Manufacturers can't justify producing a more reliable product at a higher price point, because there isn't really a way to get consumers to trust that it really is a more reliable product worthy of the price.
Of course, many execs look at brand value as something to be harvested for short term gains to the value of their options, but that’s a different problem.
Craftsman, Portal Cable, Bosch, Stanley, the list goes on and on, of once independent brands that have been bought out by mass marketers to sell lower quality tools under those names
From a PE/market perspective, the sweet spot seems to be the 95 year old with a good reputation that still carries weight.
I imagine it's because of the good spread between current price and expected returns, as the 'old' brands this is done with aren't usually very profitable, if at all.
See this Drill is DW345, we sell DW350, it is 5 better
We found Miele for dishwashers. Zwilling for our toaster, JennAir for microwave...
We explicitly avoided "smart" anything. I shouldn't need to connect my refrigerator to wi-fi.
But we've watched the crap curve take hold on a bunch of product categories, especially U.S. brands. Hannah Anderson used to make good quality, reliable children's clothes that didn't wear out when you looked at them funny. Not any more. Other brands that used to make clothing that lasted 20+ years now makes thin garbage that might last a season. Many of these transitions were to "Made in China" manufacturing.
We went to replace a ten-year old electric coffee grinder and couldn't find one for less than $1700 that wasn't garbage. We switched to a hand grinder as the only reasonable alternative.
It is very frustrating to try to find things that will last. My parents bought one refrigerator, and it lasted for more than 30 years. Most of their stuff they were able to get once. Not every two or three years.
Brands like Ceado and Eureka make a bunch at various price ranges. 600 gets you a decent one, 1200 and you're well into very nice grinder territory (unless you wanna go all audiophile here).
There's not a ton to go wrong: good motor, bearings, a well designed adjustment mechanism and a good hopper design. Of those I'd really only expect the bearings and motor to die in any reasonable time frame.
If you're that concerned you could always get a commercial model. There's no way home use will kill one of those, but it'll just be big and impractical.
Very sturdy, easy to use, easy to clean, and surprisingly quiet.
Random review: https://www.home-barista.com/blog/bplus-apollo-hand-grinder-...
Went with the BPlus Apollo. See my response below to yaldiz.
The one weakness it has is the plastic ring that holds the upper burr set. This appears to be intentionally designed to break as a sacrificial part if anything jams. Replacements are a few bucks.
If I was choosing between brand A and twice as expensive brand B, and brand B said "we trust that our stuff will last so we offer a 10-year, no questions asked warranty", I would go for B in a heartbeat. (As long as it was a brand with some history so I can trust they don't just go out of business.)
like help lines which charge 80 cents/minute to not help you?
* insert terms so onerous you’re very unlikely to claim, you have to ship the item on your own dime halfway across the world, if defect is deemed not covered (and you bet it won’t be) disposal at your expense or return as is at your expense, extended warranty void if you didn’t do $frivolousThing at time of purchase and not a day later, extended warranty doesn’t transfer to new owner, etc.
That is what warranties are for. You say it is reliable? Put it in writing how long you think it will keep working and what will you owe the customer if it ain’t so.
MTBF is exec poison. Too high, and the customer doesn't come back, you see, or worse, it's too expensive to build! (According to finance).
In power tools for instance, there's a number of YouTube channels that do high quality testing. In some cases some identified faults appear to have caught the eye of the manufacturer. Hopefully over time this feedback loop will result in higher quality products that still hit their price target.