Arizona iced tea is still 99 cents.
Saddleback Leather springs to mind. Their stuff is expensive but they have a 100 year warranty and their tag line is “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead”. I have a couple of their bags, belts, and wallets. I don’t expect to ever need to replace them.
First thing I bought from them was a briefcase back in 2011. About three years after I bought it one of the steel D-Rings for the strap failed and they paid courier fees for me to return the briefcase from the UK, replaced the part, cleaned the bag up, and sent it back, no questions asked.
Full disclosure: 1) they’re an American company which might put some off buying in the current climate and 2) the founder is a devout Christian which might put others off but none of their products have ever tried to make me a believer so I’m ok with it.
Costco, Bosch
When I go into a Costco, I take a minute to look at the board showing the pictures names of long-time employees. At my local one, they have about 15 people who have been working there for over 30 years.
Met a woman who had been a Costco employee for 25 years. In addition to everything else, she got 6 weeks of paid holidays a year. How many other retail employers come anywhere close to that?
Agreed with Costco… and used to agree with Bosch… until seeing this recent video.
The only quality Bosch product I’ve used is windscreen wipers. Every other tool or appliance has been pretty average in terms of quality.
Dean’s Beans coffee. The owner was an amazing guy, fair trade, all that. When he stepped down, he handed ownership to the employees.
Seems like these guys: https://nubo.coop/en/
They provide email, calendar, contacts, and cloud storage.
On their mission statement page they explicitly have:
not seeking to enrich shareholders
Dischord Records.
Fugazi record label.
Record/CD prices are capped low to cover production and distribution costs.
Personal contact and service, with real people, when ordering.
Live show prices were capped at $5.
A focus on real connection between artists and fans, rather than extracting maximum profit using music as a vehicle.
Live shows were excellent.
Mailbox.org They could go all the way and become “cool and cloud” but decided not to.
Haix While their customer service is not what it used to be they are still more than decent to a point it hurts their sales.
With my last one I am not 100% convinced: Mikrotik. While their stuff I great and cheap for what it does, I also had one really lacking support experience with them (they forgot to pack the rack ears for a switch and neither the vendor nor they could somehow get me ones. Another premium partner of them helped me for free and since then will always get my business). But in total they are still the good guys I think.
All business have to care about profit or they won’t be in business for long. Also if you want employees to get good pay/benefits and such they have to charge more and in turn you can’t shop for the cheapest.
That said I think the concern comes when they start trying to squeeze every last cent out regardless of the customer relationship and long term image. As soon as a company goes public you now have a board that will get rid of you if you don’t push stock values up another percent. Even if you want to have long term growth and goodwill the board is pushing for profit growth targets this quarter and they pay mostly in shares too. I find the best corporate customer/profit balance comes from private firms.
All business have to care about profit or they won’t be in business for long
Businesses have always cared about profit; just reasonable profit. They would make a product, determine the cost of manufacture, apply a modest profit margin to it (usually about 30%) and factor in things like employee raises and benefits, expanding the business, and building up a financial safety net.
Businesses were run by humans, for humans.
Hedge fund managers and venture capitalists in the 80s changed that. Rather than assigning a fixed profit margin each year to try to maintain, the rule became “how much profit can we squeeze out by sales and (most damning) by systematically dismantling anything that we pay for that benefits our employees”.
This is the end result of having taking human stakeholders out of the business decisions and replacing them with shareholders that are mostly other businesses, hedge funds, and venture capitalists. Profit becomes the ONLY motive, rather than one of many.
Yup. If you are bought by anything with “capital” or “equity” in its name you are fucked.
Arizona Iced Tea
Dudes a multi-billionaire and doesn’t understand how someone could want more.
That’s why he puts the MSRP on the cans even tho he can’t control store prices. Most stores still sell it at 99c, because they’re still making profit on it.
He could sell them for 2x and barely lose any sales, but why?
I heard this story before and it is truly amazing how the CEO still stands behinds his principles and values.
It would be a lot more common if we had anti-monopoly laws still.
There used to be a shit ton of regional stuff like this where one family owned everything, and 10 million a year was good enough instead of needing x% growth forever.
If you’re not cutting every corner to make the quarterly % increase constantly go up, workers aren’t getting fucked over as much, at least not every time. So everyone losses when we have mega corps. And that’s the natural result of unregulated capitalism
LEGO comes to mind. Not cheap, but definitely knows how to keep a healthy and active relationship with their customers.
I loved them as a kid and just bought a 3 in 1 kit for my Granddaughters Easter basket. She is nutty balls over Legos. That company has secured multi-generational love.
If you do the math as time has gone on the average set has gotten far more complex and used more pieces. If you look at the prices from a the perspective of price per individual Lego piece I am pretty sure they have pretty much stayed the same price the entire time. I watched a YouTube video essay about it like a year ago so it’s probably still true today.
I’m a big Lego fan and I agree that they are one of the best in this regard. However, they’ve taken up some relatively new practices such as compromising mold and instruction quality in favor of faster production, conditioning kids to gamble with minifigure loot boxes, commandeering a cornerstone of the secondhand market (BrickLink), and gatekeeping certain themes or genres behind massive price tags, which are not in the favor of customers in general.
Edit: There’s definitely been some price gouging with certain sets/themes too, ex. 76232 and 76292; and lazy designs and cheaping out on play/quality, ex. 76314. The Pharrell Williams movie and sets also don’t sit right with me because it feels like anybody can just buy their way into the medium/merchandise now. The Red Bull and Kick sponsors on the new F1 cars additionally are not true to how you’d want to think of the brand.
I hate the loot boxes and I hate the priced out gatekeeping
The minifig loot box thing bugs me
I like it. It gives me a nice way to give my kids little gifts that don’t take up much space. If I had to pick specific ones it wouldn’t work as well.
With that said, I do use an app to make sure they’re not getting duplicates.
I second this one. LEGO is really well made, the sets are well designed, and the instructions are some of the best you’ll ever see in any build-it-yourself product of any kind.
@dominiquec@lemmy.world
@MemmingenFan923@feddit.org can confirm. My son bought a set that was missing on of the bags. Filled out a form and uploaded a picture of the box + what he had built so far and the remaining bags. 48 hours later, we had the missing bag and he was back to building.
So many other brands wouldn’t even respond to something like that. You’d have to take it back to where you bought it for a refund, buy another set and start the build again.
Lego customer service understands that their product is more than colored plastic.
Lego quality is still good but has noticeably degraded over the years.
Chewy dog food will send you flowers and a refund if you pet died.
I called their customer support, and a person answered. Like, right away. I was caught completely off guard. They resolved my issue in under a minute.
My sleepy brain was reading this as if your pet dies from eating their pet food.
Still applies
Steam.
You mean the company that makes money from getting children addicted to gambling?
Yup, Valve is still in it for the money of course, but the customer really does come first. I’ve used their support a few times and they’ve always been stellar. I will always buy Valve products.
Yeah, shoulda said Valve, rather than Steam.
I do like Valve and their products, but I can’t ignore that they know they have an underage gambling issue and have done nothing to fix it.
Here’s a coffeezilla video about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y
Only partially and only to certain customers
Meh, having experienced their deny and defend customer service, I’m not impressed. If there is no way to escalate an issue beyond someone who refuses to pull their head out of their own ass long enough to see an issue objectively, you’re stuck and there’s no recourse.
Haven’t done extensive research on it, but the lifetime guarantee on Darn Tough socks has made me their loyal fan and I recommend them to others too. I feel like they stand behind their product I stead of trying to constantly find new ways to nickel and dime me.
Another one is an Italian winemaker, Podere Pradarolo (https://www.poderepradarolo.com/). They make table wines, are not ashamed of it, don’t try to position themselves as premium wine producers, and the owner refuses to raise the prices beyond the bare minimum that allows him to keep operating. They’re not in it for profit, and it shows in their wines - they are fantastic for what they are and I always have a couple bottles at home.
They are great socks, my favorites. I can’t wear the things out. They are an example of paying up front to save in the long run.
I wish Darn Tough accommodate international markets more readily. I had 1 imported years ago via proxy and it was honestly magical. Not swelteringly warm at all in a tropical country. For refer6im used to wearing jeans in this climate so it’s nothing out of the ordinary for me. Too bad I blew a hole at one of the toe area and never really bothered to try for their warranty after reading their policy back then.
Sounds awesome. Can that be purchased in the states?
The wine? No idea since I’m in Japan, but they do export uite a lot, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s at least one or two importers in the US. Not sure about the price though, with all the psychotic tariffs being applied and taken back and reapplied seemingly every week…
There is a local employee owned hardware store near me that will go out of their way to make you a deal. No idea how they do it, plenty of employees around to ask questions and some of the best prices around.
Patagonia is solid. Osprey (packs) recently sold to a conglomerate but I have an old pack I can send in soon to test their “we will repair it no matter what” guarantee.
That Osprey news is new to me. That’s a shame. Hopefully they don’t go to shit fast.
I love Patagonia. They’ll repair anything even if you’re not the original owner., they use sustainable and recycled materials and they’ve used their profits to protect huge areas of land.
Too bad they are so expensive though. Out of my budget.
Buy stuff on sale or used, then take it to the Patagonia store to get repaired. Great for things like jeans, they’ll last a lifetime.
