Mike Jacoubowsky said:Quoted message said:There is no manufacturing-engineering
reason for making inferior rims. The reason to make
inferior rims is so that folks buy more rims at inflated
prices.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Even the dumbest bicycle component company isn't stupid enough to think that
people are likely to pay $$$ to replace equipment that failed before its
time with more from the same company. Sure, some people may, but a whole lot
of people are going to be buying something from a competing company. The
only people who would benefit from making product that consistently failed
earlier than it should would be those with a near-monopoly, and that doesn't
exist in the wheel-goods section of the marketplace. Lots and lots and lots
of options. And no, there's not a conspiracy among the various companies to
all make shoddy product so they sell more. That's giving them way too much
credit.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
I think that it's not as simple as the idea that there's a giant
conspiracy or that any company makes stuff that's blatantly shoddy and
won't last, but not accurate to say that this stuff has nothing to do
with, as was the original argument, the reasons why manufacturers make
inferior rims. For various reasons -ignorant design, cost-cutting,
feeding or creating hype, and perhaps indeed intentionally limiting
service life- rim makers, like many other bike component makers, are
operating in a climate where no one at all makes rims that generally
last as long as possible for a given rim type and weight. Everything is
anodized and/or has single eyelets, and there are many other problems
with what's currently available. How we got there is complex, but the
fact is that usually in this type of status quo, it's rare for any
manufacturer, especially a big one, to step out of the norm and make
stuff more durable again. That's just not how they think their profits
are going to be maximized, and it's not because they're simply
overlooking the advantages of having a reputation for making more
durable stuff. What level of product life a manufacturer wants is a
complex question, but it's one that they known to ask and has
everything to do with how viable they can be, and that pretty much
everyone chooses to answer, at some level, with something besides "as
much as possible, all else being equal, plus we're gonna be the only
company to do this big seemingly backwards-looking thing that does away
with all these marketing-based features and is just as durable and
high-performing as anything else." Companies have every reason to push
limited product lifespans as far as they think they can get away with,
it's just that executing this is complex because consumers do in fact
care about buying what they perceive as reasonably durable products.
And it's perfectly possible for an upstart to get in the middle of this
status quo, but upstarts have their own challenges.
