde with an OEKO-TEX label.
But I agree the information is quite asymmetric. As a customer, I want to know a lot more about how products are made. And I want to be able to repair them and source replacement parts.
>And you'd never encounter a product that smells formaldehyde with an OEKO-TEX label.
These guys will put lead in children's toys but would never be so unscrupulous as to put a fake label on the product? Or lie to obtain certification?
That's a criticism of the supply chain and enforcement, not the certification itself.
I think most people would agree that a promise without verification is no real promise.
China executed people responsible for adding an industrial chemical to baby formula [1]. Without debating the merits of capital punishment, I think the issue is the lack of consistency in supple chain management. The only model I could compare to would be Costco, who is pretty good at curating products customers will like (and the quality is usually good IMHO). Trust sells, if you find buyers who value trust.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes...
China executed scapegoats after huge internal outrage and an attempted coverup.
Not the kind of thing that builds trust.
I don't know whether they were just scapegoats. But if we assume the worst, that they were, it's still a big cost. Having to find scapegoats to pin the blame on while keeping morale of other employees up, I'd imagine that isn't easy. People will be scared. They will wonder whether they are next in line for scapegoating. They will try their best to stay away and cover their asses. It will raise costs to the point that no one will try this again.
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I don't know about manufacturing. But for food products people get prosecuted all the time by trading standards.
My friend who works for them has a lot of interesting stories to tell. One story, she visited a local pub and asked for a dairy free ploughman's, the waiter asked if she would like butter on her bread. My friend waited for it to be added, then she put the whole meal, plate and all into a plastic bag and took it away for analysis. The pub got fined and another visit from trading standards.
>the waiter asked if she would like butter on her bread. My friend waited for it to be added //
I've heard stories like this before. It sounds a bit stupid on the part of Trading Standards (TS).
Waiter: "Do you want butter"
Customer/TS agent: "Yes, please"
Then the TS agent prosecutes you for putting butter on their food. Well why did they ask for butter. I mean, I realise that people are sometimes absolute idiots but I don't think you should prosecute restaurants for serving what you ask for.
A story in our local press was that the TS agent said "no peanuts for me as I have an allergy, I'll have the lamb bhuna, ..." and then they ordered a load of dishes - as you would for a family - and they included in their order "chicken satay". They specifically asked for it.
Guess what the restaurant did, they gave them what they asked for. And Trading Standards prosecuted them and made them out in the press to be evil.
Now to me it sounded like the person was ordering a bhuna with no nuts and a load of stuff for other people, if they're stupid enough to order a nut dish isn't that their own fault?
I don't know what's happened to personal responsibility but the expectation for businesses to coddle people has gone too far IMO.
/rant
It takes very little for the waiter to inject, "The satay contains peanuts as an essential ingredient, do you still want to order it?"
Sounds by that story that the other orders were intended for the other people eating given that the peanut free order was explicitly made. So I can only assume the waiter assumed the rest was an order for the others? Maybe that assumption may not (legally) be made and a warning needs to be made for everyone at a whole table? Either way that seems like a bit of a gray zone. Sounds almost like the point was to trip up the waiter.
When you are really allergic to peanuts, it can be an issue just to sit at a table where someone eats peanuts. A waiter should know this. Unlike many other things they deal with, it's literally a matter of life and death.
This I think it's exactly it, they are trying to trip the people up and it's not realistic.
...Wait. Your friend asked for no dairy, then said she wanted dairy anyway, then got people in trouble for that?
Am I missing something important here? This sounds like a textbook example of soulless, arbitrary bureaucracy that benefits no one but bureaucrats and their enforcers.
This sounds like someone (your friend?) had a quota to fill by any means necessary, as opposed to actually enforcing consumer standards. Rather shameful, IMO.
I guess you can get non-dairy spread, mayo, salad cream, etc to put on. It's not her being sneaky and trapping people, it's just that people are dumb. "You're offering me butter when I specifically asked for dairy free?" "Yes" Adds butter. Bosses all slap foreheads in frustration.
Lack of training. Stupid people. I dunno. She's got a lot of stories. The animal neglect are the worst. The pub food ones are the amusing ones. She gets a lot of food poisoning from dodgy food.
I, err... don't know how to feel about this. Entrapment at its worst?
I'm all for labels, safety, and verification enabling people to be informed, consenting adults.
But if you asked to have butter on your toast, as an informed consenting adult, you get butter on your toast, and it ain't anybody's fault but your own. And I'm a liberal socialist pinkie commie Canadian, not even a redneck gun-tottin' libertarian :D
There must be / I hope there is something I'm missing from the story...?
What a disgusting friend you got.
She’ll entrap you next. Brunch date rape accusation or something.
CE mark is a self reported thing.
TüV and UL are more reliable, but they are still a minimum standard of safety, not a sign of quality.
Are you talking the Conformite Europe Mark? Or the all but identical China Export Mark?
(Now I'm expecting some Bitcoin "investor" to jump in with "blockchain all the certification marks!" as though that'd solve the problem of people not caring...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export
'The Commission responded that it was unaware of the existence of any "Chinese Export" mark'
This legend has to stop. CE is a self declaration marking, and it's just people applying the CE marking when they have not respected the relevant standards.
CE = Conformite Europe = "We promise we meet all the safety standards, scout's honor!"
I know "blockchain all the certification marks!" we can call it "ChainOfCustodyChain" $$$$$$$$$
Just be careful so you don't get sued for trademark infringement by 2 Chainz.
In the EU, there are lots of tags that guarantee product safety
Like all those EU-compliant logos on the 1TB SDXC cards that sell for €10? Totally legit.
Of course such tags are completely irrelevant without the effects of the jurisdiction that aims to secure their authenticity. In particular, when buying online from overseas you have very little guarantees of what you'll actually get, unless you are familiar with the brand and/or merchant.
Things are different when buying domestically at a retail store. Retailers have supply chain or import the products themselves. Importing and selling products that violate safety standards, or products that show safety marks like CE without authorization, is not in the retailers' best interest, since the Customs Agents will come down hard on them. As large monetary sanctions are the only effective way to deter corporations from breaking the rules, the fines/reparations are proportional to the volume of the illegitimate products sold.
Not to speak of the civil liability when some kid gets electrocuted thanks to the hazardous phone adapter your company imported.
On that same subject - it was interesting to me how much better fresh produce was in Italy. In no small part I think this is due to the fact that people have a pretty good ability to distinguish the quality of a lot of traditional foods there.
In the stores, the produce isn't usually as neat and tidy and pretty as in the US - you might even find a few bad bits and pieces, but by and large, it tastes really good.
it was interesting to me how much better fresh produce was in Italy
It helps that the food doesn't have to travel far from where it's grown. Sadly, the majority of the planet isn't as fortunate.
Same thing applies to a lot of produce in california, still tends to taste worse.
A lot of that will depend on where you are and where you're shopping. For example: even in the Bay Area it can be hard to find garlic grown outside of China despite Watsonville and Fresno growing a ton of garlic. American-grown ginger as well can be extremely difficult to find as well. Same with avocados and limes. The Southern Californian climate is well suited to both avocados and limes, but most I've found out here are sourced from Mexico or South America (except for the 'specialty' avocados).
I'm not surprised. Local fresh produce tends to be the way to get much better food products.
What I would like to see is a curated list of all common objects we use daily that have the properties I mentioned above: high quality, safety and repairability.
Places like r/bifl and manufactum.de are good starting points, but they are far from complete.
It's not necessarily local - these aren't what I'd call high end or "hipster" type markets, just regular supermarkets. They'll bring in stuff from southern Italy, or Spain or wherever is convenient.
But they do pay attention to quality because their customers want that.
I'd still argue that's quite local. In most Spanish supermarkets, stuff tended to be local or from nearby EU countries. Although now things are degrading.
My favorite UK supermarket sells organic pine kernels from China, at a ridiculously high price. That's not local, nor pine kernels are typical produce from China. It's just seeking high margins.
Soil composition, fertilizers, vegetable strains, and weather conditions all impact taste. Tomatoes from my garden made from heirloom seeds taste significantly better than best boy, beefsteak, or even tomatoes on the vine. I've had tomatoes from Italy, in Romania if all places, and can concur that even the produce exported tastes worlds better than what you can buy in the average US supermarket. I'd wager that the type of produce grown in the US is the culprit as it tends to be more important to have shelf stable and attractive produce than tasty produce. Stuff from my garden or the farmer's market is comparable to produce I've had in Europe.
You can find heirloom veggies and less industrialized produce in American markets — but part of the reason they're not quite as popular is that they don't ship as well or have as long a season. Fuerte avocados, for instance, have a season of about six weeks. They're delicious but towards the end of the season they're not that great.
Of course, living in the Bay Area I'm spoiled by the selection. It really is better than a lot of other areas. In contrast, Portland, in particular, stood out as having consistently mediocre produce available (and New York was surprisingly good even in the middle of winter).
New York and a good chunk of the Northeast get a lot of produce from Canada year round. New York is also a major port city with fresh food coming in daily. I can't find any heirloom anything in my local market, not a big enough draw. The farmer's markets are great though fresh from field to table and usually great prices from great people. In the Bay area you actually have a really nice pipeline to farmers which probably explains the great produce. Portland seems like it might have a rain problem with would limit produce to tolerant it greenhouse crops, especially tomatoes which do poorly in tons of rain. Even lettuce needs to dry out lest it rot.
> it tends to be more important to have shelf stable and attractive produce than tasty produce.
Yes, exactly. US customers are selecting for the biggest/dollar with no blemishes, rather than the tastiest.
The avoidance of Monsanto seeds could be a part of it.
Yup. I worked at a company selling enterprise equipment, and they were absolutely opposed to entering the consumer market precisely because low-information customers push everyone into a race to the bottom.
There are notable exception to this in most industries, but it’s got to be a hard path to walk. Somewhat amusingly, most people’s favourite brands tend to be the more quality ones, if my circle is anything to go by (which is a trap). If it’s what they buy is a whole different thing.
> A step further, it seems most people's favourite brands tend to be ones which were high quality in the past. Its a rare situation where that quality continues as mass market appeal arrives.
Yes, I think this is a typical brand lifecycle. Somewhat niche brand gets famous due to high quality and appealing image. Brand gets bought by big group, with a lot of expertise in distribution and marketing. Quality goes downhill, prices skyrocket. Brand eventually loses appeal.
The LVMH Group does this all the time. But arguably, they don't lower quality too much.
The whole Kenmore/Whirlpool/Maytag/Jenn-Air/etc branding joke is that they switch which brand is the good one frequently to sucker people into buying garbage so you really have to be careful and do your homework for every single device. Have a great white Whirlpool dishwasher that replaced a near identical looking model. Apparently the motor and a few other parts were significantly different as while the prior model only made "the energy star sounds" it frequently clogged and never cleaned. The new one is a champ, uses less energy, less water, cleans everything, fits more dishes, and never clogs and I'm pretty sure it was cheaper than the previous model. The previous house had an amazing portable dishwasher I'd plumbed in. I had to replace the motor once and the impeller twice (user error) but the thing was over 20 years old and still ran like new. They certainly don't build them to last like that anymore.
Today you can get the highest quality consumer appliances ever available in human history...if you are willing to pay.
https://www.mieleusa.com/domestic/full-size-dishwashers-1532...
The auto open feature is fantastic, drys out your plastic ware.
I've tried buying upmarket items as my income has appreciated, however I haven't always found the additional cost worth the price. The KitchenAid mixer we purchased was worth every penny, but other high cost items like Pampered Chef haven't been any better than what I can purchase at Target. I'm definitely in the spot of trying to find durable, quality items at any cost as I need to plan for them to not break down when I'm gone. I don't want my wife and daughter saddled with constantly breaking garbage that I'm not here to be able to fix.
I was just reading the book "The House of Morgan" and it describes how companies are purchased when they don't maximize short term profit. The bankers and executives make sure that they make millions in the transfer, and then the brand is cheapened to get more profit, usually at the expense of the customers and employees, and then the company is sold again to get more millions for the executives and bankers. They don't really care if the company goes under or they destroy society as a side effect - it is all about making more millions for the already rich principals.
I jokingly call this MBA disease as a nod to Dutch Elm disease; the parasite sucks all the nutrients it can out of the host, killing it and then moves on. It’s the reason I don’t expect to enjoy Whataburger for much longer now that it’s been purchased by a Chicago investment house.
For instance Whataburger uses fresh eggs and scrambles them on site. That’ll go by the wayside in favor of McDonald’s-style pre-made and pre-packaged eggs generating waste and lowering quality. But it’ll make the food easier to replicate nation wide creating shot term profits from growth until consumers have the predictable “I don’t see what all the hype is about” reaction, damaging or possibly destroying the brand.
> it describes how companies are purchased when they don't maximize short term profit
But they evidently did maximize short term profit by selling the company.
LVMH are mostly luxury brands. They only do high-end and way above that.
When the standard price for a tshirt is something like $50, they don't need to worry about manufacturing price or cheaper competition. That's a different business entirely than primark selling $1 or $2 tshirts.
A step further, it seems most people's favourite brands tend to be ones which were high quality in the past. Its a rare situation where that quality continues as mass market appeal arrives.
Irwin tools, Klein tools, Blaster Corp products, John Deere stuff, K-Bar, Leatherman, Ogio backpacks, and Patagonia. I'm sure there are others but these brands have held up well for me over time. It's definitely a short list. Lowe's Kobalt brand seems to be good for now but Craftsman is junk now, most major appliances are garbage, every television manufacturer I can think of has garbage QA, aside from Samsung and apple I can't think of a reputable phone brand sold in the US but even Apple quality has lessened a bit and Samsung has the exploding battery issue. It's gotten really hard to find quality that isn't hand made.
Yeah, this is kind of the entire point of trademarks - to let non-professionals get enough information about quality to make decisions on some basis other than just price.
Good point. This is where public online reviews come in. It's a bit tricky with amazon, because for some products different sellers source slightly different versions of the product (or just knock-offs), but in theory open online review is a revolution for the customer-quality information gap.
Why reviews are horrible, even (especially?) on Youtube:
SO HYPED ABOUT THIS PRODUCT. CAN'T WAIT UNTIL IT'S RELEASED (5 stars)
(brand) hits it out of the park again! Thanks for the review model, paid trip to Hawaii, and sweet t-shirt, (brand). This makes all (other brands) obsolete! Hail Sony! (5 stars)
This new model makes the old one look like trash. A new era has arrived (5 stars)
(One year earlier on the previous model): This new model makes the old one look like trash. A new era has arrived (5 stars)
Used it for 5 minutes, I love it (5 stars)
I've never used it but (YT celebrity) said it's good (5 stars)
(paid spam review) (5 stars)
(review of another product) (5 stars)
Good and knowledgeable review that has an honest view of the strengths and weaknesses of the product. Might have a mix of broken English, bad production values, or be by a kid with a squeaky voice or someone who looks ugly: 3 stars
WAS HYPED ABOUT THIS BUT SICK OF WAITING (1 star)
Great five-star product but (random seller) sucks / was slow to ship it / wouldn't take my return! (1 star)
It broke when I dropped it out of an airplane (1 star)
How do I turn it on? (1 star)
(complaint about related but different model of same product) (1 star)
(review of another product) (1 star)
Out of stock! (1 star)
This is part of the reason why AvE's BOLTR series is so popular. Buy a tool for money donated on patreon, take it apart, tell us how it works and how it will break, test it a bit. Explicitly tell us "this is no fucking good at all" or "this is pretty skookum".
It seems like there is a viable business model underlying this, that shoulf translate to other product categories. The hard part is building an audience that trusts you.
Don't forget literally switched the product to another product and kept the old reviews including pictures of the old predicts.
Reviews are nice, but reviewers are rarely in the position to assess some properties of a product. Especially safety.
I think it might have made it worse since most reviews we see are fake or influenced rather than word of mouth from trusted friends
that’s why we need regulatory bodies and, yes, tariffs which should factor all those additional costs: to environment, human rights, etc.
tariffs are a poor instrument for anything except raising the price of incoming goods so that your local industries can compete. And then you're still "picking the winners and losers" by selectively applying tariffs. It's a tax that hurts consumers and helps industries. There's a place for it in well measured smart economic policy, but in almost every case it's better to use a tax (like carbon tax) than a tariff. Essentially that's what a tariff is, but calling it a tax and giving a good reason for it is a lot less likely to cause retaliatory tariffs.
A tarriff is just the name for a tax applied to imports. The reason and the scope and definition can be good or bad, just as with a tax.
"It’s about price because consumers can’t measure by anything else."
They can, but it's obviously the biggest signal.
But let's not confuse the plight of the middle/upper middle class who can afford to start to invest in aspiration, and make other qualitative judgments about things like supply chain.
China+Wallmart have made entire categories of goods and services available to regular working people, at prices they can afford. The consumer surpluses have been vast.
However much we may not like all of the ugly bits that come along with that new reality (and there are many) - we often forget the immense surpluses they bring to quite a lot of people.
Most people don't have a lot of money and are very price sensitive, and being able to afford 'stuff' can in many cases improve their lives quite dramatically.
Anecdotally, I've been helping to create a physical product for mass consumption, and this has really hit home with me in our earlier trials and feedback from customers. Without getting into specifics, the 'simple' version of our product at $40 is accessible to most. The fancy version at $80 will be beyond the reach of most. Margins will be what they can be, but for the first time in my professional career, it dawned on my quite clearly all of these folks clamouring for our product for whom we would have to say 'no' to, because of price point: they are not going to be able to get the little bump in lifestyle. It was the weirdest bit of 'capitalist equality/opportunity' logic, but I really felt bad that we might have to tell all those folks that they 'can't have it'. All things equal, I want to make it as affordable as I can because that brings a lot of benefit to people.
So yes, after 20 years of this China-Wallmart global supply chain powerhouse ... maybe we should start to take stock of all of these externalities, but let's also not forget how much of the surpluses go to those who need it.
Now consider that there are still 4 billion people who are going to 'come online' into basic economic prosperity who are going to want and need 'stuff' to!
I hope we start to figure out plastics, waste, pollution, but we also want to make stuff accessible.
There seems to be a major difference in you trying to make a good, quality product which have yet to have benefited from economy of scale and cheap knock offs that are often dangerous, misleading, or just plain cut corners. For a large number of people and products this isn't actually a problem, like you say. Harbor freight had an excellent business model in just this but they are very up front about it. You're not buying the best wishlist quality, you're buying the best quality they can find at a specific and accessible price. That's adding efficiency to the supply chain, which is most of what Walmart does. Don't sell yourself short that your first product iteration isn't there yet. You'll find ways to improve and lower the cost of the product in safe and efficient ways over time.
“It’s about price because consumers can’t measure by anything else.”
Neither can statisticians so that’s why I don’t put any trust in CPI numbers (“inflation”). They don’t even track amount sold (I.e. did the 355 ml pop become 340ml?) how are they going to track quality???
CPI is difficult and flawed, but they do try to account for size. Soda is pretty consistent in size (12oz can), but, for example, yogurt which can come in a variety of sizes is added to the CPI per 8oz. The hard part is how you measure the quality change. The market is flooded with high end higher quality yogurts. Yogurt shelves in the grocery store look very different than they did 15 years ago before Chobani kicked off the Greek yogurt crazy, and completely different than 30 years ago before USDA organic certification.
Add starch to yoghurt and the 8oz becomes 7oz is yoghurt
Make yogurt with organic grass fed milk and 8oz of yogurt costs as much as 32oz of plain old starchless yogurt.
I think this is one of the few places where blockchain would be more help than hurt. Provenance of materials, location of manufacture, even tolerances and standards applied could be tracked across multiple independent companies. Of course, enforcing what goes on the blockchain would be a whole different can of worms. This sort of tracking is important in manufacturing standards (ISO9001). Coupling non-central control of the manufacturing record would be very helpful implementing standards like ISO9001 and allow third party analysis of "manufacturing quality" and "environmental impact" ... even better if it can be integrated into manufacturing instruments that can register a step automatically. Shipping and supply companies are looking heavily into these types of applications.
When the internet was young and I was wide eyed optimistic I thought reviews and ratings would solve this problem. It didn't. Then amazon came along and promised a similar panacea, user ratings... but again it didn't quite happen.
I feel twitter suffers the same problems. Who is genuine? Who has unbiased knowledge? Who can tell me the truth about a product? Can I know your credentials online without knowing your name? ((Imagine twitter posts being flagged "This person has no qualifications and has failed a basic maths exam")) -- idea - online exams with my results cryptographically signed.
Block-chain seemed to offer some sort of solution. Maybe if we had trusted manufacturers of components, then these components could be tracked (along with pollution, carbon miles, labour policies, etc) all logged in the block chain. A bit like "fair trade" but for other items. Easily checked using your phone/bar-code before purchasing.
Blockchain does not provide any verification of trust, nor can it. It provides verification of number crunching transactions alone, as well as an immutable store of that number crunching. It's actually notoriously poor for trust compared to traditional systems, as there is no way to mediate in the case of fraud once a transaction has occurred.
How exactly would "blockchain" contribute anything to this solution?
>But it's a lot of trouble to find high quality items these days. I want to own few things and keep most for the rest of my life.
I concur on both fronts.
Might I suggest you check out thrift or second hand stores?
I have a collection of old aluminum cased power tools made in the mid 20th century in North America, and I think the most I paid for any one of them was $12 CAD.
They look amazing.
You can take them apart quickly and easily if you need to re-grease them.
You can re-wind the motor if you somehow manage to short it out.
They don't need a warranty, as they have proven themselves over the past 50+ years already.
Etc.
We've made a LOT of quality products over the years, many of which make their way into thrift stores sooner or later.
Paying 10% of what something would cost brand new, and getting quality that is typically 10x greater than the brand new version is a steal imho.
Take a bit of care with those... When I was a kid I was using my granddad's orbital sander - with a beautiful alloy body, when one of the brushes _finally_ wore right through, and the spring and pigtail popped out of the brush holder and put the live 240V AC conductor into the casing... (Not at all helped by the fact I was using the extension cord from the double insulated electric lawnmower, which had earth pins on the plug/sockets, but no earth conductor in the cable...) My arm waved around uncontrollably as I couldn't release the grip in my hand - until it _finally_ bashed itself into the boat I was sanding down and hammered it out of my hand. I have no idea how I came out of that unscathed...
A valid warning, indeed!
I will admit that my drill has had the grounding pin cut out of it's once-3-pronged plug.
Apparently it was common for contractors to cut it out as many of the houses they were working in didn't have grounding sockets.
I've only used it a couple of times, after checking it over mechanically inside, so I'm not too worried about it.
The beautiful thing about old power tools however is that replacing the power cord is as easy removing 4 easily accessed screws in the outer cover, removing the cover, then removing 3 further easily accessed screws that connect the plug to the electrical system of the drill.
Which as you remind us, I should probably do sooner than later.
Thanks for the story, and thankfully you still have an arm to type with!
With the grounding pin absent, even a small amount of leakage can result in the enclosure of the tool being anywhere between mains and ground potential. I'm neither an electrician nor an engineer, but I suspect that the newer "double insulated" standard is a worthwhile improvement.
Either (or both of) roper grounding or a residual current detector would have made that day of mine a lot less exciting. I'm still happy using metal-cased mains powered devices, but I'm somewhat more careful about checking those two things before I hang on to them tightly these days...
In the UK most 'thrift' or charity shops are hollowed-out since they realised they could make much more money selling valuable items online in auctions. Since then they have a national audience and not just wall-ins from one town.
Any tips on how you identify such items that are worth buying? Those tools sound like an amazing deal.
It's tougher than it looks.
Especially so with newer Chinese made products actually adding lead weights inside their cheap plastic cases to make their cheap products feel as though they were cut from a heavier cloth.
Some rules of thumb that I have when it comes to buying old power tools are:
Does it look like something your grandfather might have owned?
Is it of all metal construction? If not, are the plastics of a high enough density to make them almost as indestructible as metal?
Does it plug directly into the wall? And does it work?
If you can answer those questions in the affirmative when it comes to any power tool, chances are it is of good quality.
The best way by far imho however is just to get out there and start looking.
After a few months, you'll begin to notice lots and lots of exactly the same items showing up in the same shelving sections.
The same kettles, the same breadmakers, the same drills, the same table lamps, most all of them having been made in the past 20 years and currently knocking on death's door.
Once you've seen enough of that crap, when a quality item displays itself in front of you, you'll know it's a great deal and snap it up with excitement.
I love thrifting.
Good luck out there!
Also - keep in mind a lot of places you find these things they're _really_ cheap, so it's often perfectly fine to buy one that is _probably_ good, then pull it apart when you get home to check it's interior and construction. If you only dropped $5 at a thrift store, it doesn't hurt too much when you find its actually shitty plastic with a lump of rusty steel inside - and you just trow it out...
That is a great point.
Plenty of items that I have purchased and been unhappy with personally have found their way back to thrift stores.
I try to donate primarily to the more local actual charities that do a lot of good in my community like the salvation army, but I have no problem donating to for profit thrift stores either as I am in them often and I can see the great things that they're doing for a very large number of less wealthy people.
Salvation army isn't a non-profit in the strict traditional sense of the word, they are a church that happens to do a lot of worthwhile charity, The church part of their mission has led to some controversy regarding how they treat members of the LGBT community. While each individual office is different there's been a consistent thread of this running through the organization in line with their belief system. If that's not a concern to you then disregard, if it is you may want to consider how your donations and purchases are being spent.
As for finding thrift store items in general, you can find some great things in need of minor tlc, especially hand tools. I tend to use my battery powered told for most things these days that are have tools so plugged tools aren't my forte but I still have a drill I bought ages ago that's lasted me numerous projects and years without failing. It's kind of remarkable how well built some tools are.
>If that's not a concern to you then disregard, if it is you may want to consider how your donations and purchases are being spent.
That is absolutely a great concern to me, but the fact remains that there are at least 10 homeless shelters and soup kitchens in my area funded completely by the salvation army.
While savers et al might be more supportive of the LGBT community, salvation army is literally putting a roof over hundreds of heads who call my city home every night, which is why I choose to support them.
I don't deny in my comment that they do good work. It's absolutely a double edge sword and not an easy or clear cut case of what's right versus wrong. It's well within their rights to choose how to spend their money and I wasn't attempting to assign moral or ethical judgement, just to bring up the point that if it's a concern then your money and time might be better directed elsewhere. This isn't a case of some monolithic evil organization demanding intolerance on high, but as part of their belief system it has led to multiple occasions where people have been thrown out of facilities, denied services, etc. It's up to everyone to find the line with which they are comfortable, especially in areas like this where the best use of resources might actually be giving to a cause that could be antagonistic to another cause one supports.
I'd stay away from used circular saws. The shaft may be damaged, and having the blade come off or shatter at high speeds could be pretty bad.
I'll be sure to check out the shaft before I use it next time, thank you!
While lots of cheap bicycles are made in China it's also where practically all high end carbon fiber bikes are made as well. Just like we discounted made in Japan a generation ago, we like to do the same with China today. It's true for some industries but just wishful thinking for many. Look at what's happening with Chinese cars for an example of rapid manufacturing improvement
"cheap" versus "high-end" is not as clear a distinction as it seems. In fairness, it depends what you're looking for.
Carbon Fiber is lighter, ok, so call that the high-end one. But in reality, their durability is lousy -- in addition to being mostly-ruined by a crash, they do deteriorate over time. I know this first-hand as a colleague repairs carbon fiber frames [imagine lots of epoxy and carbon wraps], so I see a huge gamut of failures. Most of the frames coming in are probably 2-8 years old? Will be interesting to see how they 'wear' in the 10-20+ timeframe.
This, in comparison to steel frames, which have fantastic crash resistance (one of my frame's toptube has a huge dent in in for years no problem, and, another friend, a racer, finished a multi-day stage race with the headtube angle crunched-in after rear-ending a car early in the race). Also, provided they're rust-proof'd the frames last decades and can be repaired, modified.
I've been to ?a? ?the? Giant factory in Taiwan seeing them manufacture steel frames -- it was amazingly simple and primitive and mass-scale factory way out from Taipei, in the countryside.
I suppose another win for carbon is it enables lots of weird/cool frame shapes. There are shaped steel and aluminum tubes, but nothing like the options in carbon.
I think the weight advantage of carbon is lower than you'd expect -- high-end cromoly-steel frames are made from suprisingly thin tubing that is very sound.
Anyway, I am clearly a fan of steel frames and more randonneur-style riding. If I was into triathlons or time trials, I'd probably reply differently. And I also increasingly dislike throwaway culture and I don't believe these carbon frames hold up in the longterm.
I have this vague idea of starting a "buy it for life" type store, everything with a 10+ year warranty, plus required maintenance stated clearly for each product. Sell tools, clothing, kitchenware, appliances, whatever.
Is there anywhere like that already? I'm in New Zealand but I'd like to hear about international examples even if I couldn't shop there.
I think Manufactum is the most similar thing out there, yet still far from perfect. They focus too much on old looks vs quality.
Manufactum (if you talk about the German company or division) sells mainly feel good stuff. I bought some and I wouldn't classify it as high quality items. They generally have a very good finish, that's it. I certainly wouldn't shop there for high quality.
Thanks, Manufactum looks great. As you say though, everything looks plenty solid and reliable, but as far as I can see they don't state any sort of actual warranty/guarantee.
I think it was called "Sears"...
Particularly I miss low-spec, high quality items. I want a good laptop for writing, it has to be only powerful enough to run emacs and a browser. but it has to survive being trashed around and the battery must be available 10 years from now for replacement. Good luck finding that kind of product...
They're called "used ThinkPads".
Yes, that's the closest I could find.
New Thinkpad E series is decent. Unlike previous ones, it has true Thinkpad construction and price is very reasonable, especially with some discount.
Battery is not glued, and most components are serviceable.
I'm very skeptical, but there's supposedly emacs for Chromebooks: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForChromeBooks
I think at this point new Chromebooks can all run Linux software natively - so might as well just use normal emacs.
Actually I have emacs running on Android as well. I don't really use it often - but it works fine. Maybe if I bought a little Bluetooth keyboard I would play around with it more.
I would never have used a computer connected to the internet, ever, for anything personal, such as writing.
All my writing and personal-things -machines go offline, permanently, before I'd write anything, and they stay offline forever.
8 megs and swapping
hahaha, *constantly swapping. it's either this or another editor that has 2 modes: beeping like crazy, ruining everything.
That phrase only makes sense in the context of a time when 8MB of RAM was considered a lot.
> Meermin/Feit shoes
There's another company out of the US called Grant Stone who makes shoes in China. They are some of the best constructed leather shoes I've ever seen. Lots of people compare them to Aldens, which are double the price.
A counter example is solar panels. China makes most of the worlds solar panels, and Chinese engineers design them, thereby proving under the right conditions the Chinese can put together a world class manufacturing chain without anyone else. Evidently Chinese engineers are as good at their jobs and any other engineer on the planet which is to be expected given the number of them they churn out.
Given that, what's surprising is Solar panels are the exception. Push bikes are a great example. I'm pretty sure there are more electric push bikes in China, possibly more than the rest of the world put together. All are designed and built in China. So you would expect with that much volume and competition the best ebikes would come out of China. But that's not what has happened: Chinese designed ebikes are crap.
There was a Australian documentary about China and the Chinese mentality called "Two men in China". One of the presenters was previously Australia's Chief Scientist. It's both hugely entertaining and very informative if you can find it. Anyway, they presented a typical Chinese house. It as small and cramped by Australian standards, but everything was shiny and modern. Only there was a problem: the cupboard doors were falling off. Apparently this generally happens after about 6 months. Doors fall off, carpet comes up, roofs leak, electronics breaks, LED lights that should last 50,000 hours died after 500. No one seemed overly upset by this turn of events. No one was demanding someone come back and fix it. It was just accepted.
The difference then between the solar panels and the ebikes isn't the capability of the designed or the manufacturers. Of all things, it's the difference of the consumer. Where the Western consumer pushes back hard when their solar panels don't work (and by push back I mean law suites, legislation, and ultimately people going to jail) the Chinese consumer allows the manufacturers to get away delivering crap and lying about it. Who would have thought discerning customers were a key ingredient in making a great manufacturing nation?
Giant contract manufacturers bike frames for many brands that are considered “high end”, including Bianchi and Trek. So it’s not like they’re known for low quality.
I avoid things shipped directly from China or HK, but happy to buy something made in China from an Australia store so there is some guarantee of quality and safety.
Seems to me you could share and possibly monetize your list for others and your benefit
> I have slowly curated such a list, but it's as I said you need to go out of your way and often get custom things from niche brands.
Any plans on making this list publicly available?
Do you happen to have published your curated list somewhere? I feel the same towards quality so I am always looking.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/ Note the sidebar links.
>Sadly, it's all about price.
This is the problem, but not how you are stating it. If CEO's didn't make 300x the lowest paid employee, and "shareholders didn't demand" exponential growth quarter after quarter, then the price to be 'Not made in China' would be reasonable.
Fix these problems then the damages caused by seeking "cheapest possible AND cheaper" would be non-existant.
*NB: I am a shareholder. I want my investment to MATCH inflation not magically exceed it. If everybody stops being so greedy this is possible. (I wouldn't need to buy shares if my company and government didn't fuck up Retirement Benefits.)
I think it's more complex than that. It's not _just_ the CEO and investors greed. People's time in "1st world countries" is more expensive because _everything_ is more expensive. There's pretty much no manufacturing left here in Australia, because the wages on offer for "factory jobs" can't pay rent or buy food in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane. And if you _did_ pay your "factory workers" in Australian cities enough to rent/buy a home there, your base assembly costs start out at more that the manufactured-and-delivered price for the same item from China. Automation will help fix one end of that problem (the cost to manufacure side), but will make the other end worse (even fewer jobs for lesser skilled workers).
I don't _like_ that fact that global economies and inexpensive shipping have made arbitrage of inequity a real business profit driver. But the reality is that a bunch of people in China are prepared to work in factories making widgets for less money than anybody in Australia - and moving shipping containers full of widgets is _way_ less expensive than the difference.
>If everybody stops being so greedy this is possible.
Problem is that we, as evolved creatures in a world of scarcity, are hoarders by... nature. Greed is just a morally misguided way of hoarding. So, waiting for people to stop being greedy is much more difficult than just making the right moral choices.
And it's not _just_ greed.
Is a person struggling to make rent in New York or San Francisco or Sydney being "greedy" when they demand more pay than workers with equivalent skills in rural China or Vietnam or Bangladesh or Rawanda?
Global economies mean that while some things stay rooted in local pricing (like the food and shelter at the top of Maslow's hierarchy), while other things can be _way_ more valuable if you stuff them in a shipping container and send them to the docks of Oakland or New Jersey...
If I can house and feed my family for $US10/month in Rawanda, and my neighbours can only afford to pay me 30c for my widgets, but they can sell for $100 in San Francisco, of _course_ I'll jam 100,000 of them into a container and pay $5,000 to send them there...
That'll keep working great for the Rwandan guy - up until his kids decide they want iPhones and cars and university degrees, and the costs of their expectations increase until they cannot afford a manufacturing-based economy to fund them either...
BS, if it wasn’t about consumers going for lower prices, the market would be packed with high-end manufacturers. People want cheap shit at Walmart regardless of how much the CEO of Alphabet makes.
If you have an investment that matches inflation then after taxes you will have a negative return.
Giant is a Taiwanese company. I've had quite a few of their road bikes and mountain bikes over the years, and they have all been excellent - superbly designed and built. All made in Taiwan too - it seems only their cheaper frames are made in China (https://cyclingtips.com/2015/02/a-tour-of-giants-taichung-fa...). From what I've heard, a majority of the world's high-end bicycle frames are manufactured by Giant and Pacific Cycles in Taiwan, then re-branded.
Re-branded isn't quite correct, they are a contract manufacturer, so they are made specifically for the brands. Rebranded makes me think of open mold or catalog frames.
Many bikes for other brands (if not most) are made by Kinesis out of Taiwan, which may be what you are referring to. Although the company was founded by Giant employees it is not the same company as Giant itself.
Yes. I think taiwan was/is a leader in Carbon Fiber. 90s carbon-fiber-glued-to-aluminum bikes were all made from CF tubing that was made in taiwan, by Giant (that last detail I'm a little less sure on, made in taiwan for certain). Specialized, Trek, and Giant all had very similar bikes available at that time, conventional geometries with Shimano 600 (I've got one, I love it). Modern monocoque designs are a little more diverse in design, but I think all but the highest end are made in taiwan.
I've had good luck with any Taiwanese goods that I've bought to the point that I trust Taiwanese goods as much my own American goods.
I don't have a Giant bike but I have some giant accessories and they have all been to a very high standard.
But if you ask China, Taiwan is also China.
> But if you ask China, Taiwan is also China.
It's the same if you ask Taiwan. Their official name is "Republic of China".
Amazing to see an anecdote like this trotted out as newsworthy. There are three total data points and two of them are incredibly vague.
Honestly, this feels a bit like propaganda.
It's just a click bait title, especially since the last sentence in the article is "If America “decides to remove the 25% tariff, we will move the production back to China right away,” Tu said."
Doesn't sound like the era of Made in China is over if they're itching to get back.
Ok, we changed to the subtitle above.
Made in China is over, that ship has sailed.
- US recently declared China to be a dangerous competitor,
- both parties are full-force anti-CCP. except maybe a few candidates like Joe Biden
- Taiwan view China as dangerous as well
- Way cheaper labors exists in SE asia
what's anti-CCP?
Suspicious of and hostile towards the Chinese Communist Party.
The title clearly says 'World's top bicycle maker says'. It's an opinion.
It's not opinion, it's an announcement that they're moving their manufacturing to Taiwan.
"Giant Manufacturing is moving U.S. orders to Taiwan factory"
"Giant" is the brand.
Yeah, not sure about how they're measuring. By market cap, Shimano is about four and a half times larger. P/E is very close between the two; Giant's PY return is about 77 times better than Shimano's.
Shimano doesn't sell bicycles, just a lot of bicycle components and accessories.
Fair enough, I just couldn't think of any other manufacturers even in the industry that make more parts or complete bicycles (that I can actually buy) than Giant does.
Shimano also makes expensive high-end fishing reels.
They go for anywhere from a couple hundred to 1k+ (like the Stellas) apiece and you typically want 3 - 5 rod/reel setups when going on a fishing trip.
Shimano is the world’s major bicycle-component manufacturer, but they do not do much production of frames or complete bikes, and Giant certainly leads in that regard.
Shimano makes bicycle parts, not bicycles. Giant sells bicycles, and some of them come with Shimano parts.
> It's an opinion.
Opinion articles are - by convention - designated as such. This allows journalistic institutions to distance themselves from things that are insufficiently sourced or are overtly one-sided.
This doesn't fall under that umbrella. It's presented as a piece of economic foreshadowing that Trump's threats are impacting the viability of China as a global manufacturing hub. Which, ok, prove it! Don't give us one company's stated stance, show the numbers. Give us more sources.
This is not good journalism.
It's a company using politics to get free press. Nothing new here.
The article is also missing an important context, Giant is a Taiwanese company. A lot of the world's high end bicycle are built by them in Taiwan.
It doesn't matter if you're right or not, if such a company believes (or even just says) it, it's newsworthy.
We just moved and needed to buy some new kitchenware. You would not believe how difficult it is to find so much as a spoon that is not made in China. Even from any name brand, even in a "fancy" store like Williams-Sonoma.
Gotta be more targeted in your searches if that's what you care about.
https://www.sherrillmfg.com/
https://www.globalkitchenjapan.com/collections/flatware-cutl...
Thank you. Looking Japanese stuff is a great idea. They are one of the few places to still keep some manufacturing "in-house."
Searching is hard and companies are not always fully transparent about their process. E.g. "Assembled in the USA" for a frying pan could mean that the pan and handle are made in China, but riveted to each other in the USA. Sigh.
For nicer kitchenware, shy away from retail stores in general. Search out brands, find what nice restaurants are using - some fancy restaurants seek out small, artisanal manufacturers for sure.
I remember Jungsik had all dinnerware from Korean artisans. Nice stuff.
May I ask, why are you specifically looking for a spoon that isn't made in China?
Assumption (partly from personal experience) that products may be more likely tainted with unknown or harmful substances for the sake of cost cutting somewhere in the pipeline.
I feel your pain, recalling the last time I moved out. Buying anything on Amazon is a disaster.
Friendly tip. Go to a local supermarket or department store and get what you need there. The item will for sure come from a normal manufacturer/brand and satisfy the local regulations against toxic plastic and stuff, even if it was made and imported from china.
We've been having good luck seeking out manufactures and buying directly from them instead of using amazon. It's often cheaper.
Try Sambonet for example, great quality, made in Italy.
Or some WMF steel, made in Germany. Other components might come from China, though.
Pretty easy to find this kind of stuff in the UK, e.g. a lot of cutlery used to be made in Sheffield which is near to me and there still seems to be a demand.
https://www.sheffield-made.com/acatalog/Old_English.html#SID...
Yep. I wanted a good American made roasting rack so I went to Williams Sonoma. They're all made in China now.
All-Clad (but not the HA2 line, I presume an MBA got their hooks into the operation) is still made in the USA.
Cutipol is Portuguese. Liberty Table Top still manufactures in the US.
Ironically, the pic at the top of the article has many bikes painted "Trek" in the background despite the caption saying it's Giant's facility. In truth, pretty much every major bike manufacturer makes their frames in Taiwan, often in the same facilities. Decals and branding are applied after.
There's a huge amount of manufacturing know-how and infrastructure around bike manufacture in Taiwan, especially around carbon fiber manufacturing. You can even go buy a carbon frame design in Taiwan, you pay more for the design if you want it to be exclusive.
Therefore, it's not terribly surprising that they moved to Taiwan. If they were moving to the US that would be something.
For those interested in MTB, guerrilla gravity is designed and, as far as I know, built in Colorado. The reviews of their bikes (even aluminum frames) are resoundingly positive. Considering the price points they’re not one to overlook.
https://ridegg.com/
I own a 2017 Giant and it was made in Taiwan. They've always made their bikes in Taiwan. In fact Taiwan is the performance bike manufacturing capital of the world (largely thanks to Giant). Giant have carbon manufacturing techniques and knowledge that is renowned as the worlds best. All of this always happened in Taiwan.
It's "over" until it isn't: > That’s why Giant is open to reverting production to its Chinese plants if the U.S. and China are able to hammer out a trade deal. If America “decides to remove the 25% tariff, we will move the production back to China right away,” Tu said.
If you know the bicycle industry, what's interesting is that Giant started out as a Taiwanese based manufacturer, and is probably going to go back there for some things. And to other places like Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia.
They are actually not very much different from the top ten largest Taiwanese motherboard makers. All the motherboards used to be made in Taiwan (Hsin-Chu City, etc). For lower labor costs and other things they moved a lot of production to mainland China and kept the design/R&D/HQ in Taiwan. Now some things are going to go back the other way.
Even the parts still made in Taiwan are often made by imported labor, last time I visited a bike factory, many signs were _only_ in thai. Taiwanese labor is just too expensive to hit the margins targets US bike manufacturers are looking for. It looks like the shift that's been happening toward SE Asia will just accelerate.
a large number of taiwan based AC-to-DC and DC/DC power supply manufacturers (Delta, Zippy, etc) have opened factories in Thailand. If you look at the ATX power supplies sold on newegg for instance, there's about 60 different brand names, actually manufactured by about 12 different companies. I'd say at least half of those have moved manufacturing outside of mainland china because they have better labor/cost of operations opportunities elsewhere in developing parts of southeast asia.
This could just be a neat spin on a move towards automation :)
Are there any robots yet that can weld bicycle frames? I thought that was still a job for humans...
This is actually weird to me. It seemed like it should be possible to stamp out bicycle frames like a car, so I researched it. Such a bike does exist, but is extremely expensive, which seems to defeat the purpose. Is it really not possible to streamline the manufacturing beyond welded tubes?
Not an expert but stamped parts are pretty weak from some angles, but perhaps you meant cold forged which is how aluminum bicycle cranks and some other parts are made - pressed using 100,000 pounds (or some big number depending on material) of pressure, this of course only works for mostly solid items. There is a huge cost in making a cold forge and a limited number of times a mold can be used before a new mold has to be made due to wear and tear. Frame quantities in the exact same shape are not that big, though, manufacturers do seem to come up with new models every few years. Making a frame from a solid piece of metal would make it very heavy increasing the material costs substantially, and counterintuitively - weaker than a tube for this application - there is a strength from the shape of a tube that a solid piece of the same metal does not have and if my memory serves right, the larger the inner radius, the greater the strength (of course you can make a tube so thin the first mishap with a vector in the wrong direction crushes it, but that's a different problem). I recall there being a magnesium frame that was a one piece thing a long time ago.
Lots of aluminum bike frames are already made from hydroformed tubes. Anything that looks like it wasn't just made from pipes, is molded. The question is whether making a frame from a smaller number of molded parts is cost effective. The different parts have to be of different thicknesses, and there's just the geometry puzzle of how to do it without ending up with a big seam that has to be welded anyway.
Early Schwinn frames included parts (head tube, bottom bracket) that were formed from sheet metal. One thing about making tubes from tubing is that there's very little waste.
I'm sure there are but most elite bikes Giant make are carbon which isn't welded
Robots weld all kinds of complicated things - cars for example. Why not bikes?
I'd be shocked if bike frames were not robotically welded already.
Which parts of a better quality Giant bike are made in China, anyway?
Maybe they hare having the Giant-branded frames made in China? (I'd be wary of this stuff, if true; a crappy frame can break and kill you.) Or perhaps tires. Kenda tires (Taiwan brand) are likely made in China.
Nothing that you actually hang onto a frame to make a bike that is worth a damn comes from China: cassettes, rings, cranks, hubs, bottom brackets, shifter, brakes, rims, you name it. Only low-end garbage like SunRace cassettes, ProMax brakes and whatnot.
Bike all around the world are typically the same in this way. The "brand" part of the bike goes into the frame, and then what's on it is third-party components from familiar brands.
Some Shimano stuff is made in places like Indonesia. I don't recall having seen a "made in China" stamp on it, though.
A lot of high end carbon bike frames come from China and or Taiwan.
For a background on the bicycle manufacturing business, there is a section in this article (on starting a bicycle company) on the history of how bicycle manufacturing shifted to Asia. https://www.pinkbike.com/news/we-went-to-taiwan-and-started-...
If the recent tariffs are cited as the main reason for not making things in China, wouldn't things naturally reverse themselves when they are lifted? The tariffs strike me as an artifice that can't be sustained for a very long time- what is their lasting effect that changes the economics of manufacturing things in China?
Or what if China will play dirty and devaluates CNY against USD to offset the tariffs? This will be extremely bad and potentially means another escalation to the trade war...
Already a lot of popular brand frames were made in Taiwan.
Also, if enough manufacturing shifted to Taiwan, that itself might prompt a certain "stable genius" to add them to the list of tariff countries. Or China might become aggressive enough toward Taiwan that he would lump them with China in tariffs.
> Tariffs are adding $100 on average to the price of bicycles made in China and exported to the U.S., compared with those made in zero-tariff areas, Tu said, explaining the rationale for the switch to the Taiwanese site.
Amen!
Moving from china to taiwan? Raise your hand if you still support trunp.
Perhaps if manufacturers will move out of PRC into nearby countries it won't have a large effect on prices for consumers and businesses in the US, but at the same time will force China to make structural changes in adherence with the rules of global trade and human rights. Too bad Trump has alienated traditional US allies - if major economies teamed up in this effort it would have been a much easier goal.
I don't think allies are going to be permanently "alienated" by one president's remarks.
"Once bitten, twice shy" as the saying goes.
For example, the EU has acknowledged that their unflappable trust in the US alliance can no longer be depended on. And they are taking steps to move towards a more independent posture in particular on defence.
It will be if that president becomes your monarch, which is looking increasingly likely.
The one idiot that the rest of the world ignored was Georg W. Bush. By electing a second, worse idiot the US has demonstrated to the world that they are no longer a viable long term partner.
No partisan flamebait here please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The feeling is mutual, why do you think we elected Trump?
Americans are sick and tired of America paying for the rest of the world. Enjoy investing in your own military, if you get invaded I hope the U.S doesn't lift a finger.
Posting political flamewar comments isn't ok here. Would you please review and follow the site guidelines so we don't have to ban you again?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If this was the reason you voted for Trump, I have some bad news about the trajectory of military spending.
The "traditional US allies" have been the least help in this. The U.S. government hasn't done enough to support Taiwan in my opinion, but U.S. relations with India, Viet nam, Korea, etc. are exceptionally good. Among them surely is a replacement for some of the scale and industrial power the PRC is unwilling to provide on reasonable terms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48650505
The U.S. relationship with China is dominated by imports, so India restricting some imports from the U.S. (keeping in mind that China imposes far more severe tariffs on most U.S. goods) is not completely crazy.
The USA can't provide that scale and industrial power? Seems like the elephant in the room.
Maybe the U.S. can, but it seems that some people still think it's more efficient to go elsewhere, and in the near term I don't see that opinion changing.
That efficiency can be eliminated with tariffs, just as much of the rest of the world does. The only safe place to do business, is in the country that you're selling to. That should've never been encouraged to get away from to begin with.
Bicycles are something that you need to be careful buying. Don't buy a BSO - a Bicycle Shaped Object. Just because it looks like a bike, doesn't mean you can comfortably ride it. An entry level bike is about $1200. You can comfortably ride it for hours, or up hills, carry a heavy load, it won't easily break, and it'll have a smooth ride. I feel bad for people that go out and buy a BSO; BSOs ruin cycling. We need to have laws in place to prevent crap from reaching the market.
I have to laugh at this. In Japan, my Chinese-made bicycle is bulletproof and entirely functional. It cost $150, shipped to my front door. It’s a folding bike with 9 speeds and disc brakes. I’ve ridden it day after day for years. It spent two years without shelter in the elements. It won’t win the Tour but it is a winner in every other way.
You can tell me the environmental impact was horrendous and I would believe you, but the quality of this bicycle can’t be denied.
Sounds like it's a decent commuter-ish bike?
You don't see many of those in the US compared to places like Europe or in your case Japan.
Probably because there's less of a market for them in the US.
What the OP is probably thinking of is the crappy bikes you get at supermarkets, where the quality is really not very good, and they're assembled by someone who is not paying attention. Sometimes they try and look like a more expensive bike: front shocks, lots of gears and so on. The commuter bikes in Europe were, on the other hand, built with that in mind - big fenders, more upright position, and fairly rugged if not lightweight construction. You wouldn't mistake them for a bike you'd want to go on a long ride with.
What's the bike you got? I am in the market for one in China, and have a hard time filtering for quality.
They get rebranded in Japan, so I’m not sure about the original maker. Try looking at bikes on Rakuten’s japan site, and maybe you can trace some of those bikes back to their source in China?
Still remember the brand?
I'm seeing a few different ones at that price point, MyPallas, Graphis, Airbike.
An entry level bike is not $1200. Thats a mid range high quality bike. If you trips are short you can be totally fine on a $400 road bike. I would just avoid department store bikes that are typically under $300 but are built to look like high end mountain bikes. The suspension on them is totally useless and makes it ride worse than a bike with no suspension.
Yeah, there are lots of basic, good quality bikes in the $400-500 range. People just need to go to a real bike shop or a place like REI with a good bike department and helpful staff. It is true that once you drop to the $200-300 range, there is a lot of junk to avoid.
My current bike is 10 years old. I bought a $500 hard-tail Marin mountain bike to use for commuting, expecting that it would be able to take some abuse. My wife has a similar vintage bike from the REI house brand at the time (Novara) and it seems of similar quality. I am pretty sure both have Giant frames under their paint. These aluminum frames and disc brakes are a revelation compared to my previous long-term bike which was a lugged-steel Bridgestone with cantilever and cam rim brakes.
I have been almost negligent with maintenance, mainly just oiling the chain and replacing tires and tubes. I don't miss re-packing the bearings and freewheel like my old bike. I am not sure how much that is due to modern tech versus changes in my riding habits. I haven't left the asphalt with the current bike.
I did have to have a wheel re-spoked once after I pounded it in a deep pot-hole with narrow street tires mounted. My Shimano trigger shifters are near the point of needing some kind of major tune-up. I think I would have preferred to keep the simpler indexed levers from the 1990s, as they required a little more operator skill but were less finicky.
>We need to have laws in place to prevent crap from reaching the market.
We already do, they're just weakly enforced and (in the US in particular) archaic and badly drafted.
nah. Buy a used old 1980s era Japanese bike from craigslist for ~$300. It'll be fine and good.
In addition, being self sufficient for maintenance can turn practically any bike into a good working bike. I ride old bikes, but have tuned them to perfection.