It's not that simple. If you plan on keeping the car and the interest rate is low enough you are likely better off taking the longest term loan possible.
Consider a $30,000 vehicle. I can finance it at 1.9% for 48 months or 84 months. The payment on the 48 month loan is $650/month (scenario 1) and the payment on the 84 month loan is $380/month (scenario 2).
In scenario 1 I invest $0/month for 48 months and then $650/month for 36 months. After 7 years I paid $31,178 for the car and earned ~$26,000 from investing (at 8%).
In scenario 2 I invest $270/month for 84 months. After 7 years I paid $32,062 for the car and earned ~$30,000 from investing (at 8%).
In scenario 2 I paid $884 more in interest but earned an extra $4,000 from investing.
There is a lot more that goes into this type of calculation but it is not nearly as cut and dry as "you're an idiot if you financed a car for 84 months."
That there is a scenario that, effected perfectly if you stand on one leg and squint and get super-favorable rates at just the right times, makes an 84-month loan not the worst economic choice possible does not mean that it's not the worst economic choice possible. Because it is the worst economic choice possible.
The people who understand money and finance will end up ahead of those who don’t.
Denying this reality will lower your risk profile but also lower your potential rewards. If you can’t control your spending and investing then don’t finance a car for 7 years.
But don’t pretend that economics and math are wrong.
But also don't pretend that your prime rate example is the typical case for the 7-year loans, which are mostly subprime borrowers who don't plan on perfectly maintaining and keeping the car forever.
Assume some charity here. Everyone was speaking in generalities about the trend. You can always find non-central, imperspicuous examples, but that's not really responsive. (Scott Adams has made the acronym BOCTAOE, but of course there are obvious exceptions, to head off such replies.)
The recognition that something -- like your case -- is an extreme exception proves the general validity of the rule. (Yes, I know there's a frequently misused version of the quote, but I use this modified, correct version.)
>That’s only true if you are already bad at personal finance.
That's kind of the point: you can't just assume away the case of "people making bad financial decisions", and that might be -- and probably is here -- the reason for the trend.
> After 7 years I paid $32,062 for the car and earned ~$30,000 from investing (at 8%).
Nitpicking, but you didn't earn $30k from investing. You contributed $22,680, and ended up with $28,910, assuming dollar-cost averaging contributions monthly (bulk contributions at the beginning of the year would get you $31,223). So your total return, assuming 8% annual growth, is $6,230.
I'd be willing to bet that MOST people who take out 7 year car loans don't invest half of their interest rates in stocks that average at 8% or higher...
While a long term average for mutual funds at 8% is pretty reasonable, I'd argue that 3-7 years is short enough that you have a reasonable chance of ending up with less money than you put in, never mind out performing the 2% interest.
Besides, as I've mentioned elsewhere, anyone offering a loan at 1.9% is aware that they are subsidising your purchase. You should be able to negotiate most of the difference into a decent cash deal.
Not to mention the non-trivial risk of being involved in an accident in a car which is worth less than is outstanding on it (which for a 7 year loan is probably 6+ years).
Your financing argument is actually flipped. You will get a better cash price if you finance because that is where dealers make money. Your best strategy if you want to pay cash is to finance the car and then pay off the loan immediately.
As far as being underwater is concerned... most dealers throw in GAP insurance these days. Removing GAP to lower the cost is counterproductive because the banks buying your loan want you to have GAP.
There really are just very few scenarios where paying cash at the dealer makes the most financial sense.
If you listen to Freakonomics, they often say that we aren’t “Homo Economicus”. While what you say may make sense economically, that’s not how most people operate.
If you have kids or intend to have them in the future this is a life lesson they need to have drilled into them.
I bought the cheapest house within commuting distance of where I work (in London) and am still trying to figure out how the hell to get out of that mortgage sooner than the final term. My car was bought outright as was my campervan.
I don't know how the people who drop half a million on a house and 50k on a Chelsea tractor, earning the same wage as me, sleep at night.
Maybe a warning like on a cigarette pack could help? e.g. "spending more than 15% of your income on a car can lead to a financial ruin". Warning on cigarettes reduced smoking by a few percent.
So I have rocks in my brain for taking a 2.9% interest loan? I don't see it that way considering my investment horizon allows me to earn 8% in a vangaurd sp500 etf with the money I could have used to pay for my car outright.
This doesn’t make sense. You’re arguing that this was about capital allocation for you, but if that’s the case, buy a used car for half of what a new car would cost. If you buy from someone like Carmax, you can get access to loans which are almost as cheap as what you’d get on a new car, and you’re buying a car with very little wear and tear.
crikli said "Anyone that signs up, of their own free will, for a seven year loan on a depreciating asset has rocks in their head."
I'm saying that financing can easily make sense with low interest rates. Nothing in my comment nor criklis has anything to do with buying a used vs new car as the same logic applies to both.
The alternative isn't to buy a brand new car for the same amount of money. The alternative is to actually buy a car you can afford.
You are still losing maybe 50% in the first year in depreciation. If you are paying it over 7 years then you are under water on the car from the minute you pick it up until it's paid off in full.
You can finance a cheaper car. Buying with cash carries a large opportunity cost due to compound interest being a helluva drug.
If you can finance at an interest rate below what you are earning in the market then you are better off financing. People who pay in cash are leaving money on the table for non-financial reasons.
It seems improbable that dealers / manufacturers can't do simple compound interest calculations too. If they are offering loans at below market rates they are basically giving you a discount on the cost. If they are willing to do that then you should be able to get a similar discount on a cash basis.
Its basically the same thing when you borrow at a longer term to invest the difference.
Mathematically, it makes a lot more sense for us to refinance to another 30 year loan (to get rid of PMI) and invest the difference but I am planning on refinancing to a 15 year.
> Anyone that signs up, of their own free will, for a seven year loan on a depreciating asset has rocks in their head. For fucks sake.
Whether this is good or not is completely dependent on the loan interest rate, a person's cash flow situation, and what they will do with the free cash flow otherwise..
$50-100/mo saved due to lower 7y payments reinvested elsewhere could quite feasibly offset the higher cost associated with the (assumed) higher interest rate of the 7y loan.
And, according to the assumptions in financial/economic theory anyway, if you can get a loan at or below inflation rates, you're getting a 'discount' on the total price w/r/t paying 100% cash now
But yes, this should be made as a 'financing' decision, not an 'affordability' decision - if you can only afford the vehicle with 7y loan at all, and aren't taking the longer loan as an savings/investment decision among weighing the TCO you probably should be buying a cheaper one.
Alternatively, there are individuals who live month to month and having tired of beaters and decide this looks affordable. While clearly a false economy, some individuals may have other motives, like status seeking.
This doesn't mean they are rock-headed. Like all of us, they could have a blind-spot where a decisions made may not be in our long term economic interests.
I think if you are living paycheck to paycheck and don’t have disposable income, it may make more sense to buy a cheap new car with a warranty than a cheaper used car.
It’s much easier to get a car with a $350/month car note where you won’t have unexpected repair expenses than getting a $200/month car note on a car without a warranty and then have an unexpected expense.
Now we have a credit card with the car shop we used that has a six months/no interest program. I use that even if I do have the money. But if we had bad credit, we could get a car loan much easier than an unsecured credit card.
I am at a point in life now where I can afford an expensive car repair bill and it just stings a little bit. When I was first starting out decades ago working at night as a computer operator while I was in graduate school during the day, any unexpected expense meant a call to my parents. Many people don’t have that luxury.
Yea, except for the part where you’re paying 12,000 more over the course of a 7 year loan and the new car warranty ended at 4 years leaving you with a higher payment and you still can’t afford repairs.
It can be rationalized with emotions, but not financial sense.
If you don’t have access to cash or credit to take care of car repairs, the last thing you want is to be paying a car note on a car that you can’t afford to have fixed.
As far as four vs seven years. You’re hoping that you can figure something out in four years.
They do although they don't necessarily call it that. When I had to get my dad a phone in a hurry from AT&T, the only option was to pay for it monthly as part of my phone bill.
This is better than the old days of getting it 'free' but being locked into a contract that requires you to pay the full cost of the phone if you leave..
All four of the major carriers and Apple offer 0% interest loans on phones.
At least with T-mobile. Even if you have horrible credit as long as you pay your bill on time with them for 12 months, you are eligible for a no interest phone loan.
Oh of course, though would say insects are far more prepared evolutionary-wise to deal with those products rather than Monsantos new monthly bioweapon straight out of the lab.
So...to me this article illustrates the dramatic differences in objective and mentality between bootstrappers and VCs.
This VC looks at this idea, figures out that in order to own the market and make $fuckton, they'd have to spend > $fuckton. Decides to bail.
As a bootstrapper of businesses, I look at this case study and go "well yeah of course it'll take $fuckton because you're haven't focused on a narrow enough niche". Which of course they haven't because you can only make $shittons from niches, not $fucktons (where $fuckton is up to an order of magnitude larger than $shitton).
It's a very different set of expectations. $idea might not be investable as a VC, but if you can really define a specific niche, get a toehold, and patiently build from there, $idea might have merit for a bootstrapper.
(All that said I don't think this particular idea has legs based on the reasons identified in the "Regarding competition" section and also from my own limited experience in the music space).
Absolutely. Because we're venture-backed and are spinning out venture-backed companies, we are limited to billion dollar ideas. It's not uncommon for us to kill great ideas that could "only" make tens of millions of dollars.
We're hoping through blog posts like this and other means to be able to share more of them because we want those companies to exist, we're just not set up to create them!
Well I was right there with you, thinking it was a completely shit idea, but a little math shows how it at least popped up on the radar (and I don't think its quite so bad myself after some thought):
100,000 music instructors, $60 per hour, at 365 days per year is roughly: $2.19 billion gross revenue per year-hour in the segment. Assuming, the average hours per day are like 3.5 (I can't imagine folks doing this are giving lessons for a full 8 hours per day, 5 days a week), that gives a total market of like: ~$7.65bn. Assuming they could earn a 20% stake in 100% of the market, that's like $1.53bn.
Looking at the numbers, I think there is likely more potential than they realized[1]. I would suspect that by and large, digital advertising is capturing almost none of the market as kinda proven by their analysis. Looking at how low the frequency of searches were compared to the sheer number of employed individuals tells me something is off as a whole with the analysis.
That is to say, digital advertising isn't showing the volume of or demand for musical teaching service because it's highly likely everyone believes it's incapable of doing so or adding value... That (driving the market online) is the problem to be solved in the space, because it sounds _hard_, and solving hard problems tends to be the way to make a lot of money. The other opportunity I would look at is, sort of from the other side: how to fix (what I assume to be likely) most music instructor's "underemployment" problems (i.e. inconsistent, few, or not enough hours). I imagine this angle would probably net more gross sign-ups as well since users (instructors) would be advertising the platform for you.
With all that said, you'd have to assume there is latent under-served demand (25-35%) in the market too to bother with anything I've said... that 25% is essentially what would be left over for others after you've captured the niche.
One last thought, for the VC since it looks like they're reading HN. Have you thought about doing retroactive market analysis where unicorns now exist to see what the market looked like then (e.g. short-term vacation rentals in ~2006)?
Might give you some strong signals for where there is potential...
[1] They are indeed a VC so it may not be in their best interest (time value of money, opportunity costs, etc)...
$60 / hr is not awfully high, lots of private tutors in the western world charge that, but note, that's it the west. There are also hordes of tutors charging as low as $5-$10 / hr in the west. It is unfortunately a business that is absolutely overrun with undercutting.
I think in reality, the only tutors you'll find that can charge that much, consistently, are professional musicians (i.e doing it for a living), and those with a degree.
Neither does it help that free alternatives like youtube and IG vids are in great abundance, which again can help to bring down the perceived value of lessons ("Why should I pay $60 when this great musician with 100k followers is putting out lessons for free? / on patreon for $10 a month")
There's probably some kind of market, but I'm not sure it's a billion $ market.
I'm a member of various FB musicians groups: buy/sell, discussions, theory, etc. and you see small businesses and startups like these come by all the time.
> Assuming they could earn a 20% stake in 100% of the market, that's like $1.53bn.
That makes no sense. Why would/should instructors+students continue to give them 20% commission for follow-up classes beyond the first one? It seems like just wishful thinking. The app store situation is very unusual (monopoly/monopsony), and does not apply in this context.
Yeah, this is the problem Wag has been having... and they ended up trying some draconian things to try to prevent people from working outside the system.
These market place ideas don't work nearly as well for businesses where there are long term, repeated, interactions between seller and purchaser. They work best when there is a one time exchange, because a market is really getting paid to make an introduction.
edit: I see now that many people made this argument much more eloquently in other comments on this thread.
Isn't that what VCs are trying for? Or rather, the nature of their investments? We're talking hypotheticals to analyze the potential of the business, saying it "makes no sense" doesn't mean much. We're trying to gauge an idea and to do so we have to be able to look at the potential.
If there is a medium to high drop out rate, and teachers are constantly looking for new student to fill their schedule (even 30% of their schedule), it could well be worth it.
By providing some small value-add products that are not possible easy for individual instructors to provide, but customers like to see. E.g. nicer scheduling of lessons or a way to share sheet music with the customers?
With platforms like these the choice isn't really up to the supplier, but to the consumer. The consumers come to expect those value-adds and so the suppliers have to switch to the platform (where the revenue share is opaque to the consumer) to get gigs.
The 20% cut also does sound rather extreme, but if you build a very good product where you can end up charging even more than the usual price, the 20% isn't taken away completely from the supplier, and might end up more like a 10% actual cut.
With platforms like these the choice isn't really up to the supplier, but to the consumer.
Once the platform has a significant number of suppliers, sure. If the platform is new then attracting suppliers is the number one problem to solve, and that's really hard if it's too expensive.
Yeah booking 10-15 hrs a week at $35/hr for 40 weeks would probably be a much more representative sample (Thats $14,000/year per person on the low end)
It also assumes that all discovery of teacher is done by direct searching instead of word of mouth - I know some one Phd in music, London session Musician who's played on top 10 hits he wont need to advertise
This is basically a hyperlocal seo play not sure why PSL seems obsessed with PPC only paid is not the only channel - go talk to some one Like Norm at DAC group
Not sure about now, but I was a musician with a variety of instruments for about a decade in my youth. In my experience, private instruction was always locally advertised. For instance, I had lessons on oboe, violin and piano. The piano teacher was a friend of my mothers, oboe and violin I had a class at school where the instructor suggested where to get tutors, typically either former students in the local orchestra or students at the local college music program.
To me, an app would have to improve upon this relatively convenient method of finding instructors. Typically these instructors come with the implicit approval of a trusted person as well.
> That is to say, digital advertising isn't showing the volume of or demand for musical teaching service because it's highly likely everyone believes it's incapable of doing so or adding value
An ad for online one-to-one art lessons has been popping up in my Wechat moments. Judging by the ad copy, they feel they have two strengths:
1. No need to transport your kid to and from the lesson.
2. Your kid will like this more than classroom-based lessons.
I conclude that the market they're trying to serve is parents who would like their children to learn to draw. But there are a lot of those, and their selling points seem pretty reasonable.
Brainstorming and validation rarely starts with a perfect idea. It starts with some about of demand, an unsolved problem or an inefficient market. We start to dig and as we talk to potential customers we get a better understanding of the problem and pivot accordingly. Sometimes we end up unearthing a great idea, sometimes not. It's worth remembering that finding billion dollar business narratives often involve some amount of market creation or expansion. It's not just "can we capture enough of the market that exists". It's "would customers pay more for a better experience?", "would more people become customers if the process was easier? Or cheaper?".
Hey Ansel, thanks for responding and for validating my train of thought...I don't have that much exposure to the VC world so the things I suspect far outweigh the things I know. :)
We have spun out 20 companies over the last 4 years which we are confident meet this criteria using this methodology. All are venture backed (led by investors other than us) and still operating (except for 1 which sold to Nike last year)
Does this apply to the vast majority of VC's? So if I want to do a yc pitch it needs to be able to have unicorn level potential? Who would you target as investors for tens of millions ideas if so? I'm guessing a larger focus on angels and IB's after a more proven, traditional profit model is shown (often a much different model than VC-startup profit model).
Yes, VC returns are dominated by the huge hits, so everyone is chasing those. Google almost certainly returned more than every other investment made that year for example.
For a tens of millions pitch go to Earnest Capital who will be perfectly happy to invest.
Yes due to how the economics of traditional venture funds work, in order to achieve the returns that limited partners expect, investments are made in companies with unicorn potential. Some will do well, most will fail, sometimes one will actually become a unicorn but because you don't know which is which you need every at bat to have a path to a home run.
This means that if your business is the right shape, VC is a fast way to raise a tremendous about of money.
But that's NOT to say that every company can or should raise a tremendous about of money. There are less traditional VCs, angel investors, debt, and other financial vehicles that can help businesses succeed. There are tons of examples of companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars who raised little or no money to get there (Webflow and Atlassian are two top-of-mind examples).
I understand the logic, but I can't help but feel that this type of assessment is really shortsighted.
Would Facebook have passed this "test"? There was Myspace and Friendster dominating. How about Instagram? Why would anyone want to share photos elsewhere when everyone posted their lives on Facebook?
We all know how those stories ended.
Your firm's method only addresses the current market in current conditions. Having the foresight to see the currently unseen before anyone else is what yields amazing results. And if this is the main reason for killing something like this off... let's just say I'm glad I don't have my funds there. :)
You're also ignoring the probability of success. This project is only worth $shitton ($30 million) if the project were perfectly executed and other market participants didn't dynamically react to this new entrant. This isn't the likely outcome.
The expected value of this project is probably only $5-10 million once you factor probability of success into account and thus not worth the time and effort at trying in the first place. A $5-10 million E.V. project is very much worthwhile for two founders who wanted to bootstrap though!
One reason VCs target billion dollar ideas is that you'll probably fail. But in the unlikely scenario that you succeed, it more than makes up for the 10-20 other projects in their portfolio that DID fail.
You won't even make 1 penny, if you can't break even on your user acquisition costs. That's what usually breaks a business not the fact that it's not profitable enough, but that's it not profitable at all.
The lessons are an ongoing expense, but the principals will rather quickly eliminate the middle man marketplace after meeting and being happy with the connection.
That said, if you want to specialize in $shitton projects you should be picking ones that don't need to be perfectly executed. There's a literal shitton of $shitton projects out there that you can half ass and still make a $shitton from. In my experience the best method at finding these $shitton projects is throwing shit on a wall and seeing what sticks.
Had a similar experience running a consulting practice for a global software company. Our practice revenue was growing with profitably around 20% EBIT. Software sales where not growing as fast. As a result consulting was an increasing % of regional contribution income but at a lower margin. So my practice was lowering regional EBIT margin. We got told to slow down. I put an amazing guy in charge and resigned.
Millions of incremental profit... unwanted. Of course it's logical given shareholders, but remains strange all the same.
There's a large opportunity cost to that strategy. If you allow consulting to make up 80% of revenue by default the business will inevitably turn into a consulting business, not a software business.
Consulting can be a great way to bootstrap but you need to know when the tail is at risk of wagging the dog.
during a business downturn, it can be hard to get consulting contracts as everyone is under pressure to cut costs. That's when having a viable software business can be helpful.
i totally agree, i was being overly terse. To me, if something is working well then you should do more of it but, yes, you have to manage risk and see the whole picture. Like everything, it's a balance.
It's counter intuitive but in downturns consulting can tick up. The first place companies go to look to reduce cost is headcount but the work still has to get done. In come the consultants to implement a new system to increase efficiency and reduce headcount (it rarely turns out that way though). Also, I think it's easier to finance money for consultants than FTEs because of where the expense falls on the accounting books.
Using that case study, getting $21k in revenue for $80k in expense makes zero sense ever. That doesn’t even count the actual startup cost to build the platform or even get the “talent” to deliver the lessons — which is an expense not to be ignored. So the real $80k is probably much higher because for a marketplace to exist, you have to attract buyers and sellers. And a 30% commission means that music teachers would have to sell at 30% more than they would for their own off-marketplace customers. And, unlike app sales, 1-1 music lessons don’t scale, so that 30% is a real hit because they can’t really make it up in volume: 1 hour can only yield, 1 hour of lesson for one person. I know this problem well: I founded a therapy marketplace that has been surviving for 10 years now, but it took 8 years to actually become profitable and still, just barely.
Real world music lessons scale better, with many beginner classes at Guitar Center (or private centers/homes) scaling to 5ish students per teacher.
It's not as high quality as 1 on 1 instruction, but the benefits of scale cannot be understated. Offer lessons at 1/3 price but make double the revenue.
In that case it's the regional "Guitar Center" or "Yamaha Music School" or whatever that provides (i) a marketplace that also lends credibility to the instruction and (ii) scaling via group lessons and as a result take a cut from the pie.
Often though, many successful VC startups start from a niche and expand from there. For ex: uber started with luxury black car service only in SF (a niche) and then expanded into normal cars, carpools, food and the rest of the world. I think the real requirement is a foreseeable future that you could potentially expand into a bigger $billion market.
Small niches that have proved themselves are often more attractive from an investment standpoint.
VCs look at this and are like "We can't do that with run-off-the-mill webdevs and marketers". And they have a formula to express what to expect from this reasonable effort model.
Comes a founder with awesome experience in pedagogy, a reputation in, say, Montessori teaching, and publishing records. She knows 10 musicians who could potentially teach, 100 potential students to bootstrap the idea.
VCs re-reun the numbers with these new assumption and discover a potentially ten times higher return after Q1.
VCs and bootstrapers and founders make different assumptions in efforts and time and need each other, fit different niches.
I’m a bootstrapper and I also use a similar metholodology to this article.
I only go niche if the larger addressable market is big enough. It might be okay if the initial niche offering only makes $5k its first year, but I should see some path to expand to $500k+ per year or the opportunity cost is too high.
> How long do I stick it out before looking elsewhere or even returning to my last job as I left on good terms?
Eject, as long as this isn't going to add to an existing pattern in your employment history.
People in the position to hire have more than likely been in the situation where they were sold a bill of goods, gotten on the job, and had to make the same choice.
But if this is going to be, say the third short term gig in a row, then it's going to be a hard sell that the problem has been the employers and not you.
Assuming it's the former, when it comes time to talk to other potential employers and interviewers, state the scenario factually and without rancor. "I was told during the recruiting process that we would be writing the platform in Node, turns out we were hand punching Fortran cards."
Edit (hit submit too soon): if it's the latter, then you need to stick it out for at least 12 months. There are some great comments in the thread about changing the culture, etc. I would add to those to shift your mentality from "this is my employer" to "this is a client for whom I'm going to do the best work I can for 12 months." I can yap a lot more about that shift but if you can create a mental firewall between you and the employer and minimize emotional engagement, doing the time will be easier. :)
> "this is a client for whom I'm going to do the best work I can for 12 months."
Yeah, absolutely agree with this. I made the transition from employee to consultant/contractor, and have no regrets about the decision.
If you can do good work no matter what situation you're dropped into, it means your worth at least twice your salary as a consultant. If you can transform an underperforming group, you are worth even more.
I agree with the above. Try to impact the culture from the ground up. In the meantime try working on new things and share those things with your colleagues who are otherwise not very interested in the job.
If the pay is substantial you should definitely give it another 6 months. I think as workers in general, that we should evaluate the companies and its leaders annually the same way they evaluate us. Hope this helps.
She's been running it for about 12 years, basically not long after the kids started at school.
Growth has been organic, probably around 20% year on year at a guess.
For a long time new clients were mostly Google Ads/Remarketing, word-of-mouth and customer referrals and a few ongoing relationships with sales executives in traditional media like TV, radio, etc. Over time organic SEO has come into it as her ranking improved.
There's been minimal networking which is always a concern if online stops working. There's just not the time to be out at business chambers, BNIs, etc, look after kids and get work done. It's also a long term commitment.
I've got a business that my wife and I are launching, as well as a couple of other ventures queued up for 2020. All of them will rely on effective digital marketing. I'd love to visit with your wife, see if there is a fit. My email is chrisrikli at gmail.
The property taxes are sky high, yes, but they most definitely do not exempt the rich. There is no state income tax. I wouldn’t call the state’s general tax structure progressive or regressive.
Property taxes are inherently more regressive than income taxes, since since property (either directly or through rents) nearly always consumes a larger portion of the income/wealth of lower-means individuals.
It's not obvious to me that you can't also have a progressive / marginal tax system for property taxes based on home valuations (e.g. home values >$1MM taxed higher than those worth $200K). So, I don't think property taxes are inherently regressive.
That said, I don't think it's enough to just look at one tax. We have to consider taxes and regulations as a whole to understand whether a place is overall regressive or not. This leaves room for different implementations of tax policy which if done correctly will benefit the people.
> “If you ask any cohort of young people if they will ever pay for Netflix or video services, the answer is unequivocally no,” said Mike McCormack, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities.
Good grief what a stupid quote to use as a pretext for tacitly supporting these measures.
When I was “young”, whatever that undefined number means, I swore there were lots of things I’d never pay for. Streaming music services, are a germane example. Then I got older, developed a bit of discretionary income, my time got more valuable, and the services become the best option. The once “no way ever” is now an unthought monthly cost.
also -- if a demographic says they don't want to pay for your product, why would you think cutting off their free access to it would change their mind? There's a lot of competition in the streaming video space.
Corporate ego. Executives think their media is in-demand and without substitute. Most young people have already replaced traditional media with YouTube & Twitch.
I’m a climber / skier / runner etc based out of Colorado and between my wife and we’ve spent a small fortune with backcountry.com. I didn’t know about any of this. Suing a maker of backcountry skis? Well, fuck you too, private equity jerkoffs. I’m going to light up my rep on this and let them know my spend and my recommendations are going elsewhere.
Edit, @skierjerry, et, al, here's what I just sent my rep:
Heya <person>,
I read an article about Backcountry in the Colorado Sun that really disappointed me. Your employer has adopted ugly business tactics and begun using its size to attack smaller businesses who have the ubiquitous term “backcountry” in their name.
Please look at my lifetime spend with Backcountry as well as that of my wife. It is significant. It also stops now, and I’ll be making significant contributions to the legal funds of the boutique makes and businesses that your employer is assaulting.
I wish you nothing but the best on a personal level and hope that your employer chooses to take a better path."
Worth a mention...Colorado Sun is a great example of what local journalists can do after local legacy organizations are snapped up by national/global organizations.
After the Denver Post was acquired by Alden Global Capital, the paper's hedge fund owner,they laid of 1/3 of newsroom staff to maintain a profit margin on the property in the 20 percent range.
Several of those laid off (and some volunteered to migrate), they formed the Colorado Sun, which is online-only and does actual deep investigations locally. It's probably still hard and the money isn't easy, but its better than what we had!
I was quite surprised to see a Sun article on HN today. Been a member as soon as I moved to Denver last year and have loved seeing it be such a high quality source of journalism.
I chatted with a rep last night and they were very responsive, said "our managers are listening to customer feedback."
Don't forget, Black Diamond laid off much of the Utah engineering staff and their climbing cams will now be made in China... Not sure what other gear is taking that fate. Looks like it's Metolious Master Cams for me now.
That's crazy. China loves to replace parts with "equivalent materials." My employer has been spending the last 3 months resolving Chinese QC issues with metal fabrication such as ignoring critical tolerances or broken welds. Considering how devastating it would be for a carabiner or ice axe to fail in the field it would be hard for me to trust outsourced manufacturing.
It's everything. Literally everything. It's what I believe is going to hold up Chinese manufacturing, regardless of how much better it is now compared to the 90's or early 2000's.
As another example - Jorgenson Pony clamps were made in Chicago until they closed down (like 15 years ago). They're the gold standard for woodworking clamps. Solid as a rock. The company announced they were re-making clamps. In China. At the world's largest clamp making plant.
They're garbage now. Materials are cheaper. The QC is nowhere near as good as they used to be. The price is more, even adjusted for inflation, than what they were when they were Chicago made - because people are buying the trusted brand name and getting burned for it.
It's just sad. I can't imagine that I would ever trust something like climbing gear to outsourcing. No thanks.
This is highly rational behavior for hired CEOs — you’re there for 5-10 years and paid based on stock price, so it’s in your best interest to sell shoddy products under the venerable brand name in the highest quantities possible, and cash out before the market discovers that your brand name is worthless (cf all of the venerable kitchen brands like All-Clad and Wusthof that now have Chinese junk lines).
This is why the father to son family business model may prove more enduring.
I doubt any CEO's compensation is tied to anything beyond five years; and, I bet even terms at five years are sparse limited to a few giant names who have to (like Tim Cook) otherwise the stock price would collapse and that's it.
I'd like to add: there is no incentive for it either, shareholders want returns NOW, and so they want CEOs to act in their interest NOW. Most shareholders aren't looking at their "ownership" stake with compassion for employees at the company, or any form of responsibility to other stakeholders, but solely for their own bottom line.
>there is no incentive for it either, shareholders want returns NOW, and so they want CEOs to act in their interest NOW.
Many of the biggest shareholders are major pension funds with 30 to 50 year time horizons. They absolutely do NOT want "returns NOW" with the implicit assumption that future quarters don't matter.
They absolutely do NOT want "returns NOW" with the implicit assumption that future quarters don't matter.
That is true but it is also true that they can’t risk waiting 30 years only to find their investment is worthless. Hence the insistence on quarterly reporting.
I know this is the received wisdom, but as a shareholder, I emphatically do not want this. I want long-term value, as I am a long-term investor. I hate that I have to watch out for shady things like this and adjust my holdings accordingly.
I always thought this was a weird definition of "rational". If you're already rich, which I assume most hired CEOs are, why is prioritizing money over people a more rational decision? Is that money going to change their life in any meaningful way? Is it any less correct to say it's in their best interest to stop working as soon as they have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their life, to minimize stress and maximize lifetime?
I understand that it's rational behavior for someone driven exclusively by money, but that's an important qualification. Most people are not money robots, so they aren't given these jobs.
It's the corporate structure. The CEO either grows the year over year profits or he gets punished/fired by the board. Boards pick CEOs based on a history of delivering growth at any cost (this is one of the irrational decisions, they should prioritize long term growth over short term, but they rarely do). This in turn provides a strong incentive to CEOs to make bad long term decisions if it means short term gains, because they either won't be around to see the eventual collapse (having moved on to another CEO position) or else they take the long term plan and get fired by the board for not providing enough growth (or worse, reduction).
But it shouldn't be a strong incentive, right? Getting fired from a CEO position is fine, you're almost certainly set for life. I understand this is sort of a circular argument, because anyone who doesn't buy into this incentive structure won't be hired as CEO, but my point is that somebody who is willing to go along with this system isn't really behaving rationally in the normal sense of the word.
> If you're already rich, which I assume most hired CEOs are, why is prioritizing money over people a more rational decision?
Generally, a non-founder CEO is a ferociously competitive person--probably to the point of being pathological. They often "play poker" in situations where there is very little upside to doing so.
Great salespeople are often the same way, they simply can't turn it off.
You are asking a leopard to change his spots after he has started eating the antelope.
I understand, I just don't think we should describe that behavior as "rational". In casual conversation, the word means "sensible, logic-driven decisions that any person with good judgement would take". Here we're describing behavior driven by a particular niche, unnatural rationale, and pretty much any behavior can be explained that way.
I really dislike this kind of reasoning. Saying this is "highly rational" is saying the only value is money. Everything else can be set aside if it leads to more money. Even if people get hurt or worse using shoddy equipment. There is no place for empathy, at a sociopathic level. I'd think that a few millennia of civilization would give more value to notions of altruism, honesty, not constantly trying to scam your fellow man.
This is a sort of "Ayn Rand'ian" rationality in which the only thing that matters is what you're getting out of the deal independently of how devoid of empathy your worldview is.
The way it's been explained to me is that it's proportional to how much money you're spending. If you think you're getting a great deal from the Chinese, then the Chinese think it's reasonable to rip you off.
Whereas a manufacture in another country might say: "For that little money, I won't do the job.", in China the answer is more like "For that little money, I'll do the job [but I'm going to rip you off, and for how little you're paying, you should already know you're going to get ripped off.]"
Unfortunately I don't have more details; it's something I heard a few years ago from a Chinese coworker. He was explaining that quality products can be produced in China, but you have to pay for that quality just like anywhere else. And it happens that when American companies outsource to China, they're often looking for the cheapest bidder.
It’s also crazy given China trade talks right now. Seems like at least something to postpone a year or so. Or maybe they already feel they have the shutoff options covered.
Black Diamond makes a lot more than just walking sticks. But even if that's all they made ..
You're seriously underestimating how hard it might to to engineer and test even something as seemingly simple as a walking stick. These are lightweight, high-tech materials we're talking about (carbon fiber), which even SpaceX gave up on for their latest spacecraft. They're also collapsible/foldable. Simply put, this is harder than you think it is.
I have no idea, I've never made an artificial walking stick. Good strong wood is quite sturdy however, but not nearly as light as a synthetic walking stick. Trying to replicate the strength of a hard wood in a very lightweight synthetic material is probably a challenging engineering task.
Anyway I'd think production/manufacturing and quality assurance would be more to blame, particularly if the same products used to perform better than now.
Enough to keep your manufacturer from doing something stupid.
Designing the walking stick is simply the start. The problem is that you specified some really expensive materials with exotic manufacturing requirements that your supplier probably doesn't understand unless they are in aerospace.
Of course, aerospace manufacturers are ferociously expensive, and your customer can't really tell the difference if you are 1 or 2% less effective, but they can tell if you are 10% cheaper, so you start downgrading your manufacturing.
And then the problems start. The new manufacturer probably doesn't understand exotic materials as well, or they would be an aerospace supplier charging you more money. So, maybe they don't apply a cross layer, maybe they change the binding agent, maybe they use a cheaper material.
How do you, as the manufacturer, know?
You would have to put people on quality assurance analysis, but those are valuable engineers.
For a product that is $200. Max. For a company that has a revenue of roughly $100 million a year and basically no profit.
So, go find a company that charges $500-$1000 for your sticks and creates an actually good product, or suck it up and buy the Chinese crap.
I'm not sure if I see what's wrong with that. Like it or not, electronics manufacturing is centered around China and the APAC region. Trying to set up manufacturing outside that region, especially for a company that doesn't specialize in electronic goods, simply doesn't make sense.
Brother I'm livid. I understand that a company has to protect a trademark, and I've been in the protecting position. But there are actions you have to take and actions you do not, and BC seems to be taking it to the extreme.
The thing that really pisses me off is that they are attacking people in business because they love the sport. These boutique makers are often just scraping by and don't have the margins to sustain much resistance at all.
I understand the desire to protect your trademark, but if you want to make a trademarked brand part of your business, maybe don't build your business around a generic term?
Yup, I'm switching exclusively to Moosejaw until Backcountry is a little more reasonable here. Obviously they have to enforce their trademark to avoid losing it, but some of these lawsuits are egregious imo.
FYI - Moosejaw is now owned by Walmart, so if you're trying to ethically "vote with your dollars" it might not be the best choice.
I buy essentially all my gear from the REI co-op, who seem to have both customer-friendly return policies as well as genuine commitments to environmental standards for the gear they stock.
REI is my favorite place for outdoor gear. Return policies aren’t as good as they used to be. You can get around the return policies by buying high end gear. I had a goretex jacket where the membrane taping failed after 8 years and the manufacture replaced the jacket for free.
Almost everyone has cut back on their replacement guarantees. LL Bean is another company that used to basically have a no questions asked policy.
I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset. Or if it's that more and more stuff is made in the same Chinese factories and they literally tend not to "make stuff like they used to."
"Increasingly, a small, but growing number of customers has been interpreting our guarantee well beyond its original intent. Some view it as a lifetime product replacement program, expecting refunds for heavily worn products used over many years. Others seek refunds for products that have been purchased through third parties, such as at yard sales."
Well, of course, LL Bean isn't going to say "And, besides, our stuff is a lot crappier than it used to be." Some people have been doing this sort of thing forever. Though I find it perfectly believable that it's become more common--admittedly an assumption at least somewhat rooted in generational stereotypes.
Yeah, but we all know jerks who've been pulling that scam with Craftsman for years too, and I believe it's a large part of what made them less profitable too.
Turns out that a "forever" guarantee lasts longer than shifting moral standards.
I know of at least one person who would routinely buy stuff and return it after a season of use to get a refund. That guy was a real asshole though. But still, people like him ruined it for the rest of us.
Sounds like a guy I knew who would "buy" a brand new TV just before the Super Bowl, and then return it immediately after.
This was before all consumer electronics were consolidated into a few chains, so he was able to go to a different place each year.
These days there are companies that monitor that sort of thing and will alert the stores when you try to return stuff. But considering the state of online shopping, I wonder if he's still doing it.
> I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset.
I think that's the rationale they gave, and I believe them. My brother has pushed what I consider the moral limits of generous return policies a couple of times, and given what I've seen at REI scratch and dent sales, I think other people are as well.
I believe Nordstrom still has basically an unlimited return policy. They sell a surprising amount of outdoor gear too. Arcteryx, North Face, Patagonia, etc.
Most of the stuff in the stores is those brands fashion lines, but their website regularly has more outdoor focused gear. I even once bought a Snow Peak backpacking stove from them.
> I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset.
That's probably a part of it, a long running joke in the skier community was that "REI is an acronym for Return Every Item."
That plus blatantly notably lower quality Chinese production probably put an end to it.
Weird. I've noticed a strong increase in the quality of their products over the past few years. I have a REI magma down bag from them and it's awesome. Their performance wear has taken a step up, too. I seriously considered a rain shell from them, but ended up buying a Mammut on sale.
One of the only real quality disappointments I've had with REI was fairly recently when about a 3 year old lightly-used camp sleeping pad started slow leaks from all over the pad. Obviously whatever material they used to keep the air on the inside had just broken down. I probably should have at least tried to return it but I couldn't be bothered. Looking online, I was far from the only person with this problem.
"For life" is such a misleading statement I'm surprised companies get away with using it without running into legal trouble. It most definitely does not mean that your jacket is guaranteed to last as long as you're alive. They are not talking about your life, they are talking about "useful life of a product", which can mean pretty much anything.
My ski jackets which are goretex easily last 10+ years. Membranes are things that usually fail. I had a raincoat membrane fail while I was in Thailand during the monsoon season. It was a cheap rain coat at a 1/3 the price of a goretex equivalent. REI wouldn’t take back the raincoat even though it was only 4 years old so I replaced it with goretex active coat which is still going strong though I burned a couple holes in it that I had to plug with wax. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a waterproof membrane to last the life of garment. Most of my camping gear is 20 years old and still works fine.
I've had bad experiences with their garage sales, buying products that say "too heavy" or "didn't like fit" but are just broken. Like at least give products a look over, especially electronics that can't easily be tested by a customer in store. Spent like 3k one year at REI, then was sold broken products that they didn't take back. Dividends don't accumulate on sale products so their pricing isn't competitive - I think once the bubble popped for me I realized REI isn't special
Well, specifically, one that I remember was a solar charger. I couldn't exactly go outside and let it sit in the sun all day to see if it worked before buying. What set me off was when I asked them about it, they said, "hey its hit or miss. Actually we have another one next month, try your luck again!"
So I mean, its minor, and maybe I'm being petty, but it irritated me enough to stop buying gear there. Esp given how much I'd spent on winter camping gear the months before. Started trying to support local shops more where I can, and buying online elsewhere.
I don't really see the problem there to be honest. When it comes to electronics at the garage sale, I usually don't purchase unless I can tell that it's working or isn't difficult to fix. There could be a number of things wrong with electronics that don't show on the surface. One of the downsides to the garage sale is that sales are final. Basically, you took a chance on a risky second-hand product and the fortune wasn't in your favor.
> REI is one of my favorite stores in the world. It's hard for me to come up with a reason not to like them.
That's easy. Pretty much every single non-REI branded item that they sell in the store is insanely marked up compared to what it can be bought in the brand's store.
Agreed. I've been a member for a while now and REI's standard prices are pretty average if not a little high, but they have enough really good sales during the year (plus the member discounts) to make up for anything you'd consider high price. Not to mention the garage sales can be a gold mine.
It is definitely the case for ski gear ( skis/boots ), bike gear, cold weather gear, helmets, backpacks, etc. Northface store? 25% off. REI? List price. Columbia store? 25% off. REI? List price. Patagonia store? 15% off. REI? List price. Atomic REI? List price in Feb. Atomic at EVO? 25% off in Jan. Yeti at REI? List price. Yeti pretty much anywhere else? 10% off.
People justify it because of the dividends gimmick. Hell, I fell the first year for it myself.
I don't think REI moves as much ski/snowboard gear as a more local shop would, but they have seasonal sales on the same items you just mentioned every year, and their anniversary sale is usually pretty good. Not to mention their outlet store often has additional sales on items that haven't sold, plus the garage sale.
The best 'deal' I found at REI was a ENO DoubleNest hammock for $12 at the garage sale, perfect condition. A near second would be a Black Diamond Access (I think) insulated hoodie for about $100, lasting me more than 6 years as my insulated layer for climbing, snowboarding, all around and casual use.
Last Season: REI great "snow sale" ~ 20% on Columbia gear. At the same time Columbia has the same stuff at ~75% off. Dick's has the same Columbia gear at 50% off.
REI is a cult. 10 years ago it was a cult that brought lots of things to the members because the brands sucked at selling on the internet or marketing on Instagram. Now the brands adjusted, and REI still behaves as if this is 2009.
> No. Their prices are consistent with the MSRP of the brand name products they stock.
And their competitors base line is pretty much always MSRP - 10%. That's why REI pretty much never shows up on Slickdeals apart from their blow out, out of season sale.
To be honest, their return policy is still awesome. You can return things after a whole year of use. They changed it because people were abusing the return policy and treating it like a rental.
It makes sense that they stopped offering a lifetime policy. 1 year is still generous. They also offer price adjustments up to 2 weeks after purchase (if a sale starts, for example).
That’s the thing. A company like REI wants to do good by its customers, but a large enough fraction of them make it into a game. I knew people who’d buy something outgrow it and return it to buy the new thing they wanted. I mean, c’mon, but there you have it, the same old ugly reason we can’t have nice things for long. People abuse these niceties till they adjust or die.
yeah, well (and this might be a stretch for you to consider) maybe they reduced the return window because people like you expect every item to last indefinitely.
These days I put a real premium on how a product is supported after I purchase it.
I paid almost $200 for an Outdoor Research rain jacket back in 2017. Last month the zipper broke off, and they immediately sent me a replacement. Now I won't think twice about what brand I buy the next time anyone in my family needs a lightweight rain jacket.
I used to be a long-distance road cyclist, and I paid a premium for the Dura Ace brand for chains, cassettes, chainrings, shifters, etc. On two different occasions something failed in the 3rd year of use, and both times Shimano replaced the broken part under warranty. Had I gone with cheaper kit, I would have had a slightly less quality ride experience and would have been out the cash to buy replacements out of warranty.
I bought a pair of L.L.Bean boots 2 months before they suddenly dropped their lifetime replacement policy. Guess what brand of boots I'm not going to touch with a ten-foot pole now?
Finally, I owned a Tesla for almost 3 years. For the first year Tesla honored its warranty for about a dozen issues that came up. I was willing to work with them through the issues because of how responsive to the problems they were at first. By the time I was at year 3, they were refusing to fix anything -- most notably, a shudder in the half-shaft that happened under moderate acceleration. I immediately got rid of it and won't ever purchase another car from that company.
It's all about how you treat your customers after the sale. Shimano and Outdoor Research have a fan for life. L.L. Bean and Tesla have earned someone who now discourages others from purchasing their products.
FWIW, MSR and Osprey are tiptop as well, both have replaced products for me even though I was just looking for parts to fix it myself (MSR), or giving feedback on how a pack wore after 6 years of heavy use (osprey).
Maybe they just like to see their gear after some proper usage to see how it's holding up.
The only caveat seems to be that they now require you to have the original receipt, otherwise people would still be buying 30 year old clothing at garage sales and exchanging it (which is the reason they had to drop the lifetime guarantee to begin with).
Check out Let My People Go Surfing as well, he talks more about how they've discontinued certain colors because of the environmental/social effects of mining certain pigments/dyes. It's very inspirational. I fear for what might happen after he's gone. Yvon Chouinard is the ruthless visionary we need for adventure sports equipment, something like Steve Jobs was for tech.
As for returns, I'm not sure they're any "better" than REI, but I fully buy into their philosophy of "if it's broken, fix it" and "don't buy this jacket." They try to be the antithesis of fast fashion and consumerism. If your jacket's zipper or stitching fails after 10 years of taking you to incredible heights, and you feel entitled to a replacement, you are delusional. Either fix it, or pony up the dough for a new one. You're not just investing in a new piece of clothing when you exchange money for it, you are investing in the company and its continued craftsmanship, R&D and training of newcomers to keep making and improving things. And in Patagonia's case, lobbying for better standards environmentally and sociopolitically. Asking for a refund or replacement is basically a vote for offshoring, reduced quality, carelessness towards the environment, etc as far as I'm concerned.
They'll even repair gear made by others. Which is putting your money where your mouth is, if you ask me. They'd rather keep your gear, made by someone else, going than sell you new stuff.
> Obviously they have to enforce their trademark to avoid losing it
This is a commonly repeated myth. The circumstances in which you could even possibly lose control of a trademark in this way (genericization, abandonment) are very narrow and difficult to apply. For more context, try https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...
Why not look for a local option for your gear? I understand that some equipment may not be available locally but surely you can find most of what you need. If their prices aren't competitive with online retailers, look at what else you get beyond the equipment such as customer service, repairs, etc.
Over the last few years I've been trying to shift my spending from online to local businesses. It's been a miserable failure. Hours and hours wasted trying to avoid the Amazons of the world, only to end up having to order online because local selection is basically non-existant. The town I'm in only has a population of 120k so I don't expect to be able to find niche items, but I've honestly been surprised at just how difficult it is to buy relatively high quality items at all in the local market.
Yup, the local markets often only cater to the entry-level, casual users. That's where their profit margins are. If you need something niche/higher-end your only options are to go online. Otherwise you get the usual response: "We don't have that in stock but can order it online for you. It should be here in 2 - 4 weeks."
That excessive delay probably isn't fundamental and probably represents an opportunity to improve logistics and get that down to 1-5 days depending on how niche and how centrally the customer is located.
Amazon is brilliant for charging the customer 120 bucks a year for shipping and not making them feel the pinch on each transaction.
>The town I'm in only has a population of 120k so I don't expect to be able to find niche items
This caught my eye: is 120,000 people considered a small market?
I grew up in a town of 5,000, work in a small city of 50,000 (which has plenty of amenities, including multiple independent outdoor sports stores) and now live in a village of 200 people.
There isn't a single ramen restaurant in this town. Nor is there any donut or ice cream shop that isn't a chain like Dunkin' Donuts or Cold Stone. The only outdoor store is a hunting store Gander Mountain or a sports oriented store like Dick's Sporting Goods. The only decent kitchen store is a Bed Bath and Beyond. The only "boutique" store I've found that I've found reason to go back to is a grill store, but even they didn't have something pretty basic like a flat burger press. Maybe Cedar Rapids, IA isn't a small market, but it doesn't feel like there are very many local options at all.
Sounds like it might be a demographic problem. Slightly larger town in Colorado here; we probably have 10-15 outdoor sports stores, and half are local.
Actually, I just checked again to make sure I wasn't a liar, and we did get a dedicated outdoor goods store but it wasn't until toward the end of last year. I did also finally get a leather repair shop for my boots who also moved in last year. Hopefully smaller retailers are recognizing a gap in the market and starting to move in. If someone wants to start a hipster ice cream or donut shop, the Cedar Rapids, IA market is all but uncontested.
You don't necessarily need to avoid ordering online to avoid giving money to the giant retail companies. A lot of the best small gear manufacturers sell their gear directly on their websites.
And with those new credit cards that allow you to spin up one time use numbers you don’t even really have to worry so much about a small businesses card handling operation getting hacked which is nice.
Not having a central point of failure for your checking account is a boon these days I think.
You often can't even find the best gear at the big box retail stores. Small companies like Gossamer Gear, Tarptent, etc. make some seriously fantastic outdoor gear. You can't find them without some looking, but it's totally worth it.
Yeah. And in the mountainous areas there's usually a good retailer nearby the local REI flagship. Seattle has like 3 or 4 that I can think of off the top of my head.
I will say that when I went to the local REI here the lady I worked with actually spent about an hour with me fitting a pair of backpacking boots and explaining how and why some of the boots would fail when I wore them. I learned more about my feet from her than from any of the other places I went.
You can get that kind of experience at a lot of the boutique alpine or backpacking stores though.
In the US, having a local REI is pretty close to the only good option. Or Cabela's for some types of gear; they're geared towards hunting/fishing. There are a few other local alternatives with various degrees and types of specialization. But not a lot--and they all tend to pivot more and more towards general clothing over time.
As for repairs, good luck. I took something into an REI recently to get repaired as I had done in the past and it was: "Nope. Don't do repairs any longer. Send it to a place in (somewhat ironically) Seattle."
Outdoor gear is an especially good way to shift your purchasing from online to supporting local retailers, specifically because their pricing is very competitive. Backcountry.com pricing isn't saving me any money vs my local gear stores.
The only problem is actually finding a good outdoor gear store - i'm lucky enough to live in a mountain resort town, so my options are pretty good, but many places simply don't have a local shop.
I can relate to that, I did live in a mountain town with some great local stores. However, I just moved to a larger city but further from the mountains and they have worse local options, at least that I have found.
I honestly tried to shop at Dick's, about a decade ago. (I have spent lots of money at e.g. REI [although I haven't lived near one recently] and Bass Pro in the past .) At Dick's, if I ever had a particular item in mind or a question about an item they did sell, whether that was for hunting, cycling, kayaking/canoeing, snowboarding, skating, whatever: I was always disappointed. So far as I can tell it exists mostly to sell high-marketing-spend branded athleisure apparel. Their recent public stand against 2A and the resulting drop in sales would fit with that...
My time, honestly. It takes a lot more time to stop by at a store and find what I'm looking for or pick up a package from customer service than to simply have it delivered to me with 2-day shipping.
I'm not sure why Walmart gets so much hate. They're not the most altruistic company in the world, but I don't remember ever hearing about them suing small companies for trademark BS like this. In fact, I can't recall ever hearing anything really awful about them, other than maybe staff being underpaid.
Compared to really despicable actions I've heard of from so many other behemoth companies, Walmart seems to be relatively benign. Some people complain about them putting small businesses out of business when they open up, but what do you expect when a large retailer opens up nearby and has a big economy-of-scale advantage? My main problem with them is that they tend to have a lot of cheap junk, and not a lot of better stuff, but what do you expect from a retailer that caters to the crowd that wants stuff as cheaply as possible? They also have kinda crappy, dirty stores many times, but again, look at their clientele. So I usually go to Target for that kind of shopping instead, and to Wegman's for other groceries that Target doesn't carry.
> They also have kinda crappy, dirty stores many times, but again, look at their clientele.
The shopping experience at Walmart is really only unpleasant in areas where the "Walmart is gross" meme has pervaded the local psyche enough to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. It probably doesn't help that local governments in such areas do everything they can to deny Walmart's permits and keep them relegated to "not in my backyard".
In most places, Walmart isn't any worse than any other major department store, and shopping there is near-universal. You're more likely to have an incident with another shopper at a place like Target simply because the shopper base that actively selects against Walmart in non-Walmart-hostile areas is much snootier.
This is just plain wrong. Not to far from where I live, there's a Walmart and a Target in the same shopping center. There's a huge, clear difference in shopping between the two. The clientele at Target is clearly more affluent, the store is cleaner and nicer, the carts are nicer and roll silently unlike the beat-up squeaky Walmart ones, I could go on and on. It has nothing to do with "permits" or NIMBY when the two stores are almost right next to each other. I've seen this in other places as well where Walmart and Target were not very far apart.
As for "incidents" with shoppers, I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
Appreciate the counter-anecdote. There is definitely some individual variance between locations depending on local management, overall demographic factors, etc. It wasn't my intention to suggest that every Walmart and every Target are always equally desirable shopping experiences. The main idea is that except in places where Walmart is specifically artificially constrained, it's just as likely to have a bad store or a good store as the next massive conglomerate. :)
Look into WalMart's operations in Mexico, where they've bribed officials into deliberately overlooking protective legislation for historical areas, just so they could get visible placement of stores to catch tourists.
Amongst many other not just questionable but reprehensible moves behind the scenes in many, many places. If they can find a way around the system, they will, and go beyond to bribe people into staying quiet about it.
Even after hearing how bad Amazon's fulfillment centers grind people down, I'd still buy from them before giving WalMart anything.
They're well known for abusing their monopsony power to force brands to offshore production and reduce quality of products.
First they take on a product line and become a big % of the company's sales, then they start tightening the screws and demanding price cuts. The manufacturer has to either give up a large fraction of their total sales or use cost-cutting measures like offshoring and materials substitution to reduce their cost so they can sell at the price Wal-Mart demands. Wal-Mart does this incrementally over time so the company has already started down the road by the time they realize what's being done.
This was a big part of the manufacturing offshoring movement of the last few decades. Of course one company isn't solely responsible for that trend, but Wal-Mart with their huge size was a significant part of it. This was before Amazon was a thing. Now the damage is done and everyone seems to be forgetting that Wal-Mart had a hand in it.
This isn't anything new with Walmart, and it's pretty obvious that's going to happen if one retailer becomes your main customer. Walmart isn't forcing anyone to sell through them, or even to have different product lines (one crappy one for Walmart, another for other retailers), or even different brands. Basically, if you want to sell stuff to Walmart buyers, this is what you need to agree to. If you want to be a higher-end company, then don't deal with Walmart.
Well, economies of scale and significant pressure on suppliers ("Do you want your product in the largest retailer in the world?") to reduce prices, even at the cost of quality. I've noticed many of their high-volume products are lower quality than the same brands at other shops.
If a company does not make a consistent best-faith effort to defend its trademark(s), the claim on those trademark(s) get severely weakened. Companies are thus legally incentivized to defend their trademark (at least in the U.S.). This is a rational decision that has nothing to do with being an asshole (or not). If a company does not have a consistent track record of defending its trademark(s), then their claim gets severely weakened from a legal standpoint. Period, end of story.
And yet, every month there is a story like this in the news of "big company with generic name sues small company with same name" because nobody likes a bully. The problem is, if they DO NOT attack, the trademark claim will become severely diluted and then THEY will become vulnerable to a trademark dispute from someone else down the line, and the other party will point to their lack of historical defense and make an argument that the claim on the trademark is weak.
You're only incentivized not to unreasonably postpone a legal claim. Here, the company seems to exaggerate what a reasonable claim is in the first place.
Think what you may, but if there is ever a time to use the phrase that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet its now. Its being handled correctly, and not displayed honestly.
We will be releasing a statement today or tomorrow regarding the issue. We haven’t said anything due to confidentiality agreements, that other parties violated but anyways. I respect your opinion and decision.
Let me know what I can help with gear-wise in the meantime,
>They're not required to choose a word already ubiquitous in their industry and trademark it.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with the comment you replied to.
>They're taking "defense" to a ridiculous, douchy extreme.
Unless they did not send letters prior to filing their cases (of which I am unaware and the article did not mention), then everything mentioned is neither ridiculous nor douchey except as far as trademark law in business always is. If the term actually does not indicate to consumers what company manufactured it due to its common usage, all that needs to happen is one of the challenged companies put up a defense claiming genericization or lack of validity of the original trademark (that one is probably more suitable in this case) and a court will decide if that's so. With trademark, as a company you do not get a choice.
If they choose not to fight a small business using the name, that is a 100% legitimate defense for Walmart to use when they release Walmart Backcountry Skis that have nothing whatsoever to do with Backcountry.com.
The EFF article provided by another commenter does not 'debunk' anything. We're not talking about a company suing people for talking about the company. We're talking about a company suing other companies for promoting products in the exact same space with the trademarked name. This is what trademark law was kind of created for in the first place. If you can convince a court that if you walked into a Walmart and saw Walmart Backcountry Skis on sale that it would never cross the mind of either you or any other consumers that the Backcountry company might have been involved in their production, that is your defense and the trademark will be nullified and the lawsuit will be won.
Except that Backcountry.com is suing companies far outside their space, like coffee producers.
And Walmart should be able to sell “Walmart Backcountry Skis” because backcountry skis are a subtype of skis like alpine skis or cross country skis. Backcountry.com did not create the friggin product space or popularize the term “backcountry.” It’s a generic blanket term that refers to an entire range of activities.
I'm gonna go ahead and just disagree with every premise in your comment. "Backcountry skis" are a thing, independent of any brand. This is like if I started a knife company and called it Pocket(TM). I wouldn't want WalMart to start selling "pocket knives", or else I might lose my trademark, huh.
I was not aware of this at all. How did Backcountry get the trademark in the first place? It should definitely fail on the first challenge if backcountry is literally a subtype of ski and pre-existed. I know nothing about skis, and all the comments here and in the article made it sound like the furor was all over the generic adjective of 'backcountry' which I took to just be a synonym for 'rustic'.
The reason it doesn't fail on the first challenge is in the article and it's the same as patent trolls: most of the companies they've gone after can't afford the legal fees, so they simply roll over a lot faster than Philips did. By the time they get to Philips they have years of success getting other companies to, on paper at least, agree with them. Don't know if that strengthens their case in reality, but the fact is Philips sounds the first one to have put up a real fight. It's still a bullshit judicial decision, though.
The argument that they have to do this to defend their trademark also falls apart when you remember why they haven't sued Kohlberg & Co: their trademark was already in use. And by a supplier, no less.
Correct. This article reads like someone who has no knowledge of, or familiarity with, trademark law. Trademarks have to be defended or they are lost, and additionally almost all trademarks are applied to a very broad list of things just as standard practice. Even if your company is only making T-shirts, for instance, it would be very common to also have your trademarks cover toys, dishes, tools, and all kinds of other products just in case you might want to plaster your trademark on those in the future.
That being said, the fundamental purpose of trademarks is to eliminate consumer confusion. In order to defend against a challenge, you would need to present to the court strong evidence that there is very little chance a consumer might be confused as to the maker or origin of the goods due to the name. For instance, if you made a line of frozen pizzas and called them 'backcountry style' pizzas, is there a chance that some consumers might think those pizzas were made by Backcountry.com? You've got to be able to show that this is not a likely scenario even if Backcountry.com starts manufacturing frozen foods (assuming the trademark covers frozen foods, I have no idea if it does, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did).
I developed a website for reserving parking near airports and seaports years ago and the site launched under the name BookParkFly.com. Shortly thereafter, the business (I was just a contracted web developer) received a letter from a lawyer representing the people who owned a sorta-similar trademark in the same space for a company called, if I remember correctly, Park 'N Fly. I personally thought we might have been able to win a challenge in court, but the company didn't want to fight it so changed the name and rebranded everything. (It's Book2Park now if you're curious, but I severed ties with them years ago. Before they were featured on Krebs after getting someone else to slap in an insecure Wordpress blog after I told them if Wordpress was going to be used it had to be watched closely for security concerns...)
Trademark challenges aren't "bullying" or "aggressive". They're basic law 101 and really shouldn't surprise anyone in business. That's why you pay an attorney to do a trademark search if you really want to use a certain name.
A... "rep"... is a company... "rep"resentative. I don't imagine the GP is saying he's going to call the rep nasty names, but it's good to let them know why he's taking his business elsewhere.
Of course not man, from my experience the rank and file at BC are fantastic people. They of course have nothing to do with this. But when I and others tell our gearheads "the faucet is getting turned off" it will (hopefully) develop momentum internally against what's happening.
Or not. There are lots of other players in this space.
Yup, I buy my snowsports gear pretty much exclusively from evo. I love going to the B&M store here in Denver, even though it gets disgustingly crowded sometimes I have never had a bad experience there. Plus their prices are competitive, or at least competitive enough that I don't bother shopping around at this point because I like the service so much.
"And with cars/motorcycles you hear how it's more fun to drive a slow vehicle fast than a fast vehicle slow."
I know this is just your third comparator in your statement, but I never thought I'd see it pop up on HN. :)
It's one of those clichés you see all the time in Jalopnik comment sections...I always want to say "but have actually done that, driven the slow car fast and the fast car slow?" Because...I've got a slow car and a very very fast car. The fast car is fun to drive even when you're going 0 miles an hour at a stoplight. The slow car is fun to drive slow but awful to drive fast.
Maybe this statement works if the "slow" car is an E30/Miata/Fiat or similar but in my book, fast car going any speed is always way more fun. :)
I haven't heard it about cars but it applies to motorcycles. Generalizing, a maintained bike with good brakes and tires is probably more capable than most riders and faster than public roads so a 1990's or later 400-600cc motorcycle ("slow"?) is more fun whirring the engine and stirring the gearbox than loping along in second gear on a liter-class bike.
One of the most fun rides I ever had was after swapping my bike for a riding buddy's 250 Ninja for the Friday lunch ride. I flogged that thing like a rented mule trying to keep up with the bigger bikes. Riding that thing close to the 14K redline in every gear. Give the handlebars the slightest nudge, and that <400lb. bike just lays on its side, hammer the throttle at the apex because that tiny engine isn't going to spin the rear tire up.
Try that on a ZX-1X on public roads, and they'll be pulling dental records to identify your body.
I have a slower Mazda 3 (although its fairly peppy at low speeds, similar to a Prius) and a very fast Tesla -- the Mazda is most fun to drive around town under 45, while the Tesla is basically very fun to drive anywhere, anytime at any speed.
I don't even understand the original statement tbh..
That doesn't really make much sense. Are you really having a blast in stop and go traffic in your Tesla? It doesn't even make sound - so you can't say you're enjoying the sound of revving the engine.
I think the point of the saying is that if you're going the same speed in both cars, you're likely going to be at a different driving "x/10" effort in the slow car and "y/10" effort in the fast car. And the point is that x >> y. So, you'll be pushing yourself and the car much harder in the slow car than the fast car.
I've found that my enjoyment is somewhat correlated to how hard I am pushing myself and the car. The slower the car, the harder I have and it have to work to go the same speed. Thus, sometimes, the more enjoyment.
> For sure. For one thing, the car looks flashy and draws a decent amount of attention where I live, so it's fun just driving around town.
It doesn't really look like a flashy car to me unless you've wrapped it..? Where I live (SV) they're about as common as a toyota corolla. Maybe you've done something to it but I don't feel like it's flashy like a Viper ACR is flashy.
> For another, I accelerate pretty fast at lights, so that never really gets old.
I guess but that's, again, not really driving a fast car slow then is it?
> And in stop and go traffic on the freeway, it's fun because I just set autopilot on.
So, you're saying that not driving and watching someone/something else is.
