YKK: Japan’s Zipper King [video] | Hacker News Reader

YKK: Japan’s Zipper King [video]

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172 pointszdw53 comments

I often help my girlfriend get into dresses that she buys, and I just cannot fathom how zippers are used in womens clothing. They routinely design dresses such that zipping them up in the back or side is the sole clamping force holding the dress together, which means the zipper has to withstand whatever force is required to squeeze you into a dress, which they all seem to require as designed. Then they buy the cheapest, plasticy shit zipper that you are terrified to break, and just kinda let you deal with that stupid problem.

I just cannot fathom that. It's a dress that sells for $80 and definitely cost $8 to produce.

I wonder if $800 dresses have the same hardware. But every dress I've zipped up in the back also had some kind of eye/hook fastening going on, too. No idea what my GF's dresses cost though. She usually buys 2nd hand anyway...

Women keep buying them, so why would they change?

Same with the pockets. Every girlfriend I've had has ranted about pockets being non-existant or just fake pockets for decoration, none of them have gone out of their way to buy pants with pockets.

Even if you could easily buy them, would most women trade-off the pants looking nice and being form fitting in exchange for pockets?

Let's be honest, having a huge rectangle sticking out of your tight is not the most flattering look. There's a trade-off. Hell, if all we cared about were pockets, we would all be wearing cargo pants.

Bad business attitude. What if others start using quality zippers?

Absolutely one of the biggest cons. Companies spend pennies making shitty cheap clothing and then sell them at stupid margins. Shitbag giants like Shein making billions at the cost of our planet

YKK zips is always something I look out for when going through op shops (charity shops, thrift shops, whatever you call them). If they spent a few extra cents on a zipper the chances are better it's decent quality clothing.

After years of thrifting/antiquing, honestly, out of all metal zippers I've come across, I would rate YKK last in both design and build quality. The brass Talons are the gold standard — I won't buy a vintage leather jacket unless it has either a Talon or Serval zipper, for example.

> I won't buy a vintage leather jacket

Are you by any chance Jensen Huang?

The legend says Jensen was born wearing his leather jacket.

> I won't buy a vintage leather jacket unless it has either a Talon or Serval zipper, for example.

You're might be correct on this front if the jacket is fron the mid-to-late 20th century - but as noted in the video today Talon is no more (it still technically exists but as a brand of an HK company). It's pretty much the same story: while YKK is definitely improving, a siginificant factor too is how (usually American) leading companies are cheapening their products because the brands are established (which won't affect in the short term but definitely adds up over the decades).

Correct — outside of a couple of japanese factories recreating/pantomiming their favorite vintage brands (buco, etc. — mostly using the original equipment from America!), I don't think there are any modern leather jacket brands worth buying.

Slate did an article on this that backs this up

> For an apparel maker designing a garment that will cost $40-$65 to manufacture, and will retail for three times that much or more, it’s simply not worth it to skimp [on zipper price]

> Multiple apparel designers I talked to recalled incidents in which batches of non-YKK zippers failed to meet their standards

https://slate.com/business/2012/04/ykk-zippers-why-so-many-d...

I do the same for my backpacks and other hiking and mountaineering gear.

I've bought so many high end packs, only to have the zippers fail and have had to re-sew them or hemm the seams back together. I had one mid range pack with YKK zippers about 15 years ago and its been nails on every trip I've been on. After that experience, I just look for YKK zippers now on anything I buy.

A lot of Amazon product listings will explicitly mention YKK zippers so you can search for e.g. "backpack YKK"

This is a fairly decent way to find products of good quality. It's far from foolproof, and is certainly ripe for gaming, but it hasn't steered me wrong yet.

Great to see Asianometry here. Jon has such a huge number of interesting videos from semiconductor industry based to water supply to failed business models.

Love his "What [course of action] did for [country]" videos.

E.g. What eating the rich did for Japan.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5_-Ac68FKG4

I want to like Asianometry, I find his video topics interesting, but my god the dryness puts me to sleep like no other. I understand this is a draw for many to watch his videos so I understand it's just not for me but I wonder if anyone else feels this way.

I don't think the YKK video is there yet but Jon also provides transcripts for many of his videos on his Substack, which might me more to your taste.

Here is the one for the history of Intel and AMD.

https://www.asianometry.com/p/intel-and-amd-the-first-30-yea...

I somehow like his way of presentation with his dry humour. But maybe because I'm already interested with his topics (mainly related to IC industry and Asian history).

There's plenty of times where I've outright laughed at a reference he's slipped into his videos, e.g. a Far Side reference in a video about cow cloning.

Wait until you watch NileRed.. By far the most monotone, vexing delivery of any interesting youtuber.

NileRed and NileBlue are actually super interesting to me! But in that creator's case I think what they do is highly visual and stimulating in that way.

What? I love NileRed!

Monotone enought that NileGreen parodies ware decently easy to make.

His video topics are interesting, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm just watching what amounts to an ai-level summary of a slew of wikipedia articles with some added images and captions to keep viewers somewhat engaged.

Watch it at 2x speed. That is the cure for slow talkers and saves you time.

YKK zippers: Why so many designers use them (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32656463 - September 2022 (157 comments)

Why YKK? The Japanese company behind the world’s best zipper - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8655580 - November 2014 - (57 comments)

Why Do So Many Zippers Say YKK? (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11602988 - April 2016 (60 comments)

I only learned about YKK when I heard it in an Outkast song[0], went to check out what the lyrics meant, and then I realized YKK is on every item of clothing that has a zipper (recency bias)

> YKK on yo' zipper, lick you like a - lizard when I'm slizzard or sober; six million ways to fold ya

[0] https://www.lyricsmania.com/so_fresh,_so_clean_lyrics_outkas...

As a teenager in 1998, when year 2000 fear was ramping up, there was a dumb joke that went around my middle school that went like:

Person 1: "Did you know your zipper has the millennium bug?"

Person 2: "What?"

Person 1: "Take a look at it. It says 'Y two K' right on it."

Such a lame joke, but memorable enough that it's stuck with me for going on 26 years.

Kabushiki gaisha is not "production company" but more akind to "stock company" or limited corporation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabushiki_gaisha

If you're talking about the start of the video where he says "Yoshida Kougyou Kabushiki Gaisha, which roughly translates to Yoshida Manufacturing Company", what he said is correct. kougyou means manufacturing.

I hate zippers but when I have to use them I'll look for YKK as I've had the least trouble with that brand.

Zippers are my nemesis, of all inanimate objects that I come across in my life they consistently cause me the most trouble.

It doesn't matter if they're on my sleeping bags, jackets or the fly on my pants, they jam, the teeth pull out, the limit/stop staples at the ends fall out rendering the zipper useless. Fabric gets clogged in the zipping mechanism and it's often impossible to extract it without it tearing—sleeping bags are a disaster in this regard with their super long zippers.

The more expensive a jacket is the more likely the zipper will fail, then there's the problem of aligning jacket zippers, the two parts never properly engage or they jam. And on two-part zippers where there's effectively two zippers in one, aligning the bits can be a major undertaking. They never align when one's in a hurry.

As a male, I've had pants fly zippers draw blood—a painful experience to say the least. Also it's highly embarrassing when one's fly zip breaks and one comes apart at the seams, also fly zippers have habit of just undoing themselves and often one isn't aware of the fact until someone embarrassingly points to one's unzipped state.

Then there's the problem of replacing or fixing zippers. Often, I've had to sew cotton at the end of a zipper when the end staple falls out, and after the repair meshing the teeth together again where the staple used to be is a pain—I think I've fixed it only for the zip to completely fall apart after zipping up. And it's nigh on impossible to replace a lost tooth midway down a zipper (it quickly falls out again and the zipper unfurls in an instant).

Replacing a pants fly zipper is a major undertaking and it's best they're sent out for repair—on the other hand even I can sew back a button in moments, it's a trivial exercise. Moreover, if one loses a single fly button it's much less embarrassing than the gaping gap left by a failed zipper.

The only thing I hate on clothes more than zippers is Velcro, those who inflict us with that awful product ought to be put in the stocks for days on end. Velcro is damn useless after several washes, it collects lint and or otherwise stops sticking.

Give me reliable buttons any day.

> Give me reliable buttons any day.

My favourite pair of jeans are a pair of Levis from the 80's that only use buttons. Lack of zipper is one of the reasons they've lasted 40 years.

Right, I still have several pairs of 501s of nearly that vintage but now I'm having difficulty fitting into them. I've never had one of those riveted buttons part company with any jeans whether Levis or others. That riveted system works very well. However, I've had several come off Levi jackets usually during rough activity when I've been caught on something and they've torn out. No problem, I just stitched up the torn area with needle and cotton leaving a hole that the riveted part passed through and replaced the button with an almost identical generic type that comes in two parts which just screw together. Problem solved.

RiRi zippers are even finer. Italian producer. Visvim, Alyx, etc use them

Yeah RiRi zippers are great. John Elliott in the US also uses them.

I wonder how rich you have to be to feel comfortable in such expensive t-shirts

They regularly go on sale; there are t-shirts for $49 on their site right now. But in any case JE is not _too_ marked up compared to other brands, given the quality, cuts, and the fact that all the t-shirts are made in LA by workers given fair wages.

I second that. It‘s Swiss though.

Right

Ykk makes so many types of zippers, it's hard to tell quality really... I am sure they are better than others (wife buys terrible amount of crappy non-ykk zipper clothes)

I have had 2 jackets fail within 1-2 years of purchase this year, both the zippers broke and both were ykk(never had a zipper failure myself before).

It wasn't worth local tailor/seamstress to repair vs costs of jackets, I ended up throwing them out

Zippers are a tough problem. When the best, YKK, doesn't work reliably, you must wonder.

I would ponder that velcro would be more reliable in a lot of use cases. And maybe there are solutions which don't require physical sealing, and tied or looped flaps would suffice.

What makes zippers such a tough problem?

Material strength vs the forces applied. Zippers are perhaps rarely _just_ holding two same tension fabrics together. Often they are also supporting forces which press against the materials laterally, such as with bags.

So you have some small pieces of plastic, namely the little tooths of zipper material, which must interleave and hold against forces trying to pull them apart.

But even more than the static force against them is the force preventing the teeth from "sealing". Each zipper tooth has a somewhat conical outward protuding piece and corresponding tail indention to host the following piece. Forcing these cones-within-divots to interleave properly and stay in place is not easy. The materials involved must be strong but also a little pliable.

Zipper tech is likely much more complex than would appear from the user perspective.

Edit: also, in contrast, velcro doesn't have to connect perfectly as a zipper must. It can connect with a subset of overlap and still provide closure (in the literal sense). As long as what remains connected stays closed, the velcro is effective. But a zipper where a few teeth do not connect tends to break surrounding connections, leaving a large gap.

Even the best velcro wears down, gets contaminated, etc.

A large-pitch metal zipper with corresponding cloth just doesn't fail if you don't use cheap materials.

I am writing a comment as a kind of love letter to the Asianometry YouTube channel. The author does such a great work, and I am really pleased with the details and structure of the essays.

If you haven't heard of Asianometry, give it a try!

I remember my first introduction to YKK zippers was an image of Kylie Minogue in a red leather jacket, from Smash Hits circa 1988.

Started looking out for and noticing zippers after that.

I love this sort of content. Thanks for sharing!

i wonder when dual lock fasteners will make it to clothing - velcro on steroids + used in aviation! :)

I watched this video the other day, it's really interesting.

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