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Comment by sebastiennight | Hacker News Reader

I recall reading The Robert Collier Letter Book when I was studying copywriting, and he had this quote about fads versus trends versus things that will never change.

It said that some products will always be needed, and gave an example : men will always need hats to wear in polite society.

Reading it 100 years later when societal norms have changed so much (and not only will you not see a single hat in a posh restaurant, they are even listed on the forbidden things of their dress codes) reinforced that there is no such thing as needs/products that "never change".

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Also a fantastic point, what do we mean when we say ‘never change’ ? I think it was a bit near sighted for the book to use a fashion example, albeit a fashion example that had, at the time, been around for hundreds of years prior, but even 100 years later through its own mistakes the book is ironically teaching a whole new set of lessons through a retrospective lens. The lesson it’s teaching by being wrong is arguably more meaningful than the lesson it was trying to teach at the time of writing.

The pandemic caused a "never change" to happen in many businesses. There are many things unlikely to happen that could have high impact. Taken as a group, something unlikely yet high impact becomes likely (i.e. the Black Swan paradox).

And Black Swan events do happen, it’s like the fact that growing up my town got hit by a 100 year flood. Twice.

But in the wake of Covid when it comes to business analysis I think that we now have a different outlook on why is variable and what is not. We might have gotten a little too high and mighty with our assumptions.

There are still things that will never change about the base relationship you have with your customers if you have a viable business model though.

While a hat may be not an eternal feature of a nice restaurant, food likely is.

RemindMe! 100 years :)

With the rise in popularity of delivery and people working on things like delivery drones, I can absolutely see a future where environment and food provision are different services offered by different companies, and people still calling the environment "restaurants".

The irony is that he did use social norms as an example that will never change. However, if we change the example to something that will _really_ never change, it's still quite accurate: (wo)men will always need hats in cold weather.

And yet, when things freeze over where I am, I see a lot of people out and about without hats on.

Maybe the hat industry hasn't invested enough in marketing to them ;)

>(wo)men will always need hats in cold weather.

Women will always need yoga pants in all weather. There updated for modern times )

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