Try it. Name one.
Not a brand of sponge, or trash bag, or tin foil, all of which you can name without thinking. A chip clip. There is one in every kitchen you have ever stood in, and not a single one of them has a name anybody remembers.
Why that matters more than it sounds like it should
A product with no name on it is a product nobody has to answer for.
If the clip in your drawer snaps in March, nothing happens. Nobody hears about it. There is no brand to be disappointed in, no company to write to, no reputation that takes a scratch. You throw it away, you are mildly annoyed for four seconds, and the next time you are in a shop you buy another one. The system worked exactly as designed. You are the repeat purchase.
That is why it is two dollars. It is also why it breaks. Those are the same fact.
That clip is not badly made. It is made exactly as well as it needs to be to come back.
Nobody sat down and decided to make a bad clip. Somebody decided how long it had to last, and the honest answer in a market where nothing carries a name is: long enough that you do not return it. There is no reward anywhere in that system for lasting ten years. A clip that lasts ten years sells one clip.
What we did instead
Put a name on it.
That sounds like branding. It is actually the entire mechanism, because once the name is on it, every one that fails comes back to us by name. So we removed the parts that fail, we print them a short drive from where this is being written, and if one ever cracks, splits or stops gripping in normal household use, we replace it.
That is the trade. Ten dollars instead of two, once instead of every spring.
We would rather tell you that plainly than bury it in the price and hope you do not do the arithmetic.
0 comments