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Comment by felipc | Hacker News Reader

The point about the newer Bialettis being cheaper is absolutely true. My mother has an old (>10 years) Moka that feels heavy and sturdy. A couple of years ago, after accidentally leaving it on the stove for too long, the bottom chamber and the filter basket got a permanent burnt coffee taste, and we bought a new one to replace it. That one was lighter and came with a significant thinner filter basket, which I also attributed to either being counterfeit or just they shipping cheaper versions of the product to Brazil.

Then, a couple of months ago, I was on vacation in Italy and decided to get a brand new one as a gift, directly from an official Bialetti store. To my surprise, the Mokas in the store felt exactly like the lower-quality one we had bought in Brazil. I didn't even buy the gift.

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You see a similar thing with the glass chemex. There is a healthy market on eBay for pre-1980 models that were hand blown from great quality glass. My wife got me one for a gift and the difference in feel is remarkable. New ones feel fragile, this feels solid and strong. I’ve broken two of the newer versions and it’s dangerous. The old one is still standing strong in my house, surviving trips in my RV, and generally doing it’s job. I’m sure I sound like a curmudgeon but they don’t make stuff like they used to

They still make high quality ones, you just have to specifically get the "handblown series" (at 2-3x the price of the regular).

e.g. https://www.chemexcoffeemaker.com/eight-cup-handblown-series...

I am aware of those, but from what I understand the pre-80s ones are still better. I’m sure given a little time someone who is chemex expert will chime in and give a definitive comment.

Even if the manufacturing process is the same, pre-80s ones may be better on average due to survivorship bias: the weaker ones broke already.

Could they be different ent … use say lead … like some lens use radioactive material.

This feels like it might be similar to the difference between PYREX and pyrex [1]

[1] https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-be...

James Hoffman gives a good history of Bialetti here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upgQsA5kLAk including their sale to Faema and later to a cookware manufacturer, their numerous brushes with bankruptcy, and the stiff competition they've gotten from... even in Italy... pod machines.

What did you expect? They're not exactly innovators, are they?

Bialetti has been on its last leg since 2015. They're drowning in debt and (in the best case scenario) are headed toward restructuring soon; in any case their future's not looking bright.

Any insights into what went wrong?

I'm not sure about the details. IMHO a contributing factor is that they're a company historically centered around manufacturing nearly indestructible appliances (even the newer mokas, however flimsier, don't break easily); once the market was saturated with the flagship product, there's only so much profit they could squeeze out of selling accessories and the like.

That hypothesis implies that they would wipe out the whole industry long before themselves, so it's probably not correct.

Not really, it remains true even when you take competition into account. Also, the rest of the industry isn't really playing the same game: all other companies producing moka pots are vastly more diversified. You have e.g. Alessi which fills the design-oriented niche (and has tons of other products), or the countless crummy knock-off factories which churn out all sorts of trash and just happen to machine moka pots once in a while. But only Bialetti kept all its eggs in one basket (at least until it was too late).

I see a lot of Bialetti-branded cookware at local supermarkets. Things like nonstick frying pans. I actually bought one on a trip once when I needed a pan, and it's pretty good.

their quality went way downhill and they shipped production overseas. I would love to have a nice bialetti moka express or a stainless version. i bought one probs 8 or 9 yrs ago, and it wasn't long before the tin lining separated, and the overall quality was crap. nothing like my mothers or any others I had used when i was introduced to them in italy. so i bought an alessi stainless steel made in italy pot at like 5x the price, and never looked back. but do i think a well built bialetti would be as good or better, they just dont make them well anymore…

I don't know if this is the ideal takeaway. Otherwise, we should all prioritize making our products flimsier and more expensive.

I think it's just a straightforward failure of creativity — or, even more plainly, a failure to understand their customer. They had a great product, which led to a loyal following — why not expand into adjacent markets?

The cruel irony is that their product was related to something that's extremely disposable. Why not get into the business of coffee beans? Why not partner with interesting coffee growers? Subscription businesses have been huge for decades, now — why not offer consumers the ability to buy an espresso bean subscription to go with their Mokapot, thereby generating a reliable recurring revenue stream?

A glimpse at their Wikipedia page [1] suggests they never even tried to branch out from the small, comfortable niche of cookware.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialetti

> Otherwise, we should all prioritize making our products flimsier and more expensive.

It's the view of many that this is indeed what most companies prioritize — I'm not saying it's true, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly fringe opinion. It's in the vein of enshittification.

Also, might I ask how you inserted that em-dash? A keyboard shortcut? It's interesting to see fancy typography online.

One can look up the utf8 character for different typographical characters and copy and paste them in. On macOS at least, there is a keyboard shortcut for "emojis" (Cntl+Cmd+Space) and a little window shows up where you can search for emojis by name, and typographical characters by name (such as "em dash"). —pjh

> One can look up the utf8 character for different typographical characters and copy and paste them in.

Haha, yeah, that's what I usually do. But it's arduous enough for me not to bother for a HN comment. That's why I brought it up.

I love macOS' emoji picker thing, I wish there were something like it on Linux.

KCharSelect on KDE Plasma is a good alternative on Linux.

Bring up the keyboard viewer widget on macOS and it will show you a live preview of what each key is... you can hold down the modifiers to see how the keys change.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-the-keyboard-vi...

Also—FWIW—an m-dash should not have whitespace on either side, at least, not in America. :-)

https://medium.com/typography/on-dashes-hyphens-and-other-im...

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/mind-your-en-and-em...

WinCompose is wonderfully intuitive for those on operating systems without one included stock.

In macOS you can also use:

option+minus for en-dash – and shift+option+minus for em-dash —

This can be reproduced on Linux using the "mac" layout. "option" is "level 3 shift" on Linux.

This works on X11, I haven't tried on Wayland.

On Windows it works, too, by grabbing the "us - mac" layout and using the alt-gr for the mac's option. I think this is the layout I use: https://github.com/adunning/Mac-Keyboard-Layouts-for-Windows

Here in Italy, Bialetti have nice outlets, much like Le Creuset does. The one in my town often has quite a few people in.

> I don't know if this is the ideal takeaway. Otherwise, we should all prioritize making our products flimsier and more expensive.

That's an "is-ought" gap if I've ever seen one, sadly.

Brand protection may be one reason. Branding with a supplier who messes up in the coffee bean arena would hurt their reputation. Some business will throw ideas out and see what fits and maybe get a second really good product. Getting another product and being successful is hard enough which is why you see larger companies buying out others. It’s easier to buy and get a successful product from and existing than branching out and hitting another success.

But even if the market is saturated... is it really? I'm just an armchair expert in this case, but as far as I'm aware, there's not a coffee maker yet in every house; they will eventually break if overheated for example (I broke mine's rubber seal by putting it on the stove without water); and there's plenty of untapped markets out there yet.

That said, one person may buy one coffee maker and never need another one for the next decade or two, or pass it on to their children if it's really good. So what another comment said, them expanding into selling coffee as well for example, sounds like an idea.

If the rubber seal is damaged, you can simply replace it, you don't need to buy a new coffee maker. When people mention that newer coffee makers are cheaper and lower-quality, that's probably Bialetti trying to reach a larger market. I guess lots of people bought one and rarely if ever used it (I think even I have one somewhere, but don't ask me where).

As for expanding into selling coffee: that's natural for systems like Senseo or Nespresso, where you have custom pads/pods which you insert into the machine (not sure if third-party pad/pod makers have to pay a license fee to the "system provider"?), but Bialetti coffee makers work with any ground coffee. Might be an idea nevertheless, but not sure about the odds of success - I imagine most Italians already have their favorite brand of coffee and wouldn't suddenly switch to "Bialetti Coffee" just because they say it works best with their machines.

They started making garbage quality products and their brand recognition plummeted? Look at the mukka express for example. [0]

They did one thing well and succeeded for decades and then tried to expand their business and failed miserably.

I have seen crap quality bialetti everything. They make pots and pans now too.

[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Bialetti-Express-Cow-Print-Stovetop-Ca...

> "Any insights into what went wrong?"

For one thing, things like Aeropress, Nespresso/Keurig, and cheaper/better home espresso and bean-to-cup coffee machines came along. People don't necessarily need to muck around with a Moka pot to make quality coffee at home any more.

And if you really do want a Moka pot, there's a lot of cheaper Chinese competitors now that look the part and actually have reasonable quality.

Luckily for you bialetti doesn't have a monopoly on the design and you can just get a better quality one from another manufacturer

Serious Eats says Bialetti, even after all the changes, is still much better than anything on the market.

https://www.seriouseats.com/moka-pot-cheap-espresso-alternat...

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