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Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

People's algorithm for purchases is usually "what's the best bang for the buck where the name rings a bell".

I'm guilty of it as well, if forced to choose blindly I'd pick Sony over WMFSENSY. But I'm beggining to wonder, with the recent casualness with which brands lower quality, whether they'll be a generational change and people will start ignoring brands entirely.

I'm starting to change my mind myself. My last Nike shoes weren't even the same size/shape (apparently they make left and right shoes in different countries now). At that point might as well go for the knockoffs.

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> (apparently they make left and right shoes in different countries now)

This feels like a joke about just in time inventory and globalization, but I'm worried that it might be true.

It probably significantly reduces theft by employees though

I'm curious of source on this being more than anecdotal?

The most natural way for shoe mismatches is from the showroom. Customer grabs 5 pairs, tries some on, they get mixed up when returning to stock. Same shoe and size (hopefully, lol), but different production number and different factory/origin.

How often do you really expect a customer is grabbing multiple pairs of the same size/model/color of shoe to try on? Maybe it's just where I shop but it's rare that there's even more than one example of the size I need in the style/color I want to allow such a scenario to occur.

I looked (briefly) online for evidence of the factory claim and found none.

GP didn't give enough context ("MY shoes are weird so I extrapolated" vs "I know this is true; here's proof."), but the casual one-off scenario is absolutely a showroom level of "random happens".

Babysitting all those individual shoes and styles and sizes seems ... expensive, logistically.

In fact, if this were a thing, I'd imagine they'd start offloading them as though it were a cool feature. "Want to mix-n-match shoes? buy just a left!"

All the time? I don’t know if it is still true, but at one point Zappos had free returns. I know a few women who would buy a range of sizes, keep the one that fits, return the rest.

There was a Seinfeld joke to this effect that men just take whatever clothing, even if it barely fits. Women are likely to be choosier and insist on a good match. Some might intentionally mix and match shoe sizes if one foot is bigger than the other (leaving the store with a mismatched pair)

When you find a style or size you like, it’s so great being able to just grab another without having trawl shops or malls.

I wish it was a joke, I was being serious. I guess it keeps them from the factory producing extra to sell as knockoffs, or the product being "lost in transit" or whatever.

I find it amusing that they go to those lengths rather than just using factories/employees that they can trust. I suppose you don't get loyalty if you treat people like crap.

imagine the overhead of an extra location to box pairs of shoes. Where these employees steal these boxed pairs. good joke.

It’s really not that unusual to manufacture in bulk at one facility and package in another.

Also let’s multiple “competitors” consolidate packaging into one big operation. Or localized to destination. Also a space thing: can ship more in bulk and make it all fluffier closer to point of sale.

Shoeboxes, among other packages, are a lot of air, why fill your truck/container/aircraft “unit load device” with it.

That would be easily noticed when units-in != units-out: https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/07/08/the-secret-world-o...

Wild guess : It might be to make it harder to steal a pair from the factory if you can only get half of it ?

I'm not immune. I recently bought some New Balance shoes from Sheels, figuring I'd be getting reasonable quality footwear. Both sets had hole damn near worn through the soles and delamination in multiple locations after ~6 months of wearing them as an office worker who does no abnormal amount of walking or exercise in them. Come to find out their "non flagship" models are cheaply made garbage as opposed to the quintessential white leather model that costs, iirc, the upper $300 range and is made in America.

There's so many companies reputation-tarnishing themselves by doing this "we sell a lesser line thats actually terrible" thing. Why do you think I will now trust you with more money for an upgraded model? You've just made me skeptical of your brand entirely.

I've sworn off Bosch appliances after a 2 year fiasco of service calls with one of their dishwashers. The thing was still about $900 plus install. At what price point am I to believe it's not the worse-on-purpose line, as they cheapen the product every year. They seem to have models from $700 to $2000.

A bad $900 model sours me on gambling that the $1200, $1500 or $2000 model is the good one this year.

“Selling the brand” or whatever it’s called. Lots of money to be made.

Exactly. To a ruthless MBA, what good is a reputation if you can't get rich ruining it?

It's called liquidation for a reason. You don't have the asset afterwards.

The Bosch 800 series dishwashers are god-tier, or at least they were as of 5 years ago, when I last bought one. I've had one in the last 3 houses, and went so far recently as to swap my new house's dishwasher (I think a Whirlpool something-or-other) with my old house's Bosch 800, because it was a cross-town move, and I could.

I don’t understand modern shoes.

Seems like almost everything moderately priced has soles made of a extremely lightweight, squishy soft plastic that neither has much traction nor any toughness — worse than cheap flip-flop material.

Shoe companies should be embarrassed to put their name on such crap, yet they try to pass it off as premium.

> if forced to choose blindly I'd pick Sony over WMFSENSY.

Only at the same price. If there's a big discount, I'm going to prefer the random letter jumble from China because it's probably a standard design that a lot of factories are producing because it works well enough.

The only reason I lean towards Sony all things being equal is because I know that Sony gets sued when things go wrong, and won't just drop the brand and close up shop like the random letter jumble.

Also I would prefer Sony if lead would be a problem somewhere in the thing I'm buying.

And then you find you’re powering a residential proxy bot net.

Oh, definitely nothing that goes on the network whose firmware that I'm not in control of. But that goes double for Sony.

edit: I must add - except for this cheap Android phone from the carrier. But I head it off at the router.

You know that. Most people don’t.

I bought a "mini retro TV" device from China. It's basically a cheap motherboard from an Android TV device MacGyvered into a case with its own small LCD display. It's got two old-timey toggle switches in the back: one for power and one for input select which doesn't work. I figured out what device it originally came from and put a build of Armbian for that device on it. I won't let its stock Android OS connect to the internet or my network for all the tea in—er, well...

Yes, Sony has a known history of respecting the user's security...

Yeah, I'd never want to do business with a company known for their products hacking your home equipment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Phew, thankfully we're safe buying a big brand device: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/lg-to-ban-residential-pr...

A more likely scenario is that display shoes of the same nominal size/model can be made in different factories, and when they are reboxed to be sold, they end up in a box from the wrong factory. Different factories make the same model but can have differences in processes so the shoes are noticeably different. Having left and right made in separate factories, much less countries, would be a total nightmare of inventory management.

Older brands have a motive to care for their reputation, because if people know *oldbrand* is bad. they will avoid *oldbrand* and it dies.

On the contrary, *insertanynonenglishnamebrand* (*newbrand*) doesn't need to have any care in the world. If the product is trash, they would replace the name next year, bonus points if they declare bankrupcy and don't pay their obligations.

There's a gap between "old brand makes bad product" and "people knowing old brand is bad". There lies the short term profits.

> and people will start ignoring brands entirely

One problem is that business forces keep turning brands into rugpulls.

After enough of this nonsense, brands are less of a reliable indicator.

Amazon pushed that to its inevitable endgame, where each product is a unique look-at-reviews situation. (and coincidentally the amazon advertising business is there while you run the product choosing guantlet)

> My last Nike shoes weren't even the same size/shape

This is something that frustrates me to no end. How are clothing item sizes not standardized yet?

For example, I recently went to buy new Jeans, so I went to the same store where I got my current Jeans, asked for a size 28, and tried it on. How is it possible that my size 28W Basic Straight Jeans from Fox fit me, while a pair that fits the exact same description is too small?

I later went to a different branch, and there I found another pair which fits the exact same description, and it did fit me!

I have encountered this type of thing inany places, like when buying shoes one of the employees at the store told me "We don't have this in size 42 in stock, but we do have 41 and our sizes are larger".

Imagine if you went to McMaster Carr and asked for an M3 screw, and being told "We are out of M3, but our M2.5 is larger so it should work for you"

Someone shopping for an M3 screw would not be interested it trying out a smaller one, but research has shown that people are interested in trying on a smaller size with clothes ;)

However, clothes are nearly impossible to simultaneously standardize and commoditize: people (and their feet) come in all shapes and sizes, so different brands in particular, but also different lines of those brands, will have different proportions.

As a tall guy, I hate that clothes keep growing in width with larger sizes, but rarely grow in length (pants/trousers included), but only because you can't get things without trying them on in multiple sizes.

If you do not understand why standardized sizes are not mandated or something similar, just look at any bespoke garment creation and all the variable measures being taken for a shirt, pants or jacket — just make realistic combination of all of them in different sizes, and you are looking at ~1000 "standard sizes" or more.

> clothes keep growing in width with larger sizes, but rarely grow in length

Humans have this same problem, which I suspect is the root cause.

Enshittification is only going to get worse just like everything else.

To be fair mentioning Nike is kind of a straw man here — unless being explicit with the model/style. They manufacturer to many different price points, more than an auto maker.

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