
Why YKK? The Japanese company behind the world’s best zippers - curtis
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/branded/2012/04/ykk_zippers_why_so_many_designers_use_them_.html
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ndespres
"YKK isn’t the kind of brand that markets to consumers. (Or seeks any kind of
publicity: They declined to speak to me for this story.) You don’t buy your
jeans and jackets by looking for their letters on that pull. Likewise, you
almost certainly wouldn’t nix a garment purchase because the zipper isn’t
YKK."

I guess I'm an exception here. If I want to wear a garment more than a few
times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK. If they skimped on the
zippers, who knows what else they skimped on.

~~~
exhilaration
Unfortunately the skimpers are one step ahead of you: "Counterfeit YKK zippers
are flooding the world market and undermining consumer confidence in your
products." [1]

[1] [http://www.ykk-usa.com/menu/faq/counterfeit1.html](http://www.ykk-
usa.com/menu/faq/counterfeit1.html)

~~~
kazinator
It's their own fault. According to Wikipedia, "YKK has manufacturing
facilities in 71 countries". If you spread you know-how all over the world in
search of better margins, of course that creates copycat spin offs based on
the same people and equipment.

Anyway, it could be just a lie. Any time a genuine overseas YKK factory puts
out crap, they could just dump it on the market with the YKK boss' approval.
Then spin a story about how it is counterfeit so as to try to protect the
brand.

Maybe the only good YKK zipper is one that is actually made in Japan using the
mythical 100 year old zipper-making machines.

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tudorw
"The EU’s General Court backed the European Commission’s fines of 150 million
euros ($187 million) for YKK, based in Tokyo, and 110 million euros for Coats
in 2007 over cartels involving fasteners and related machinery, one of which
ran for more than 21 years. The EU said at the time that the zipper market was
worth about 400 million euros a year and the market for other metal fasteners
was worth 200 million euros."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-27/coats-and-ykk-
lose-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-27/coats-and-ykk-lose-eu-
court-challenges-over-antitrust-fines.html)

~~~
msandford
So these companies led the cartels? I get that there was a judgement, but it's
REALLY light on details.

~~~
debacle
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/09/19/idUSL1926941520070...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/09/19/idUSL1926941520070919)

> The Commission has found four separate infringements in which these
> companies agreed on coordinated price increases, fixed minimum prices,
> allocated customers, shared markets and exchanged other commercially
> important and confidential information

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apricot
I lived in China for a while and had the occasion to experience the constant
frustration that accompanies Chinese zippers. Zipping down your fly and not
knowing whether you will be able to zip up. Taking 5 minutes every morning to
zip up your kid's raincoat. And my favorite, having a "Golden Harvest"
backpack zipper fail while on the bus and spilling its contents on the floor.
Ever since then, I always make sure the zippers on my clothes are YKK.

~~~
nativexer
Uniqlo uses YKK zippers and I can honestly say that they are the best zippers
ever.

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rdl
I've bought plenty of bags, outdoor clothing, etc. which specifically
advertise "YKK zippers" as a feature, similar to Gore-Tex, Vibram, or
Thinsulate, so I suspect at least among "technical" consumers, YKK does have
enough brand recognition and following.

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bshimmin
I suspect many people who've ever idly looked at a zip will have noticed the
letters "YKK" on them, and at least a few of those people will have made it to
YKK's Wikipedia page, which is at least equally as informative as this
article.

I was a bit confounded by this sentence: "The precision necessary to craft a
working bicycle chain or a smoothly meshing zipper was simply beyond us for
all those prior millennia." Surely the author means to write "The precision
necessary to craft ... on a massive scale"; of course we've been able to build
things requiring comparable or greater precision for centuries, but to build
the machines necessary to mass-produce them is a relatively recent innovation.
Or perhaps he was just joking.

~~~
VLM
Roller bearings are old, but no one ever made a ball bearing until the bicycle
era. They grew up together, and the first ball bearing equipped bicycles
dominated competition about a century ago. Ball bearings were the carbon fiber
of their era.

I don't think ball mfgr technology of a level of roundness and surface quality
suitable for ball bearings was compatible with ancient technology. The
metalurgy would be highly questionable but that aspect would be possible.

You are partially correct that roller chain could have been built by ancient
craftsmen if they had the idea, but the invention credit is about a century
ago. The metalurgy would have been questionable, the ancients would have ended
up with chain links the size of your fist, which would have screwed up weight
and power transmission making a v-belt a lot more likely. I'm surprised
bicycles don't try v-belts.

~~~
yeureka
Here you go:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt-
driven_bicycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt-driven_bicycle)

~~~
VLM
Well, those look like kilodollar+ custom jobs. I guess I was thinking more
stereotypical department store bike from China, where the mechanics aren't
generally much of a priority so introducing something isn't very dangerous.

You can either shove innovation in at the top where R+D fits in the budget, or
at the bottom where reliability is never assumed anyway.

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shawabawa3
This just seems like a blatant submarine article [1] - anyone who upvoted want
to share what they found interesting about it?

    
    
      [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

~~~
Xylakant
I haven't upvoted but found it mildly interesting. Point that I found
interesting were mostly:

* one company dominates the market for zippers by essentially capturing the middle ground of "good product with a wide range of options, reasonably priced and flawless execution"

* the example of a company dominating the market with what seems to counter the trend of outsourcing, producing everything in house, which means keeping the knowledge in and full control over the quality. A bit like Apple in that regard.

It's more like a lightweight snack for my brain than a full meal, useless but
interesting knowlege, but I also read Now I Know. May or may not be a
submarine, but made me check the zippers on my hoodie (YKK :)

~~~
coldpie
Yeah. I found it neat that this company dominates the industry by making a
_quality product_ , not by acquiring and enforcing a centuries-long monopoly
on an idea.

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srean

      Yoshida also preached a management principle he termed “The
      Cycle of Goodness.” It holds that “no one prospers unless
      he renders benefit to others.”
    

I particularly liked that line. That is how things ought to be but not sure
that is how it plays out. For example I am quite skeptical whether removing
arbitrage opportunities over a timescale of milisecond really benefits
anybody.

~~~
calinet6
There are other practices that surely come into play as well—you don't achieve
quality simply by this "cycle of goodness."

The Japanese after WWII took Deming's quality concepts—specifically that
quality is the product of management, knowledge, statistics, and systems—and
ran with them, embracing them more than any other society. This turned Japan
from a cheap-goods manufacturer, into a country nearly fully respected for
quality production, in a matter of a decade.

Want to produce quality like YKK does? It's no big mystery, it's not special,
and it's not a miracle. Learn about Deming, follow his systems of management
and teaching, and it will start to become clear. This applies to any company
producing anything.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

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andy_ppp
The article is okay, however it says the no one ever got fired for buying
Microsoft, I thought the phrase was IBM?

~~~
tacostakohashi
I guess someone did eventually get fired for buying IBM.

~~~
andy_ppp
Haha! Finally!

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mkoryak
When I was 7 or 8 and lived in the Soviet Union, I remember my cousin telling
me that his jacket was better than mine because it had YKK zippers.

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CapitalistCartr
"The zipper is one of those inventions—along with the bicycle—that seems as
though it should have occurred much earlier in history. How complicated could
it be to assemble two wheels, two pedals, and a chain? Or to align two jagged
strips of metal teeth and shuffle them together?"

Only to someone ignorant of history. They both required cheap, mass-produced
steel and machines to mass produce identical products out of that steel. The
advantages of the industrial revolution. To make them earlier would have been
ridiculously expensive.

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mcenedella
Here's the link to the 1998 LA Times article mentioned in the story:

[http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/05/news/mn-19744/2](http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/05/news/mn-19744/2)

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driverdan
So who makes zippers that are better than YKK? There must be smaller
manufacturers with higher prices and higher quality.

~~~
fractallyte
riri - an Italian firm - makes very high quality zippers. I prefer them to
YKK.

Aside: if you're looking for _really good_ buttons, try this company:
[http://www.corozobuttons.com/](http://www.corozobuttons.com/) (Made
exclusively with tagua nut, also known as 'vegetable ivory'. Very tough,
plastic-like, and you get to support the Ecuadorian economy!)

~~~
wmil
Because they aren't molded, Ralph Lauren laser engraves their corozo buttons.

[http://imgur.com/gallery/1oeAPXb](http://imgur.com/gallery/1oeAPXb)

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frandroid
My cousin is a fashion designer and her company have had to deal with Chinese
garment manufacturers who are paid to use YKK zippers and instead use
counterfeit YKK. That was a few years ago though, now with fast fashion trends
and cut-rate prices everywhere, they have had to give up on YKK zippers
altogether.

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serve_yay
Very cool that they've brought so much in-house. I'm not quite sure why I like
companies that do that, but I do. I guess it speaks to a certain seriousness
about the product beyond just making money off of it, or something. And there
is something oddly satisfying about a good zipper.

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nacnud
Does anyone else think of the 'millenium bug' when they see these zippers?

~~~
psykovsky
I didn't, until you brought it up...

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cfontes
I always joke that I would love to own this brand. They are the only brand I
ever saw (I know there are probably others...). I never got a Jeans without
one of those.

It's like a world monopoly.

Very interesting to a bit learn more about it.

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lordbusiness
I really wish I understood all the fuss about YKK zippers. I first heard the
word on the street about YKK being amazing many years ago, perhaps 20 years
ago, in a similar article.

Then I see plenty of support for this, but my own personal experiences are
that YKK are average to middling at best.

YKK may have once been the best, but this is certainly no longer true.

All I can assume is that this is the most successful astroturfing marketing
I've ever witnessed.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing)

~~~
freehunter
So what's a better zipper and on what clothing brands can I find them on?

~~~
brohee
Riri, Swiss brand. E.g Aquazips on some Patagonia shells.

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meej
After witnessing a half-dozen zippers fail on my partner's hoodie collection,
none of which were YKK, it is gratifying to see this article.

The Chinese garment industry has gotten really good over the past decade, but
fasteners is still where they fall down, in my experience. If I buy a jacket
made in China I can expect the tailoring to be perfect, right down to lining
up patterns at the seams, but the zippers are crap and buttons inevitably fall
off. It is very frustrating.

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wmil
Here's a thought, I don't think YKK would have lasted as a publicly traded
company in the US.

Pressure for profit growth from Wall St would have forced them to make cheaper
buttons, until their brand name was destroyed and the company had no value.

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izolate
I've started buying zipper-less equipment. It's less prone to error, and feels
a bit more rustic. Definitely more fun to use.

Examples: I only buy jeans with buttons. My Fjallraven backpack has metal
hooks instead of a zipper.

~~~
jeangenie
Anecdotally, switching to a button-fly rather than zipper led to a dramatic
decrease in me walking about with my fly open.

~~~
markrages
"feels a bit more rustic."

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Animats
YKK tries to have a public image. They have their own anime, "Fastening Days".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UhQ0QK8bGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UhQ0QK8bGY)

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magoon
I won't buy a backpack that doesn't have YKK zippers.

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warrenmar
YKK gets a shoutout on So Fresh, So Clean by Outkast.

