There is definitely a market for the resurgence of some of high quality old-timey products, especially those with some novelty.
Sunbeam should literally do a Kickstarter to get the marketing going.
Sunbeam should literally do a Kickstarter to get the marketing going.
Sunbeam products are now Chinesium trash, the brand was sold off long ago.
At my last startup we learned this the hard way after buying a Sunbeam set of knives in a butcher block for the office kitchen. Every single knife was dull and serrated identically, despite presenting in the Amazon ad as a comprehensive set of knives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chainsaw_Al
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/obituaries/al-dunlap-dead...
"Allegheny's four principal divisions, including Sunbeam, went into decline through the late-1980s. Since Sunbeam-Oster was one of the most important divisions, responsible for nearly half of all sales, the stockholders were very concerned about the leadership. In 1986, the stockholders accused the Chairman and CEO, Robert Buckley of mis-appropriating funds.[10][11] Buckley's successor, Oliver Travers, downsized considerably and by 1988, the company was essentially just Sunbeam and Oster. The decline continued aided by the stock market crash of October 1987 and Allegheny filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[12] In the fall of 1989 an investment group called Japonica Partners[13] purchased the remains of Allegheny for $250 million ($521.9 million today) in a hostile takeover.[14] The company was renamed Sunbeam-Oster Company, Inc. At this point the business was then divided into four divisions: Outdoor Products, Household Products, Specialty Products, and International Sales. The company headquarters were moved again from Pittsburgh to Providence, Rhode Island and then finally to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.[15] By late 1991, Sunbeam-Oster's sales had increased 7% enabling it to make the Fortune 500 list." [0]
It sounds to me like he was brought in to be the axe man, and he obliged, while adding some fraudulent flair to the mix. One could argue the fraud was just a best-effort attempt to turn the sinking ship around, with flagrant disregard for the law.
My grandparents gave me one of these and I used it for a decade or so before it stopped working. I considered trying to fix it, but with little kids on the horizon, I was concerned about the safety issues (unlike new toasters, these old ones can electrocute you). If I'd known I could have had my old one retrofitted and made safer, as other oommenters have pointed out, I'd have done that instead. At least I got 50 bucks for it on ebay though!
The other problem is distribution.
These things are about channel power, which is >50% of the story on both sides: manufacturing, distribution, sales, etc..
'The Product' is actually less important than the system in place that makes all of this work, at least at scale.
Ideally, this would be a subdivision of a 'well run company' with operational resources and distribution power.
They certainly don't need the money to kickstart a campaign, but it would be interesting to know if Kickstarter would entertain the idea of a subsidiary of Newell Brands running a marketing campaign on its platform.
Are there other large corporate brands that you know of that have launched marketing campaigns on KS?
Why would KS have any problem with that?
But I've always had the impression Kickstarter was about small business entrepreneurs/solopreneurs unable or unwilling to raise capital through traditional means.
Per the KS Mission Statement, "It’s where creators share new visions for creative work with the communities that will come together to fund them."
It just seems unusual to me that a multi-billion dollar global corporation would decide after 60+ years to go back to building high-quality versions of their products, perhaps considering it to be a "new vision for creative work," not really need a community to come together to fund it, and not have KS pause to think about whether it fits with their mission.
Unfortunately, I think they'd cost 6-10x going rate as modern "smart" appliances, and also the market for them would be restricted to HN commenters.
If you have an electric motor that's supposed to speed up, slow down, reverse, spin fast etc., all on a schedule, it's a no-brainer (pun intended). It's usually the pump that fails, but the controller-cards often fail too. Pumps and controller cards are, of course, outrageously expensive.
These things are supposed to fail. Back in the day, they were much more reliable. I don't think it's "smart" tech that has made them less reliable; I think they've optimised their designs over the years, so that they nowadays fail just after the warranty ends.
So what I want is kitchen equipment that is designed to last. For example, I bet they could build a washing machine that works perfectly for 30 years, for under £1,000. If they wanted to. It might not have 24 different program settings, but I only ever use one setting.
Yeah, reliable equipment probably is a bit of a nerdy preoccupation; but you'd think at least someone would have a product to appeal to that niche. But nobody seems to want to compete on reliability. That makes me wonder if there is a cartel at work.
[Edit] I actually don't mean to include Bosch in my comments about manufacturers; Bosch equipment I've had has been more reliable than other brands. But they still fail and need repairs much too often.
Re. 30 years: that's how long my mother's Hoover twin-tub continued to provide service.
Efficient market hypothesis summed up in once sentence
I don't see what my remark has to do with the EMH; perhaps you could explain.
The big problem is that on the consumer side, it's pretty much impossible to evaluate durability of goods. Is the $80 toaster much more durable and better built than the $40 one, or is it just a "premium" offering that has the same internals but with a fancier appearance.
For me, it's less about cost and more about not leaving a pile of cheap toasters in a landfill for future generations.
Maybe it's a cultural thing? My extended family (both biological and in-laws) across my two countries (AU/NZ) frequently discuss what items lasted and what did not. This has led to a surprising commonality in the brands we all end up buying, and it's usually because someone bought something and it lasted, so others have bought similar, and when something isn't as good as expected, that gets mentioned as well.
There's a pretty wide range of age, political opinions and incomes as well - but caring more about reliability and long term value for money over shiny features is pretty consistent.
The initial market would definitely be limited to those with an appreciation for the concept and the funds to support it but it seems possible that after establishing a niche brand known for quality and reliability you could expand beyond the early adopters.
It would be an expensive experiment though.
Hobbyists are able to fix almost anything when they do it for fun in their free time as long as DRM isn't involved. It just isn't something that scales or can make a profit.
Every new dishwasher is assembled the same way; potentially, every broken dishwasher is broken in a different way, and needs some different part and different fix. (I mean, there are probably a handful of problems that account for 90% of the failures of any appliance. But still.)
But it still requires someone to go to your house, pull the thing apart, and put the new one in which costs way more than robots in India putting the thing together almost unassisted.
But they don't seem to exist AFAICT...
Seems pretty sturdy but I am not a connoisseur of these things. We appreciated getting a particular size too.
Is there a market for ‘buy it for life’ toaster. The question is will people pay 2-4X as much as cheap china toaster? Would you pay $150 for a lifetime toaster with replaceable parts? Would you pay $200? Or just 20% more than the next model? Would the retro angle get people to do it? Would the eco angle? Or the ‘right to repair’ angle? Or is it just easier to toss the thing and get another from our friends in Seattle?
work required: completely dismantle.
soak return coil spring assembly in mineral oil.
make a new carbon contact by cutting down a motor brush
replace cord with new cloth 3 conductor (plastic didn't look right)
10 years later and still works perfectly.
Mine is from about 1987, and I got it about 10 years ago on eBay. I've replaced one element card, as a result of a previous owner's dodgy repair causing arcing that eventually burned out a connector. The others look very old and are still fully functional.
Having said that, I understand the clockwork timers also fail from time to time, and they aren't especially cheap. And the toast, while very good and continuously adjustable in hue, isn't quite magnificent.
All my white goods are several decades old and still work well with occasional periodic maintenance. That's the other thing: back then, they were designed to last with maintenance; now, they're designed to be "maintenance-free" until they break completely and in a very cost-prohibitive-to-repair way.
But then the marketing team wouldn't be able to come up with a new redesign every 6 months.
And there would be less overall profit than building cheaper versions to fill our landfills with.
Which unfortunately means that this won't be realistic.