
The zipper's history shows how even great ideas can fail at first - prostoalex
https://quartzy.qz.com/1315839/the-zippers-history-shows-how-even-great-ideas-can-fail-at-first/
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abhiminator
Fascinating read. Interesting to see how zipper's evolution into today's
ubiquitous household utility went through many stages of evolution, including
the classic S-curve that today's _successful_ tech products almost
(inevitably) go through -- a testament to robustness of economic theories
across widely varying industries. [0]

Another interesting fact that blew my mind recently -- 80% of all the world's
zippers are manufactured in a city entirely dedicated to manufacturing
clothing harnesses (hook-and-eye, Velcro et al.) in southeastern China. [1]

[0] [http://innovationzen.com/blog/2006/08/17/innovation-
manageme...](http://innovationzen.com/blog/2006/08/17/innovation-management-
theory-part-4/) [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiaotou,_Yongjia_County](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiaotou,_Yongjia_County)

~~~
DonHopkins
I hate the way the big-shots at all the Aerosol Velcro manufacturers get
together and put different amounts of hooks and loops into the two cans, so
you always have some left over. Kind of like the Hotdog Conspiracy. Well
they're not ripping off this nitwit anymore!

[https://www.exploratorium.edu/blogs/tangents/hotdog-
conspira...](https://www.exploratorium.edu/blogs/tangents/hotdog-conspiracy)

~~~
perl4ever
One day, I said to myself, why is it hot dog buns come in packages of 8, but
hot dogs come in packages of...8?

I guess it depends on the brand.

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jackfoxy
I read or heard somewhere the major clothing brands consider YKK zippers so
reliable they won't even look at competitors product, even at substantial
discounts, the zipper being such a small portion of the total cost of goods,
but a critical point of failure that could easily ruin their brand.

~~~
rootusrootus
That may have been true 10 or 20 years ago, but YKK is not the biggest zipper
supplier any more. That honor goes to SBS, a Chinese company.

~~~
8bitsrule
Citation needed.

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dstick
So I guess we can trace back the origins of Lean manufacturing back to 1851
;-)

I wonder if the wealthy / successful (outside of science fields) back then
shared insights and knowledge in a similar wat as we do today, so many more
could benefit.

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21
And then, one day, Superdry was born :)

[http://www.ewelinakolaczek.com/images/pic/A1f9lbzZ-683_11431...](http://www.ewelinakolaczek.com/images/pic/A1f9lbzZ-683_114312.jpg)

~~~
whatsstolat
Oddly I have a superdry jacket like that and one of the zips failed

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stretchwithme
It would not surprise me if MOST successful things failed at first.

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jacquesm
See also: the Quooker story. There was a fantastic article about it but I
can't find it anywhere, highly frustrating.

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taeric
This is silly. What is the great idea? A way to quickly connect and disconnect
things?

Zippers may have failed early on. But that is going to be more about
difficulty of making them than the idea failing. This is closer to saying
computers failed see first because the machines of Babbage fight factually do
anything useful.

~~~
jacquesm
But that they failed is what is interesting. They look so obvious and so
simple and yet if you look at them closely they are super clever.

~~~
taeric
I have never thought they were simple to the point of obvious. In large
because I can't fix many when they break. So, to that point, I'd imagine most
attempts at zippers fail.

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cfadvan
Many great ideas fail at first, and for a long time, because they’re massively
ahead of their time. The helicopter, airplane, submarine, gun, and many more
are fine examples. The submarine though has literally hundreds (or thousands
if you stretch the definition) of years of abject failure before about a
hundred years of resounding success.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_submarines](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_submarines)

That’s a long time to be essentially sending people to a watery grave (with a
few limited successes) before materials and engineering technology caught up
to the vision of submersibles.

~~~
mirceal
I would go and say that for most innovative things, the invention and the
implementation are almost always 2 different phases (sometimes years or even
decades apart).

Sometimes the technology for implementation is not there and sometimes people
have a hard time grasping what they’re looking at, even if an implementation
is done.

