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Comment by kochikame | Hacker News Reader

It really is one of the worst examples of a retailer anywhere. Shelf after shelf of semi-disposable, plastic tat, destined for landfill. Crap, processed food. Knock off cosmetics. Crowded, uncomfortable, unfriendly.

If this is the future, I don't want it.

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I've heard it compared to Walmart in the USA, and having visited both chains, I can see the resemblance, even if it's not obvious at the surface. Walmart's layouts are "big box", designed for automobile users who will carry their purchases to the parking lot. Donki's layouts are compact, for people who will take their purchases(most of them, anyway) onto public transit. Everything else about both stores is built around the premise of a broad selection of low-end goods at low prices.

They are not beautiful, but I am fascinated by these chains as a phenomenon, nonetheless.

One thing about Walmart is that whilst the prices are cheap, the quality is actually reasonable. They're certainly not as bad as say Flying Tiger or some of these purveyors of poorly crafted tat. Most t-shirts and bits and pieces which I've picked up at Walmart have been useful and lasted many years.

Thing about low-end goods is, often times they're plenty good enough for what you want them for.

>destined for landfill

I've always referred to crap at discount stores as "future garbage." Sure, that's end-of-the-line for most things, but these discount stores peddle stuff with an exceptionally short useful life. Especially targeted towards kids, I feel! I guess it's easier for a parent to give in to a child's wants when the toy is only a buck.

As The Onion had it recently, “Child amused for 5 minutes by toy that will take 1,000 years to biodegrade”.

The greatest regret of all parents. They should have added "Parent feels guilty about giving in for 10,000 years."

This is now considered Carbon Sequestration, and will help save the planet.

Unless the carbon is collected from the air, it isn't

I think he was been sarcastic.

sarcasm is generally frowned upon here, for these reasons

I tried to be clever but serious!

Not if humans would otherwise burn every drop of oil they can find.

OP said "biodegrade", which typically ends up releasing all the carbon in the biodegraded object as CO₂ to the atmosphere.

Expensive toys also have an exceptionally short life for 99% of them. There will be the three or four chosen, and the rest becomes garbage.

Buying cheap crap from the start is just an optimisation of the process.

Not buying crap is the final optimisation.

Despite the best of intentions, fighting societal pressure is hard and has costs. We start advertising to children from birth as to the toys they want and it's difficult to make a 7-year-old understand that they are being manipulated into wanting a crappy landfill toy.

They don't need to understand it. It's not about children, who are not supposed to have everything they want in life anyways, just like regular humans.

Can I ask a question, do you have any kids?

I have seen enough kids that age to know that there is no need (or even possibility actually) for them to understand reasons behind boundaries, only the existence of said boundaries.

I also have myself been a kid who grew up with no gaming console in the age of Pokemon, who never indulged in kid music and derivates, who did not wear brands, who did not get to own a pet, and many other things my parents didn't allow, no matter how often I asked for them.

Is it that hard to admit one's own laxism that there's need to resort to badly aged sophisms ?

So, a very long way of saying you have no children. Wonder how I knew that? It shows. If you ever have a kid you’ll understand otherwise continue on being an overconfident asshole I guess

Well I'll ask my parents how they hold on denying me a kitten all these years then. Probably overconfident assholes. Or simply the surreal ability to get over kid whims and tantrums.

But keep convincing yourself that your kid has a dagger under your throat at the toy shop checkout and that people with more will power are assholes. I have been on the kid end at least even if not on the parent one. You seem to have been on neither.

It comes to what we call 'crap'

Is a building kit with magnets 'crap' ? Is a doll 'crap' ? Is a hand powered fan 'crap' ? Are colouring books 'crap' ?

I think a ton of small toys are tremendously fun, can help discover different mechanisms, and help grow a kid's mind. Limiting the variety and amount of toys can end up fine, but from the parent POV it's a bit sad really. Especially when by definition we can't anticipate what for any specific kid will be a hit and what won't.

Crap is what is not used I'd say. Also there is actually little need of buying stuff fresh from the shelves of Donki and the likes.

Knowing what you really want, and choosing to buy only something that fulfills your use case, is the actual final optimization. Not buying crap is a useful side effect.

I guess it really depends on the actual location. The one I went to in Iwate was awesome, not multi-storey but a one-floor, jungle-like layout. Very good food section, bought a rug, travel neckpillow, and some crockery, I'm still using them now after months.

"after months"

I think you and the GP may have different definitions of semi disposable. I personally wouldn't class a few months as a counterpoint.

They didn’t say they broke after months, just that they’re still working fine now, which happens to have been months.

And if they’ve lasted months already, they’ll probably last just as long as anything from any other store.

It's the one store/retailer I didn't find interesting at all while visiting Japan.

I have to confess that, in small doses (so as not to lose my sanity), I sort of enjoy the all-sorts-of-random-crap stores. I could spend unhealthy amounts of my time in those 100 Yen stores (or whatever they are called, I might be misremembering their names).

But Don Quijote was just garish and uncomfortable. It was even difficult to walk the aisles. Everything about it screamed to me "get out of here fast!". I can't understand how it is successful.

PS: while on the subject of these crap/budget stores, can someone from the US tell me if my hunch is right about the following? While visiting the US I discovered those Five Below stores (everything between $1 and $5) and I think I figured their trick: while the advertised price range is true, this doesn't mean what they sell is actually cheap! For example, I'm pretty sure I saw Hot Wheels cars at about $3 when everywhere else the same toys were near $1. Am I missing something?

Yes, you are correct.

All retailers play the same game though, with products priced as loss leaders to get traffic in the door in the hopes you don't notice you're paying 1.5x as much for anything else you grab while there.

The dollar stores take it to the next level (as you noticed). They thrive on the financial illiteracy of poor and rural demographics.

Look at the price of paper towels. Only $1, right? But it's half the size of the $1 rolls at Walmart.

Other stuff is just poor quality. $1 for a gallon of watered-down "bleach", versus $3 for the real deal elsewhere.

God help you if you swing a dollar store hammer around. Those dollar safety glasses will be about as effective as taping an actual dollar across your eyes.

Like a timeshare salesman or casino, they make you think you're winning to keep you coming back.

I would not be so casually disparaging of the intelligence of the poor. Sometimes you know its crap and more expensive in the long term but just don't have the funds to buy the better version. Poverty in the United States is an endless series of traps and gotchas to take advantage of people too weak to properly defend themselves.

Not to mention “rural”? You’re rural so you’re financially illiterate?? Might make sense to follow some farmers on twitter if you think rural means financially illiterate.

I'm only this blase because I've lived among them. They generally make poor decisions.

Is renting a couch from a rent-to-repo store truly necessary? No. Nobody needs a couch.

But they'll insist they do and willingly amortize the cost of 10 couches to temporarily have one.

> The dollar stores take it to the next level (as you noticed). They thrive on the financial illiteracy of poor and rural demographics.

:/ Might make sense to review this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746790.

In the UK, pound shops often get special smaller package sizes for brand name goods so while they may appear cheaper, they arent.

Yes, 100 Yen Shops.

I wandered into quite a few last week mostly just looking at all the types of goods you just don't see in Australia. Bought a lot of weird flavoured Kit-Kats.

> I could spend unhealthy amounts of my time in those 100 Yen stores (or whatever they are called, I might be misremembering their names)

Daiso

I live in NYC and this sounds exactly like what we call a '99 cent store'. They became super popular in the late 90's and 00's and sprang up everywhere. They are usually small mom and pop shops in local neighborhoods.

Yeah I’m thinking Jack’s on 32nd in particular and its affiliate locations.

Crowded and uncomfortable? I never really felt it was that bad. I lived in Hyogo-ken and would sometimes stop in at one on my way home from university. It was a fun place to be, a sensory overload perhaps though you get used to it pretty quickly. I usually just bought snacks there, a halloween costume... It's like an upgraded dollar store.

it's not crowded for a typical japanese store and not crowded for a typical east asian megacity store. i've seen "supermarkets" that have just as much walking space. that's just the nature of the use of space in that part of the world.

also i feel like almost every city will have a business like this that sells everything under one roof that does very very well. japan itself has a lot of these kind of businesses - daiso, tokyu, etc. places like donki just happen to be the most well known of them all.

Oh, you are going to 'love' Daiso then. Everything 200 Yen. (Or 2 SGD where I live.)

Mmm Daiso. Guess it depends on what you're looking for. I love it because it has all sorts of useful things you can repurpose as a maker that you wouldn't find anywhere else locally. (Or at least not cheaply.)

Large silicone mat for $1.50, Nice bamboo slab for $3, stainless steel rulers, fine-point dry erase markers, etc... There are some gems in there.

Actually it's 100 yen at Daiso in Japan, with very few exceptions.

108 surely, because of the tax?

Daiso is a step up from Donki. I have a holder of Daiso pens and other stationary in front of me now which is decent quality and has lasted me a few years (including the holder!)

Right. I agree.

I feel Donki is not particularly cheap. It's just presented in a way that makes it appear that it would be.

Weird. Lots of the goods I can find in Singapore's Daiso seem to have something about 200 Yen printed on them.

In Daiso anything without a price tag will be 100 yen plus consumption tax. Tags are only for things 200 yen or more. Thus you will only see tags saying 200, 300, or 500 yen.

Yes! I still have Daiso things, yet Donki things seem to have not been kept.

How do you solve a shop being crowded (= successful basically) ?

The uncomfortable and usually unsafe part is something that could be worked on, but otherwise it has tremendous value for single purpose products or appliance where required quality level is extremely low (e.g. takoyaki sets).

It straightly goes against the romantic “buy it for life” idea, but I think asking people to care about every single stuff they buy is a tall order anyway.

is it just uncomfortable to your non-japanese sensabilities? lots of things are small and cramped in Japan. They rent 4.5 tatami apartments for example. Toilet stall doors often open in with zero room for a person between the door and toilet to get out (50% of the time I end up rubbing my pants along the toilet since there's no room ... yuck!)

You're describing Donki within dense tourist areas, further out they become still-mad-yet slightly more standard fare.

I agree, it makes the dollar store in the USA feel like a high end retailer. They sell absolute junk. Things you would find in the garbage that other stores might throw out.

It sounds a bit like Five Below here in America.

It is a discount store, that is what they have.

Yes, and the point is that we are destroying the environment by selling stuff that has no real usefulness, this isn't really a great future.

I bought a suitcase there and used it to travel the world. I would definitely consider it "useful".

The problem isn't that they sell no useful items, they just sell so many items that even if a small percentage (it's not a small percentage) are destined for landfill then they're creating an astonishing amount of waste.

The article mentions that they only buy returned overstock items from manufacturers at steep discounts. So this stuff was getting made anyways.

Not quite true. From the article:

> Almost half of its products are leftover goods that manufacturers couldn’t otherwise sell.

These look like a more corporate version of your regular "百貨公司".

Sounds like Ikea. People buying cheap nasty furniture to last three years when it should last a couple of lifetimes.

Eh. My parents have had their Billy bookshelves since they first came out.

I’ve had Ikea stuff for over ten years easily. I still work off of a solid pine Ikea kitchen table I got for $60 CAD about 11 years ago(I bought two! My parents are using one). It’s my home desk.

Some of it is worse than other stuff but I’ve never had the problem of having to junk it so soon as all that.

They must never have moved them or had a weight imbalance leading to side-shear force. Wood dowel into particleboard construction is an abomination.

They've moved with them multiple times. 3 house moves in different cities/towns and many times throughout their current house!

Though, to be fair, they used to laminate them in real wood.

That said I've had some mac-tack $10 Ikea bookshelves (I bought 4!) for over 4 years and I've moved them once, taken them apart and put them back together multiple times with no problems . I store my entire mini library on those. All good.

If you're careless with the connectors and screws then you're going to have a bad time. Definitely watch how much torque you put into any action. I also wouldn't treat them as a jungle gym. They won't compare to a dovetailed hardwood shelf mounted to studs, but they hold up alright with care.

They've sold >60 million Billy bookcases. Some wood dowels, but mainly cam locks, and a backboard nailed to the frame to provide rigidity.

Interesting that you say it lasts such a short period of time. I've had the opposite experience. My billy bookcases have moved countries and lasted more than 20 years, as have my tables. I think the lack of glue in their construction (most of the items, can't speak for them all) actually makes them more durable than boutique furniture if you treat them with a reasonable amount of care.

> the lack of glue in their construction

They're made of particleboard - it's literally made of wood chips glued into a block. Glue is the only thing holding it together.

Not all ikea is particle-board, and the point was that there isn't glue holding joins together. The weakest part of furniture is the joins but ikea pieces usually use screws or pegs.

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