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Comment by Angostura | Hacker News Reader

I think they were a brand known for fairly high quality equipment that had a good reputation. They capitalised on their brand by producing increasingly inferior products

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This is called "cashing out the goodwill of the brand". A steady decrease in quality of output while optimizing for minimum inputs in seek of alpha.

A.k.a Welching. Gettin' the juice out.

Reminds me of the interview with Steve Jobs where he talks about large companies not caring about product because of their market position. Soon all that really matters is sales and marketing, so all the people that were good at making good products leave or get drowned out by bad decisions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

IIRC the private equity operators prefer the phrase "maximizing brand value". Such a nicely positive ring about it, yes?

What we need is a way to objectively quantify the reduction of quality over time so that people will have a clear idea of what they’re actually buying rather than relying on a hazy and outdated idea of the brand’s reputation. People would know that the drill B&D is selling in 2023 is a 40% drill, not the 80% drill they were selling in 1993.

Reducing quality and coasting on goodwill isn’t really alpha, it’s actually just stealing. They used information asymmetry to sell the customer less drill than they thought they were getting and it shouldn’t be allowed.

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