The cutest monopoly: Koala Kare | Hacker News Reader

The cutest monopoly: Koala Kare

thehustle.co

123 pointsAnon84124 comments

> “If you have a monopoly just because you’re the only one who happens to make something and no one else wants to make it, there's nothing wrong with that,” Milici says.

> “US antitrust law doesn’t prohibit monopolies. It prohibits conduct by monopolists.”

> Meanwhile, companies like Crayola (83%) or Gatorade (63%) have faced little scrutiny.

AFAIK, none of these companies are known to engage in prohibited conduct, so that's probably why they've not had much scrutiny.

You don't hear about Koala Kare forcing you into buying anything else if you want their change stations, or anything like that. There's free competition, but the Koala stations seem to work well and so there you go. If RubberMade is one of the major alternates and they can't sell a lot of them, I dunno ... RubberMade products are very common in commercial buildings.

Same thing with Crayola, maybe they've got some super secret thing where they buy up all the crayon making supplies, or maybe everyone else just makes shitty crayons and you only have to get burned a couple times before you're like Crayola crayons are always reasonable, just gonna buy those. Maybe not their markers though, I'm partial to Sanford's Mr. Sketch Scented Markers.

It’s pretty obvious why Rubbermade is losing out: it looks sterile while the Koala Kare one has a cute little koala graphic on it. I bet it wins out in the market entirely thanks to that graphic.

I'm halfway convinced that Datadog is so popular for the exact same reason.

I inherently trust companies with fursonas more. This is 100% Disney's fault.

Curiously, I'm the opposite. I feel the cutesy companies and products in baby care space are just cringe at best, and scams exploiting emotionally-drained parents at worst; my instinct is to trust things that look like medical devices more. And I inherently distrust anything associated with furries. 0_o.

I've got some bad news about all the tech companies you interact with.

The 1998 Apple iMac. Suspicious as hell.

Snuggle fabric softener immediately springs to mind here

Yeah, my take is that companies with strong marketting efforts, particularly emotionally manipulative ones, are trying to compensate for something. That something is usually poor value products (which might be well made but overpriced.)

I think you're correct. I'm finding it difficult to think of a worse toilet paper brand or more annoying ads than Charmin.

That stuff is basically useless and no other brand has the issues they claim to solve in their ads. It's the kind of propaganda you'd expect from a cult.

Datadog popularity is due the fact that you can throw logs in it and it just works and the dashboard is quite nice same cannot be said about competitors.

+1 landed on it for 'I want a UI in front of syslog without effort'

Koala care has the largest market share. They can use that money to make the product cheaper, better, more innovative. They can use this money to make the business better(better marketing, sales channels).

They are proven as reliable for 10-15 Years, at many places. Strong brand.

They are focused on that niche, unlike other.

Those are pretty good advantages.

Peak MBA brain. "How does this business do so well that they're a monopoly without using bully business tactics?" Well, the product is good, they deliver on specs, their marketing speaks for itself, and they aren't trying to expand into other niches that they aren't organizationally knowledgable in, and they aren't irritating their customers with AI integration, side-selling, trying to get them to upgrade to a newer version for no reason, on and on and on.

Like, just make a damn product, make it well and to last, and sell a damn product for a reasonable price and shock of shocks, you'll get pretty far.

> I bet it wins out in the market entirely thanks to that graphic.

That's why aesthetics are so critical. Logos are a big deal, but few people want to spend money on a real commercial artist, designing one.

It's probably the most important graphic that a corporation will ever have, and often looks ridiculously simple (at least, the good ones do).

I used to work for GE, and we had a whole set of binders, instructing us on the proper use of the GE "Meatball" logo.

Aesthetics also goes into things like UX design. Branding is a really holistic endeavor, and many techies don't get that, at all.

How does Gatorade relate to a monopoly? Every single supermarket chain sells its own clone and their are myriads of alternative beverage you can drink in every single place that sells Gatorade?

I just don't get it. What is the monopoly here? Beverages with weird non appetizing colors?

There are many alternatives available but the GP is saying Gatorade nonetheless dominates the market. They aren't doing anything anticompetitive to achieve that domination, consumers just prefer them over the many alternatives.

That's the argument anyway, I don't know how much of that is true.

> There are many alternatives available but the GP is saying Gatorade nonetheless dominates the market.

Which market? Of beverage with too much sugar? I don't even think they are leader compared to other sodas.

The sports beverage market, don't be obtuse. I don't drink them, or soda, either but you don't see me feigning ignorance about what they are.

Gatorade isn't a sport beverage. You will never see it in a dedicated sport nutrition shop or alley for instance and it is probably consumed more by sedantary overweight diabetic people than people actually practicing sports. I have been an elite athlete for years and never seen anyone using gatorade in my races.

It was developed for young men doing late summer football practice. It is quite good for that use, or for manual workers doing a combination of cardio and strength work in very hot humid conditions while wearing protective clothing. I've painted houses in these conditions, and it can be hard to drink and keep down enough water; you also lose a lot of salt. Gatorade has salt and sugar in it but at relatively concentrations. You can make your own from scratch, but the bottles are studier and tend to stand up to more abuse

The original "sport" formula was very different and has gone through MANY rounds of revisions since then. Today it's much different than it was even just 20 years ago, when it was already much more palatable than the original formula. It started with a little sugar and a "lot" (moderate) amount of both potassium and sodium. For all practical purposes, today it has zero potassium, and the sodium is also much-much-much lower. The sugar is way higher than it used to be.

Gatorade was once a sports drink, but today it is not a sports drink - it is merely retained its marketing as a sports drink.

Here's a picture of sports people using Gatorade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatorade#/media/File:Baltimore...

It may not be a super high level sport drink, and many players have moved on to other drinks (biosteel seems popular in the NHL), but it's not like nobody uses it for its intended purpose.

I am pretty sure you are mistaking sponsorship and regular use. It is like when you are a RedBull athlete or taking part in a RedBull sponsored/organized event, you have to take a few sip of the product in front of the camera. That doesn't mean you are fueling your efforts with RedBull.

Actually, the Monster / Red Bull used during concerts/sports events/etc are just water in branded cans. It's called "Tour Water" and some of them can be bought by consumers at https://www.monstertourwater.com/en-us/

So just because you see athletes drinking "Gatorade" doesn't mean it's the same Gatorade that's sold in stores. It could be just water, or closer to the low-sugar original Gatorade formula with significant amounts of potassium and sodium added that the retail product lacks.

I don't care if you approve of it or no, I for one do not so spare me the nutrition lecture.

What you're doing is along the lines of "Wine, what's that? Do you mean poison grape juice??" You know what it is, stop being obnoxious.

Drinks with what you crave.

I can't buy G2 in a store any more, but they keep it at taco bell because it's all owned by the same company.

Ngl I want to blow my life savings on a taco restaurant just to strong them into an antitrust, that's how much I miss it.

> or maybe everyone else just makes shitty crayons

It's this.

There are many non-Crayola brands of crayons, but outside of high-end ones meant for artists, they all seem to suck. They're cheaper, though.

That's pretty much the point right? It's not like buying a Koala Kare change station contractually locks you out of buying something else from one of their competitors, unlike I don't know, what happened between Dell, Intel and AMD...

Indeed. One can put a Koala Care change station right next to a Diaper Depot change station, and this is fine.

They might have different features, functions, and/or prices, and that's OK too.

It can even be OK for people like architects to freely (but consistently) specify one particular brand in deference to other brands. This is fine, too.

An architect stating something like "We always specify Hubbell wiring devices, Sherwin Williams paint, and Koala Care changing stations wherever applicable because they've so-far proven to offer a consistently excellent combination of performance, service, and value" is not, on its face, an improper thing to do.

It can be quite OK and perfectly-legal to have a natural monopoly. Selling a very, very popular widget is not an act that is somehow automatically worthy of damnation.

However, it can be very not OK (and often very illegal) for a company to abuse their status as a natural monopoly, especially in anticompetitive ways.

But I don't see anyone accusing Koala Care of any specific wrongdoing, so.....

I mean Gatorade you can make at home with 3 ingredients so definitely not a monopoly.

Can you really? Or is it like making your own ketchup, or crisps, or KFC strips, which invariably means making a thing that is nothing like original (and probably tastes like crap, if it's the "healthy version of ~" recipe)? Can't compete with industrial production on quality and consistency - consumer kitchens aren't equipped for it.

I don't know about KFC strips, but at home you can get pretty close to their regular chicken.

Brining the chicken in buttermilk makes a huge difference.

Electrolyte water is 1L water, 1/2 tsp salt, 2T sugar. How you substitute and make it taste like whatever sports drink is up to you at that point. Blue gatorade is the above with blue flavor powder, maybe 1/2 lemon for flavor…and sub 1T sugar for honey to get potassium and magnesium. But really there is no “secret formula”, society is just lazy consumer whores.

I make my own crisps at home, and they are equal to or better than anything I've purchased. Except for salt-and-vinegar ones. I still haven't nailed that.

The downsides, though, are that it took me a great deal of experimentation to get the technique right, and making them properly is a bit of a pain in the ass. Also they're absolutely not healthier. They're junk food, same as any other.

Yeah, actually it's just two ingredients. Water and Gatorade powder; which they are also happy to sell you. :p

(Otoh, the premixed gatorade usually won't precipitate out, but maybe that's just mixing technique)

saving others a google search:

> water, sucrose (table sugar), dextrose, citric acid, natural flavor, sodium chloride (table salt), sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, and flavoring/coloring ingredients.

> Some Gatorade flavor variations used to contain brominated vegetable oil as a stabilizer

Or you can buy a bottle of Gatorade and mix salt and vinegar and lemon juice into it and then have your son give that to the bully that’s been stealing his Gatorade.

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mother-arrested-after-concocti...

For the sake of this publication, I hope that they got paid by Google (in money or favours) for this rambling low-quality "article".

A dominant position in an open market with zero lock-in, is completely inconsequential to antitrust laws. Unless nefarious behaviour is alleged, it just means the product (and/or the branding) is superior.

Can anyone replace a Koala product with an alternative, without suffering any repercussion? Yes. Can anyone build a bathroom without buying from Koala? Also yes. Will your bathroom continue to work if you remove a Koala product? Still yes. Are consumers or businesses suffering from this market dominance? Not really (I guess Koala can command slightly premium prices, but we're talking plastic building supplies here - the margins will likely be pretty low already).

This has nothing to do with big-tech cases.

> Can anyone build a bathroom without buying from Koala?

Can you? I ask, because I legitimately don't know - The article mentions the Baby Act that mandates a change table in public restrooms, so you MUST have a change table - and that change table MUST meet some safety standards. What I do know is that regulatory capture is a quiet activity that can be done through many mechanisms.

What are the safety regulations around baby changing stations and who writes them? If anything, this article hasn't made me feel more fuzzy towards Google, but makes me ask "why does Koala Care have such a large market share?"

If making a change table is as easy as some plastic, some straps and a bolting assembly surely someone can make a product just as good for the same or less price. However, that clearly isn't the case, which makes me question what is the regulatory landscape for approval of change tables and who approves them?

The change stations are decades old technology so I don't think there could be any real regulatory capture because the core patents related to this invention have expired by this point.

I looked at the next baby changing station I saw after reading this post.

Not Koala.

https://americanspecialties.com/product_category/baby-changi...

As an Australian, I always find American companies adopting Australian imagery a bit jarring. It can result in an "uncanny valley" feeling, in which something which comes across as rather American (because it is) but has a superficial layer of Australianness layered atop. Cultural appropriation, perhaps?

Koala Kare isn't the worst. The worst by far, in my opinion, is "Outback Steakhouse". I remember when they first opened in Australia (in the 1990s or early 2000s???), they didn't even bother to metricate their menu. It felt weird, ordering American style food in a putatively Australian restaurant in the western suburbs of Sydney, with a menu telling you the size of steak in ounces instead of the usual grams. And I never went back to one, until sometime last decade, I was in San Mateo, California, and I was hungry and bored, so I thought I'd give them another go. And there was absolutely nothing Australian about the place except the name and imagery. And then they serve Fosters – which is a beer few Australians actually drink any more (I remember my dad drinking it in the 1980s), and few places in Australia even sell it. In fact, I'm pretty sure there was a period when they stopped brewing and selling it in Australia altogether; apparently more recently they've relaunched it and you can buy it again, but I can't remember seeing it on sale. In my life, I've drunk far more Fosters while in India than I ever have in Australia.

My favorites are

- Paris Baguette: a Korean bakery chain, selling 50-50 asian and western confections but no baguettes, pretending to be French, most popular in America.

- Bondi Sushi: a New York chain, named for a beach in Australia, for a Japanese specialty.

- Outback steakhouse: American chain named for a Australian region, and depending where you are, full of Canadian imagery including mooses and snow and sleds (I went in Boston).

Paris Baguette makes sense to me, it draws a lot of people who think they're getting a French bakery, but discover and enjoy the (novel-to-them) asian pastries in the process. As a non-white American, I have always been confused why Americans love appropriating Australian branding for restaurants? Who exactly does that appeal to, and to discover what? Evidently it offends Australians. It means nothing to me who doesn't really know what aspect of Australia I would seek from such places (sushi? steak?), so it doesn't seem meant to draw people who not affiliated with Australia somehow.

Maybe Australians cofounded these places in America? Or just Americans who had life-defining experiences in Australian locations and came back to start restaurants in honor of those places? I have not dug too deep into their origins.

> Maybe Australians cofounded these places in America? Or just Americans who had life-defining experiences in Australian locations and came back to start restaurants in honor of those places? I have not dug too deep into their origins.

As far as I am aware, Australians had nothing to do with the founding of Outback Steakhouse, and its founders had nothing to with Australia. A group of Americans in Florida in 1988 wanted to open a restaurant, and were looking for a distinctive theme or branding. And the Crocodile Dundee film had been a big hit in the US a couple of years earlier, and so they decided to appropriate the stereotypes of Australia it represents as the basis of their branding. I’m not aware any of them had any personal connection to Australia at all. If it wasn’t for the popularity of that film, they probably would have picked a different theme for their restaurant instead

Paris Baguette was contextualized to me by friends as a sort of Korean parody of a french patisserie. It seems there's a lot of this throughout east Asia, e.g. burgers / American style southern restaurants in Japan, although some of these seem more authentic than Paris Baguette.

> full of Canadian imagery including mooses and snow and sleds (I went in Boston).

That just sounds like northeast, Appalachian USA things.

We have Paris Baguette in Singapore as well. They aren't the only faux European chain / brand here, that combination seems quite popular.

Isn't using the phrase "cultural appropriation" without being American a cultural appropriation? This idea and terminology was originally invented and developed in the US, so being Australian, please stop culturally appropriating our cultural appropriation. However, if you still feel you have the right to use it publicly, then you've started to understand why the Koala Kare exists. The creators of the brand felt the same way as you.

Okay I have a related inverse rant. I love Australia but good lord are you guys getting carried away with your semi fictional origin stories to Australianize products, food especially.

For example, the cheesecake box says "Sara Lee, est. 1971 Lisarow NSW", except it was already a 50 year old American company when they expanded to Australia in 1971.

Or the "made in Australia from at least 12% Australian ingredients" labels on ALL the food. Like https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/5b8b48cb5d8051c3c6734...

Yesterday I picked up a bottle of mustard that said American Mustard, proudly made in Australia. It's surreal!

Let's not even mention the pavlova.

Well the Country of Origin labels are a requirement. I'd also argue that providing more information about the origin of food to consumers is always a good thing. Do I care that there's a little kangaroo on the label? No not really, but at least I know that my orange juice is juiced in Australia from foreign oranges.

One thing the U.S. and Australia have in common... Giving the finger to the brits a while back.

> One thing the U.S. and Australia have in common... Giving the finger to the brits a while back.

If you are talking about independence, no. The US won independence through a violent rebellion. Australia became independent through a very gradual and consensual process, so gradual it is hard to pinpoint the exact moment at which Australia became independent.

A major step was the Statute of Westminster in 1931, by which the British Empire extended full legal sovereignty to its "Dominions". The Canadian, Irish and South African governments were keen on this law, so it applied to them immediately. However, the Australians, New Zealanders and Newfoundlanders (at the time not yet part of Canada) were hesitant, so the UK agreed the law granting them sovereignty would not apply until their own national parliaments consented to it. Australia didn't agree to accept it until 1942, New Zealand didn't until 1947, and Newfoundland never did (which helped pave the way for its annexation by Canada).

So Americans fight a bloody war for their independence, Australians are offered (a big chunk of it) by the UK and drag their feet for over a decade before accepting the offer, and New Zealanders for even longer.

It is jarring and since you brought it up there are very few good analogies in other cultures.

e.g. I know a few people go off about lions in European heraldry but lions were at one point spread across Eurasia-Africa. It’s just not a good analogy for how quintessentially Australian some things are.

It goes both ways. Businesses do it all the time. I could name many Australian examples going the other way.

So, my guess is that it says more about us than it does about other peoples and just how we get worked up about it.

Fun!

Here in Sweden, it's a bit difficult with the Häagen-Dazs premium ice cream brand, since they have some kind of phony-Scandinavian spelling that doesn't actually match any proper word (the vowel sequence Ä-A is really really weird) so we end up saying it strangely (in my case, i drop the A).

I wonder what the official pronunciation in Sweden is, unfortunately they don't say on their web.

I await your Subaru Outback rant.

But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell. It's just marketing.

> I await your Subaru Outback rant.

Yes, it is a bit of a silly name, because if you actually go to the Outback, you won't find many Subaru Outbacks there, because they aren't actually designed for those conditions. What you will find, is heaps of Toyota Landcruisers and Nissan Patrols, which are.

> But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell

No doubt. But I wonder how many of the many people who condemn Taco Bell as "cultural appropriation", would even think to make the same criticism of Outback Steakhouse?

In a technical sense, I think Outback steakhouse is a classic example of cultural appropriation. However in practice, I think the "cultural differential" (difference between the cultures) and "market differential" (which one gets patronized more, a place authentic to the culture, or an appropriator?) are important details for identifying an instance of such appropriation as problematic.

If there are authentic Australian steakhouses in America or globally that are struggling or dealing with people having strange misconceptions of Australian culture, while Outback is thriving and eating into their market while perpetuating said misconceptions of Australian culture (I have no idea! It's possible...), it would be a smaller-scale but similar case to Taco Bell and the variety of struggling family-run mexican restaurants, or non-mexicans being confused/surprised/ignorant about authentic mexican food.

> dealing with people having strange misconceptions of Australian culture

Misconceptions of Australian culture are rather widespread in the US. Some Americans seem to think films like Crocodile Dundee are representative of mainstream Australian culture, when they aren’t. Films like that are taking stereotypes about the small minority of Australians who live in remote rural areas, and then exaggerating them for comic effect. The vast majority of Australians live in big metro areas, and have a rather different culture. It would be a bit like if someone saw a film about rednecks in the Ozarks and thought it was representative of the average denizen of New York or San Francisco.

Of course, in part it is just as much Australians’ fault for selling that kind of cringey stuff to Americans as it is Americans for lapping it up. The late Steve Irwin (of “Crocodile Hunter” fame), was likewise playing up those stereotypes in his on-screen persona. Some more recent cultural exports (for example Bluey) have done much better in this area

And rather obviously Outback Steakhouse is exploiting this ignorance as part of its marketing rather than challenging it

It's pretty common for people to watch movies like Deliverance and then think that wide swaths of America are like that.

Wait before a mexican enter a "Taco" place in France. They somehow managed to make it far far worse than Taco Bell.

I am Australian too, and share your discombobulation.

That said, I lived in Toronto for a while, many years ago, and enjoyed the “Aussie Chips” they served at some pubs - despite never having had chips with cheese on them in Australia.

I went to the Outback Steakhouse in San Diego in 2000. The menu was very American. When I asked the waiter if they actually had Australian food he apologised for the lack of kangaroo.

I'm not entirely convinced he was joking.

He probably got asked by customers if they served kangaroo. It isn’t an unreasonable expectation for an Australian-themed restaurant to offer it, given it is sold in many supermarkets in Australia, and it isn’t hard to find restaurants in Australia with it on their menu, even though the majority don’t-because it isn’t hugely popular. I like it, but I rarely eat it, largely because my wife and kids don’t like it, and we aim to cook things the whole family will eat. If they did like it, I likely would eat it a lot more.

As a native-born US sorta person, I agree about Outback. It's a weird environment, sold weirdly: The tables are too high. The bench seating is hard, and somehow also too high. Everything seems big, like some forms of Alice might observe, even if it is just regular-sized.

It can be an OK place to get a decent-ish steak served at an OK price, and onions are my favorite food so things like their Bloomin' Onion "appetizer" can be God-tier for me. Overall, I like Outback -- but only just barely. I give it 6/10, will probably return... eventually, some day, maybe; I can get a massive amount of onion served almost anywhere if I ask nicely.

But it doesn't seem very Australian to me, unless of course I'm approaching things as if I am living in a Crocodile Dundee film from several decades ago. (And these films are comedies, not documentaries!)

Foster's is worse. It's shit beer. As far as I know, it's always been shit beer. And there's definitely a place in the world for shit beers to exist, as long as they're cheap enough, but it's never met the snide, bold, and somewhat-reprehensible tagline of "Foster's. It's Australian for beer."

But Koala Kare? That name doesn't make me think of Australia at all. It makes me think of koala bears. And koala bears definitely seem to be cute and cuddly in photos...and their native environment is definitely highly regionalized. But they are also rapey animals that trend toward being full of chlamydia, and they feed their young with literal shit. (Straight up ass-to-mouth shit.)

And I've got a pretty positive image of every person from Australia whom I've ever interacted with, so I myself don't associate a product named after a dirty rapey diseased shit-eating bear with Australian nationality, culture, or provenance.

YMMV, of course. (And also: You're welcome!)

You forgot to mention that koalas' fear response is to climb the fool cuddling them with their 5cm claws while urinating clamydia infested urine into the wounds.

I would not cuddle one, but if you do for God's sake make sure it's in a proper zoo, there they sedate the ones for cuddling. Do not shout, or move suddenly anyway.

Koalas are not bears. In Australia we do not call them 'koala bears' — only foreigners do that. They are just 'koalas'.

Good point. I am remiss for forgetting this fact that I once knew. Koalas are definitely not bears in Australia, and they're the ones who are most qualified to make this determination. (The rest of us are literally outsiders.)

(Now that we're discussing regional dialects as they relate to furry animals: Can we talk about possums, next?)

My surname is Foster, and on Australia Day 2000 my collegues and I had a comfortable afternoon at The Australian Hotel on Coronado Bay. My mischevious friend, when ordering drinks said "... and Mr Foster will have Jack Daniels on the rocks. His entire family is sick of beer."

All evening I was being feted by blue collar Americans believing that as an Australian named Foster I _must_ have something to do with the beer.

> in which something which comes across as rather American (because it is) but has a superficial layer of Australianness layered atop. Cultural appropriation, perhaps?

As an American, I totally get this because the exact same thing happens when encountering "American" things in other countries.

I'm Canadian and growing up, I remember many shampoo commercials having some connection to Australia (ex brands named Aussie Naturals). You must have really great hair!

The most uncanny thing about Australia is that a kangaroo looks exactly like a buff, roid-raging human male chest and arms, but with a kangaroo head.

Only tangentially related, when my kids were younger, I used "changing table in the men's bathroom" as a useful measure of company health. It a) costs little, and b) required little care to make the decision, but a company or building that couldn't manage those two things was either broke or stagnant.

This seems pretty similar to my "contractor's estimator talks directly to my wife when she asks questions" test for whether we hire someone to work on our house.

I really like this one. I get pretty annoyed when folks talk over others because they believe they aren't, for whatever reason, able to give a response.

Most company bathrooms probably don't have many babies coming through though, right? So this test is limited to just places like stores, restaurants, etc. which is a tiny subset of companies.

    bathroomsAreUnisex || (bathroomTypesWithTable % 2 == 0)

A common setup that fails this condition is:

  * mens bathroom, no changing table.
  * women's bathroom, no changing table.
  * non-segregated disabled bathroom with a changing table.

That said your point is valid. Changing tables should be accessible regardless of gender. I've changed my son quite a few times in the ladies room, and never got into any problems. Then again, this side of Lake Atlantic isn't quite as gender-rigid as I've seen in US news reporting.

Eh. I've changed a diaper in the ladies', and it's not a big deal. Carrying an infant makes women not worried about what you might do—a logical biological response.

It seems the author does not see the difference between a monopoly on a service as opposed to a monopoly on a product. These changing stations can be replaced without any difficulty, by another brand, if the need arises. For services or whole ecosystems, such as Google and Apple (iCloud, Apple Pay, etc) there is a huge vendor lock-in, even for consumers. Monopolies in the latter are unwanted most of the time. But being the major manufacturer and distributor of some non-consumer-bought public bathroom equipment doesn't really do much harm, since a competitor can arise relatively easily if need be.

> It seems the author does not see the difference between a monopoly on a service as opposed to a monopoly on a product.

It seems that they don't even know what a monopoly is at all in the context of their own article about antitrust laws, really.

It's better for everyone when there is healthy competition in a market and companies are forced to attract buyers on things like innovations, features, service, and price, but honestly I don't mind too much when one company basically dominates the market as long as they aren't going out of their way to shutdown competition. Pressuring companies to sign exclusive deals, bribing government for exclusive contracts, buying up competitors or operating at a loss to squeeze them out, etc. Those are signs that antitrust regulators might need to pay attention. Same when there is competition but it looks like is collusion on prices, innovation stagnates, and customers are unhappy.

I don't hear many complaints about Koala Kare and I'm unaware of any evil they're doing to keep their spot at #1 so until that changes I hope they enjoy their success.

> It's better for everyone when there is healthy competition [...]

Well, better for most people. If I own or run a company (or even just work at one), I'm very happy if there's no healthy competition for my products.

>these changing stations can be replaced without any difficulty

Don't disagree that a plastic changing station can be efficiently made by someone else, but I think you may be misunderstanding their advantage. Koala is providing a service in the world of "places in which the public use the bathroom", which is part of the "places occupied by the public" market. There are an unfathomable amount of needs, requirements, practical concerns, laws/regulations, etc that have to be served when you operate a public space.

Koala is part of the established suite of solutions to the problem of operating a public space, and "supply chain diversity" or even "we cost marginally less" is not enough to displace them. Koala would have to really mess up or you'd have to offer a significant advantage to displace a solved problem at an affordable price when it's just one of a thousand things you need to think about.

tldr: rent seeking is reliable way to make money if you don't mess up your core value or get too greedy for the market to bear

"get too greedy for the market to bear"

Was that intentional?

This is a monopoly without lock-in or network effect. As such, it really isn't a priority.

If KoalaCare raises prices or collapses quality, they'll get a competitor. A maintenance department can replace every single changing station in a big office building in a month if they wanted to.

> In the age of antitrust, why has Koala Kare, Big Baby Change Station, flown under the radar?

Proportionality, it seems. Why has nobody sued the printer ink monopolists? Because compared to Google or Apple they're somewhat of a lesser evil.

Same with Crayola. The reality is that Koala Kare and Crayola simply do not affect people's lives as much as tech giants on the list (Amazon and Apple), or CPGs like Hershey's candy bars or Gatorade beverages.

To put a finer colored wax point on it: my crayon doesn't have access to my entire online life or my shopping habits, and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons.

> and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons.

Thanks for that insight. "Vote with your wallet" and similar responses seem to die under the actual, practical, reality of exclusion and/or lack of access.

> my crayon doesn't have access to my entire online life or my shopping habits, and I have no effective societal obligation to own Crayola crayons. Those have only really become an aspect of antitrust cases in the past decade though

Railroad, telecom, and oil monopolies of their time had their own analogue forms of reach into everyday life in ways crayons did/do not.

Because it's not the age of antitrust, and nothing has been broken up? Lina Khan trying her best does not an age of antitrust make.

It's an age of unprecedented concentration of ownership with attendant open and unashamed market manipulation, which of course makes people talk about antitrust more, while also having absolutely no mechanism to do anything about it, which makes them talk about it with a tone of frustration and anger.

But frustration and anger does not break up companies. Functioning governments do.

Yeah, it's not an age of antitrust – it's an age of monopoly

Eh. At least based on the article, they don’t seem that abusive. The printer ink thing actually is, but as alluded to in the article, we’re in an age of fairly minimalist anti-trust enforcement (this is maybe _beginning_ to change; the EC has been getting more aggressive for the last couple of decades, and the US authorities finally seem to be waking up a bit, but it’s early days and from a low base). Even in an environment of robust enforcement you probably wouldn’t expect that this company would face difficulties, but the printer people might well.

There’s nothing cute about a shit-smeared slab of gray plastic that you’re desperately trying to wipe clean while also fighting to hold on to a writhing toddler with a poopy diaper who is trying to shove the public bathroom’s communal toilet plunger into his mouth.

I’m glad these things exist. I am also glad I now carry what are essentially puppy pads for lining these things. And I am glad that Cocomelon screen time on YouTube is enough of a treat to get him to behave during diaper changes.

If you aren’t familiar with Cocomelon, consider yourself lucky… https://www.animationmagazine.net/2024/05/cocomelon-continue...

> The Koala joined the ranks of omnipresent brands that have surpassed the generic names for what they make: think Kleenex, Chapstick, Play-Doh, and so on.

I was surprised when someone said to me "do you want a tempo?" after I sneezed. I had to ask them to clarify before I got it

Tempo? or Tissue? I'm very confused now.

Am I missing it too or do you sneeze in funk?

Tempo is a popular tissue brand is other parts of the world, aka asking someone if they want a Kleenex vs a tissue.

Yes, give me the tempo. I'm the Coltrane of jazz sneezing solos.

Dragging…

I don't get it

I think a problem gets more problematic the larger the market is. A monopoly in a 100 million market is probably less harmful than a monopoly in a trillion market. It also depends on the lock in effect. I don't think this company has any moat besides its brand name, its sales force and good products.

Strange article. Did someone at the executive level of this company commit some faux pas against the author or editor of this site? There's no meat here, just a sirt of half-assed execution of a once-off "vendetta" of some kind.

I enjoyed the synopsis origin story though.

Re: Gatorade’s 63% monopoly, I’ve recently thought about how quickly Prime went to mass market. It seems like it blew up on YouTube and stores couldn’t keep it in stock.

Then all of the sudden, it’s sitting next to Gatorade in huge volumes at Costco.

I’ve never seen a product so quickly “disrupt” a long-time monopoly. It remains to be seen whether it’s a fad or if they could actually compete with Gatorade, but it seems like they could, if anyone could.

To be clear, I’m personally not a fan of how companies like this use marketing (especially on YouTube) targeting young — impressionable — audiences, so I’m not necessarily rooting for either one of them (Gatorade is horribly unhealthy). But I have found it interesting at the very least.

Where do you live? I'm in the northeast and I've never heard of Prime before, and I can't remember ever seeing it (maybe in one or two stores), although maybe my eyes just skip over it since I'm usually looking for Gatorade.

I, too, live above the Mason-Dixon line and I've never heard of Prime either.

But maybe this has less to do with geography, and more to do with the media that we allow ourselves to be exposed to.

For instance: I haven't watched regular advertising-supported TV (OTA or streaming or otherwise) for at least a decade, and my general online experience (including with things like YouTube) is generally completely ad-free (thanks, Sponsorblock and uBlock Origin).

I am, very purposefully and intentionally, rather "out of the loop" when it comes to advertising for trendy things.

I go into shops pretty often in my area but never see it, so I don't think it's just a case of media exposure.

It’s all over eastern Canada. Driving through New Brunswick every gas station had the common selection.

My small town gas station in Ontario had supply issues because as soon as some cases got delivered the zoomers/αoomers would buy it all.

The beverage industry spends a huge amount on advertising, and Prime is probably a good example of why!

Pepsi did a public case study on advertising spend for drinks. One year, they took their super bowl budget and spent it on community service projects. That year, sales were way down.

The next year, they went back to super bowl ads.

I'm not sure how you can even call 63% market share a 'monopoly'?

“You think you’re supposed to put a human baby on that mouse trap of a device. They have gang signs carved into them. Those are for snorting coke off of.” - John Mulaney

Not really a monopoly, as there are several competing brands. At least abroad. There are plenty of other markets with an dominating actor where competition isn't harmed, so it's not considered problematic in the antitrust sense.

One should probably take the invention story here as just a story, foldable diaper changing stations were starting to get common in 1986, at least in the Nordics.

> One should probably take the invention story here as just a story, foldable diaper changing stations were starting to get common in 1986, at least in the Nordics.

I was wondering about that too.

I first saw one in a men's toilet in the early 1990s. That was that was at the cafe owned by St-Martin-in-the-Fields in London (the big one on Trafalgar Square) which I was very impressed by at the time. They was pretty sure they were fairly common in the UK at the time, just in the women's, and had been for a few years.

If the idea of fold down tables had been invented in the US in a mid 80s that would be a very rapid spread, though possible as its an obvious good die. However if they were getting common in the mid-80s its obviously not the origin (or the only origin - parallel invention is quite likely).

I looked up the only brand of fold down tables I know and apparently they started already in 1981, so it makes sense the product was well established half a decade later.

Parallel invention happens, it is not a complicated invention, but it is just as likely someone remembered something they saw abroad. We don't know. But apparently they executed well on the idea, regardless of where it came from.

> An architect stating something like "We always specify Hubbell wiring devices, Sherwin Williams paint, and Koala Care changing stations wherever applicable

Yeah, my take is that it sounds like Koala Kare is really good about getting architects to specify their products in construction projects, but I never look at the Div 10 specs since it’s not my niche. I’ll have to take a look at some TI specs and see what I find.

Here’s a link to their canned spec section for 10 28 14 - Baby Changing Stations, .docx format: https://www.koalabear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Section...

That first image is hilariously bad and wrong.

I wish the poop is so neat lol

I'm suddenly reminded of an old tweet of mine: https://x.com/bradfitz/status/825404204055359488

"A moment of silence please for all the babies who fell off not-so-Sturdy Station v1. #ScaryVersionNumbers"

This is so bizarre as a non-US reader, I have literally never heard of them. (Despite having heard of all the others in the “monopoly by market share” table)

Are you a parent though? I'm non-US and I've seen their changing stations in the malls, they are pretty ubiquitous.

I guess it depends on which part of the world you are in, I guess?

They are common in Singapore as well, but I doubt they are common all over the globe.

Yeah I figure it's one or the other.

If anything I am somewhat surprised it's not some generic Chinese copies in the malls.

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