Saturday, November 09, 2013

Things They Should Study: what kinds of wear and tear are and aren't avoidable with quality manufacturing?

Conventional wisdom is that good-quality products last longer and cheaply-made products wear out faster.

But this isn't necessarily going to apply for every single kind of wear and tear.

For example, because my gait is uneven, the outside back corner of my shoe heels wears out long before anything else.  I've owned shoes at a wide range of price points, and this has happened with every pair that I've worn enough times.  It therefore stands to reason that it's going to happen regardless of the quality of the shoes.  (Unless shoes with 4-digit or higher prices, which I can't afford, won't wear out from uneven gait.)

A lot of my things that wear out seem to be from similar causes. The fabric of my coats gets threadbare where my purse hangs.  My rug gets threadbare under my desk chair.  Would better quality products not wear out in these ways (or wear out slower?) Or would everything wear out unevenly from an uneven application of friction (and therefore it's not worth it to buy more expensive if this is the first thing that wears out)?

As I've mentioned before, I buy cheap earbuds and treat them with no care whatsoever.  And my earbuds always die within a few months.  But are do they keep dying because they're cheap, or because I treat them with no care whatsoever?  In other words, if I bought high-quality earbuds and continued to treat them with no care whatsoever, would they last me years and years?

It would be really useful if someone could study different kinds of wear and tear in different quality levels of products and determine for us what kinds of wear and tear can be avoided by buying better-quality products, and what kinds are unavoidable regardless.  Then, if our possessions wear out from unavoidable wear and tear before avoidable wear and tear kicks in, we'll know that we're buying at a sufficient quality level for our needs.

4 comments:

jay said...

The problem is that considerations other than quality often factor into higher product prices.

laura k said...

Some very cheap goods fall apart before wear and tear has a chance to get to them. Very cheap shoes seem to. Cheap luggage, you use it three times, it falls apart. Expensive luggage can last through 20 years of serious travel. Very cheap clothes shrink or begin to fray or ravel much quicker than more expensive clothes. I have t-shirts that have not faded or shrunk or frayed in 10 years, but (in my experience) a very inexpensive t-shirt won't last more than 4 or 5 washings.

That's been my experience, anyway.

As jay suggests, sometimes higher prices are just for labels, but it's the same cheap stuff underneath. But not always.

impudent strumpet said...

Yeah, that's the other problem, that they could just price something expensively and make it cheaply. I don't know how to tell when they're doing that.

I've never had clothes fall apart after only a few washings. Usually, my clothes die of sweat or clumsiness, or become superseded.

But if it's possible for shirts not to fade for 10 years, maybe I should be looking specifically for quality for my black t-shirts! (Do you remember what brand of shirts they were by any chance?) I always have to buy one or two new black pieces every couple of years because they become less than perfectly black, and in some contexts that makes me feel disheveled.

laura k said...

The high-quality t-shirts I've bought were always from L. L. Bean. In recent years, their overall quality has declined, a very sad fact for loyal Bean shoppers. But even with their reduced quality, Bean products are still much higher quality than anything else I've found.

For the products I buy, the quality decline has been most apparent in cotton t-shirts shrinking after one washing. They got a ton of complaints and seem to have fixed the problem, but that's the caveat. Other than that, colours don't fade, seams don't ravel, clothes keep their shape.

They are also reknowned for excellent customer service. They were mail-order-only for almost 100 years, so they were built on a strong customer service model, and that has not changed.

AND they know how to ship to Canada. You pay taxes and duties but no shipping.

I love Bean... and thus their recent decline has broken my heart a little. But I still hold out hope that they will come to their senses.

If you do shop on their website, there are tons of product reviews where you can see if people have had problems with shrinking, bad sizing, or anything else.