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Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

Once they reach the limit of demand, then there's nothing more to be made in that price category, so they get more by selling out and lowering quality and price.

We're going through massive global depopulation in the entire industrialized world. There are no new customers coming and sales will naturally trend down because of human extermination. Once everybody has an electric shaver, then you know that the next generation of customers is half the size or less. Unless you can make people grow their beards and hair faster, then there isn't going to be any demand among people who can afford a quality product. You have to start targeting the very poor, and thus lower production costs.

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Or you could just be happy to have a profitable company that makes money consistently. Shavers don't last for ever and new people grow up every day. You could also just launch a new product line that's cheaper without compromising the existing ones.

But nooo we need infinite growth which is impossible so let's run the company into the ground for some more growth before our shit decisions catch up to us and stock price plummets.

iF yOu ArEnT gRoWiNg YoUrE dYiNg

If your customer base is declining, your company isn't making money consistently. Revenues and profits will decline accordingly.

Then you scale back a bit and keep making consistent money, just a bit less. The only way things go completely to shit is when you enshittify your product and nobody wants it any more.

Or you could expand to other markets, lots of options that don't require making your products worse.

Markets outside the industrialized world don't have the purchasing power for quality products from the industrialized world. That's why you have to reduce quality to reduce price if you want to sell consumer goods to them. Or wind down your operations. But who would want to wind down their operations?

That's not what I meant by other markets. I meant other products, though you could also make a cheaper version of the same product which I've already mentioned.

Or the company is grown in an organic way that leads to lower but stable demand.

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