Why Do So Many Zippers Say YKK? (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Why Do So Many Zippers Say YKK? (2012)

slate.com

155 pointsTomte60 comments

YKK epitomizes why Japan, despite the recent decline, continues to be a major economy: manufacturing giants that continue to serve as the backbone of the global economy.

Another example is FANUC [1], a manufacturing device maker headquartered in Yamanashi, Japan's equivalent of Idaho (i.e., there are people there, and I'm sure it's nice to live, but few travel there for vacation).

There are countless such examples: Minebea [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minebea has 60% market share for miniature bearings (ex: the trackpoint for Thinkpads) and has been more than doubling their revenue YoY.

As long as Japan's high-end manufacturing sector stays healthy, they will be fine for a little while.

[1] FANUC stands for Factory Automation NUmerical Control. You've gotta love Japanese people's creativity when it comes to company names.

[2] Minebea stands for Miniature Bearing. Again, very creative.

> Again, very creative.

When you manufacture boring stuff, you don't need a fancy name.

An interesting thing about zippers (the post doesn't specify who's factory this is, maybe it's not part of the YKK group), is that you can fully automate their manufacture, but then you have to make them with a small notch at the top of the handle [0]. But customers perceive the notch as a manufacturing defect, so some guy in china has sit and feed zipper handles into a machine all day [1]

[0] http://bunniefoo.com/bunnie/zipper/zip_difference.jpg

[1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364

Interestingly enough examining a couple of my apparel with YKK zippers, I see a specifically machined tab like here: http://www.reissverschluss-zipper.de/WebRoot/Store5/Shops/62...

> There used to be a saying among corporate technology workers—or, as you might call them, I.T. guys—which held that “you’ll never get fired for using Microsoft.”

Before that, it was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

I've never actually heard the Microsoft version.

The IBM version is well-known and I've heard it despite being young and startupy.

Nowadays, some of us will actually fire an employee for buying either Microsoft or IBM.

You will stay hired if you buy AWS

Unless you work at Microsoft. Then: Fired.

It seems to me that pneumatic tires were the missing piece of the bicycle puzzle, and that required vulcanization to first be invented. The first bikes didn't have chains (rather they employed direct drive, ie pedals attached to the front wheel) so the author is pretty far off base in trying to draw that connection.

> You don’t buy your jeans and jackets by looking for their letters on that pull.

I actually do check for a YKK zipper, though I tend to mostly buy second hand clothing and focus more on the quality rather than style.

In the motorcycle apparel world, "YKK Zippers" is frequently on the bullet list of features that the jacket has. Though they will also advertise the cloth the jacket is made from as well such as "500 wt Cordura with 2000 wt Cordura at impact points". So motorcyclists can be a bit anal.

When people view things as "gear," they'll care about the components. And brands are the easiest way of recognizing quality.

After all, Gore-tex is just laminated PTFE, Cordura is nylon, Vibram are just rubber soles. Right? Except these brands have convinced us they're synonymous with quality.

(And yes, one could also point out that they built their reputations on exclusive patents.)

Motorcyclists care about gear because it exists to keep people alive in an accident. The details unfortunately matter quite a bit.

Maybe I'm weird, but I have a favorite zipper: YKK Vislon #5

The teeth are plastic, and you'd think plastic means crappy, but it's actually fantastic.

Except when you have them on a motorcycle jacket and they touch something hot.

I know that wasn't your point but it certainly surprised me when I found my zipper melted when I carelessly laid my jacket over my seat...

The Vislon zippers are definitely way better than the coil zippers

Do this as well. It makes my wife slightly crazy but I never end up with clothes where the zipper failed

I do too but it's become increasingly hard to find garments with YKK it seems they lost a major part of the market in the last few years.

> One zipper gone wrong can render an entire garment unwearable.

Especially a winter jacket when it's -20C with 100km/h winds and your zipper pops open? It could be the difference between life and death.

It's a big deal on some backpacks too. Mountaineering and rock climbers, some backpackers

But even a quality zipper doesn't help much if the clothing itself has a design problem. I quit wearing Levi's jeans 30+ years ago because their zippers (I'd have to assume they were YKK) consistently failed near the top of their travel. After one failure too many, I switched to Wrangler/Rustler and never looked back, and never had another zipper go bad.

Sure enough, the Wranglers I'm wearing right now have a YKK zipper.

Levi's uses a non-YKK zipper that they brand with their own logo

The Levi's I have use buttons.

Levis 501s have buttons, Levis 505s are the same but with zippers.

YKK zippers are one of those things that show if you can win a good unsexy niche, the benefits are huge.

Since when have zippers been unsexy? A lot of niche filling happens when zippers come down.

Previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ykk_zippers_why_so_many_design...

Living in Taiwan, married to a girl here. When going to visit their family in the sprawling between-cities urban area of Zhongli, the landmark for me to remember to turn off the main road to their house is the big building of a(?)/the(?) YKK factory. Big YKK lettering on the facade, and fills a few blocks. Was an interesting feeling seeing it for first time, instinctively checked which one of zippers was also marked with YKK at a time...

BTW, here's the view: https://www.google.com.tw/maps/@24.9647655,121.2378239,3a,75...

Weixing SAB[1] has a good brand reputation if you're sourcing your zippers from China. In my opinion, their quality is better than the lower-end YKK zippers for a similar price.

[1]: http://www.sab-cn.com/

Can anyone shed some light as to why (apparently) still no one can compete with YKK in terms of scale and value for money?

I don't know anything about YKK in particular, but a company that has large economies of scale can operate at a lower cost than a new firm could, allowing them to continue to dominate the market.

edit: this doesn't seem to be the case here after reading the article, because it states YKK zippers are generally more expensive.

It is possible that their zippers do cost less than if their competitors attempted to make zippers of similar quality - i.e. that their competitors can't make profit on quality zippers due to not having the same economies of scale.

That never stopped china.

The zipper is a component. If the component works as functioned, there's little reason why you would risk trying someone new.

For new companies to figure how to perfect the component takes time. They could probably try to innovate the zipper but that depends on whether designers would be willing to pick up on it. Even then, it would probably cost a lot of money to set the process up and mass produce those new, untested zippers. The risk/reward is just not favourable to an investor.

For competitors, producing the perfect zipper is one thing but maintaining supply whenever is needed is another issue. Your logistics have to be in place. And then there's also the relationship. Reliability counts when it comes to being a supplier.

I used to be a product manager in the systems business when a lot of even smallish companies were still buying proprietary systems of one sort or another, I was constantly surprised by the number of customers who came through who had 80% share of US toilet seats (or whatever). The dynamic has probably changed somewhat with globalization. But, as others have said, it someone really has a stranglehold on some unsexy, low margin, low unit dollar component business, it's hard to get excited about unseating that 800# gorilla.

There is at least one other large zipper manufacturer (Ideal) who competes in many of the same markets as YKK. If you start checking your clothing, you'll see it quite a bit.

Figuring out why all my zippers said YKK was an early search I remember on the web for a piece of knowledge I didn't have locally.

I'm glad I clicked through to the article though; great YKK anime!

I learned that YKK was a thing from Outkast

I think this is a bit narrow minded of me but then again i do work with IT, not zippers:

“you’ll never get fired for using Microsoft.”

But if anything goes wrong your boss will wonder why you didn’t opt for old reliable.

That is not why people chose windows, it is cause they are uneducated(and get the only thing they know) or they dont have a choice for various reasons.

(I might not get fired but my boss sure ain't happy when we get new windows servers, just a major hassle to update and maintain)

Except for the fact that a lot of people choose Windows on purpose.

I prefer Talon, even though it's just a resurrected brand with production in Asia. I got a jacket from the Real McCoy's in SOHO and immediately noticed the difference in zipper quality - which is pretty ridiculous for such a minor feature.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talon_Zipper

"Likewise, you almost certainly wouldn’t nix a garment purchase because the zipper isn’t YKK." Until now.

I've actually seen certain garments (usually one's meant for tougher situations) marketed with YKK zippers. Little did I know it's actually a pretty common zipper.

This post by Bunnie Huang, on the manufacturing process observed at a plant in China, is relevant enough to mention here: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364

All the windows and doors in my house in Japan are made by YKK.

137 points, 57 comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8655580

We can't all be so lucky as to have caught and remembered the original release of this masterpiece of an album 522 days ago.

Which is why I posted a link to it, so people who are interested can read the comments.

I'm not sure why you chose to see something negative in a plain link.

But we can be thankful for the link. I choose to believe people here do it to be helpful.

Why is this being down-voted? There's some interesting information in the older post about YKK's manufacturing process and counterfeit zippers.

Thanks! I enjoyed the comments the last time this was posted. For example:

- YKK anime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658920

- riri makes good zippers, Corozo makes good buttons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8659176

Can software biz grow like YKK? The cycle is too short here. Any other thought?

* Checks CofH pants and Chrome messenger bag, yep, both YKK.

http://lexcognition.com/recommend/app/getSummary?query=http%...

That summary is terrible.

Why share that summary? It isn't just inadequate, it's actually wrong and misleading: "Likewise you almost certainly nix a garment purchase because the zipper YKK"

Read this piece by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html.

Now, re-read this article.

Reading this comment under every article that is about a company gets real old real quick.

It's even worse in this case because for once it's probably not applicable, as the company is publicity shy and declined to participate in the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com