Long-term consistency

[simont]

I'm getting increasingly sick of never being able to buy the same product a few years after I last bought one.

In this house I have one more room needing a wall clock than I did in the previous flat. I'd therefore like a new clock which matches my existing two, but as far as I can tell nobody is still selling the things at all; even googling for the brand name written on the front turns up a completely different product and nothing else.

I don't like the nearly universal style of tall thin-stemmed top-heavy wine glasses. I tend to compulsively pick them up and twirl them, which increases the already non-trivial risk of breaking the stem or toppling the glass over. I prefer short squat glasses without an obvious weak point. I found a make of these years ago, bought some, and loved them, but a few months ago I broke one too many and had to buy more. The shop I bought them in had nothing remotely resembling them any more, so I had to find an entirely new style matching my criteria, and then buy lots of those so that I wouldn't run out for a while.

I've got a nice big cutlery drawer here, instead of having to store my cutlery in a small mug. So I now have space for a few more knives and forks, which will stop them being the limiting factor in my washing up – but of course, there's no chance of me getting the same kind as I already have.

What annoys me most about this (and I'm sure if I sat and thought for another hour I could double the number of examples above) is not just that I end up with annoyingly mismatched stuff as a result of not having known five or ten years ago what shape of house I'd be living in today. It's that when I now buy new things, I tend to buy lots more of them than I need, because I know that when I want another one I'll never see the same kind again. So now my glass cupboard contains more wine glasses than anyone who lives alone could conceivably need. I have an unworn pair of boots in a cupboard upstairs, because when I bought my current pair I knew I'd want another one eventually and didn't want to take a chance on still being able to buy them by that time. And even that only postpones the inevitable: sooner or later I'll wear out both pairs of boots and be at the mercy of the shifting markets again. So at this rate I'll end up filling my entire house with spare copies of stuff for use in twenty years' time, trading off storage space now against irritation in the future.

I wonder whether it's just me who feels like this. Sometimes I think this is one of my (many) impatiences with the world of physical objects which I derive from spending most of my time in the realm of software, in which once you've found something you like it's generally trivial to duplicate it as many times as you need and not too much harder to preserve it across decades for further duplication as necessary. Or perhaps it's because I have unusually specific ideas of what sorts of things I like. Or slightly too much of a tendency to get used to something and then not want to change it. (I could, after all, completely replace all my existing wall clocks and cutlery, instead of getting annoyed that I can't extend my current sets. But I don't want to if I can avoid it: I like my existing ones.)

But it mostly just seems silly that nobody is ever willing to make the same product again. I know why; I realise that companies will sell more stuff if customers think it's new and improved, that manufacturers deliberately encourage fashions to change all the time so they can sell stuff all over again, that product designers can't justify keeping their jobs if they tell their boss it's already perfect and doesn't need changing, and all that. But surely, surely, there must be some people like me out there, who'd like to be able to buy the same thing again ten years later; and surely there can't be so few of us that someone can't make a little money selling long-term consistent products to us?

Comments

[fanf]

There's a rumour that Frank King bought all his clothes 30 years ago after working out his probable lifetime and the average lifetime of each garment.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

That certainly cheered me up!

[rmc28]

I have just laughed so loudly it scared Charles.

[deborah_c]

Did you just start this rumour? :-)

[fanf]

I heard it from someone in the Guild when I was an undergrad.

[fanf]

I find this particularly irritating with black socks. Why do they waste so much time redesigning plain black socks?

Also boxer shorts, especially when the new design is uncomfortable.

[pm215]

I don't think BHS have changed their sock or underwear designs for years...

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

That's why nothing I own matches anything else I own. I have officially Given Up trying to buy things that match, because it will never work.

[senji.livejournal.com]

I have an ongoing war between the tendancy to go back and buy 50 of something that I've found to be good and right and proper and the fact of limited storage space.

Thus I have 20 'F' pencils that I found in Gibraltar after years of looking in England, but only one pair of shoes...

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

This tendency is even more marked with things like shampoo. This is very irritating (in every sense of the word) as the 'new, improved' formula tends to mean 'new exciting flaking skin and rashes'.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and food. "New improved taste" = "now we add MSG and describe it as yeast extract, you didn't need that afternoon, did you?".

[gerald_duck]

The situation is even worse than that: in my experience they say "new improved taste" when nothing very substantive has changed, then quietly make a major change without fanfare.

For example, Mars confectionery going non-vegetarian a few months back, or Skips suddenly introducing tomato into the recipe.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Skips are but a dim and distant memory :(

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Oh lord yes. Conditioner, with me; 'new and improved' means 'cheaper to make for us and therefore doesn't work as well'.

[pm215]

I take the "don't care about consistency" approach here. If I happen to be able to find the same thing again then that's fine, but if not that's fine too. So I have an armchair which doesn't match the futon, two desks of totally different styles, four bookshelves of varying flavours and so on. I care more about the function than the external appearance, I guess.

OTOH the company who make the modular shelving I have in my bedroom have been using the same system since the 70s, so I expect that if I ever need to buy more of that it will all interoperate.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

The trouble with that is that the old thing's function is known to work and the new thing is generally a pig in a poke.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

When I buy for myself, I do that.

But when I’m buying a present for someone else, I’d like it to fit in with what they’ve already got.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't care much about things *matching* but if I've found a thing that does whatever it is that it is supposed to do in a way that I find useful then I want more like it, maybe in different colours. Like, say, shoes - I don't much care what my day-to-day shoes *look like* but I care that they are comfy. I *know* that these ones are comfy but when they wear out I will have to try on dozens of styles and guess which will be most comfy (and likely end up buying and discarding as useless at least one pair); if I could just buy the same style then I wouldn't have that hassle.

Manufactum

[pne.livejournal.com]

Another part is that many people buy on price; that coupled with inflation means that manufacturers who want to keep supplying an item at a given MSRP have to produce them ever more cheaply, thus often cutting corners or switching materials.

http://www.manufactum.de/ is a company that tries to reverse that trend a little; their tagline is "Those good old things still exist", and they specialise in selling things manufactured (often in the literal "made by hand" sense of the word) in traditional ways: sturdy products that will keep for years if treated properly rather than falling apart just after the warranty expires.

I don't know whether they have something like that in the UK, though.

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

"I have an unworn pair of boots in a cupboard upstairs, because when I bought my current pair I knew I'd want another one eventually and didn't want to take a chance on still being able to buy them by that time."

I don't know if that is genius or bonkers. You might have to find yourself culitvating tastes for the 'classic' designs that never ever go out of fashion, this will however see you drinking tea from Royal Albert "old county roses" (http://www.chinacraft.co.uk/manufacturer.asp?cboManufacturer=499) wearing Tweed, and squeezing juice from your oranges using something that resembles a small alien (http://www.alessi.co.uk/ashop-uk/design-products/kitchen-accessories-90143/citrus-squeezer-juicy-salif-110.html).

[simont]

To be fair, these boots are from the DM range so they're fairly timeless in any case.

But fashion wasn't my real consideration. I wanted boots (not shoes, because I like ankle support), with Chelsea-style elasticated sides (because I find lace-up boots to be an immense hassle, far more so than shoes), which fitted my feet. I found exactly one make of boot which fitted those three practical criteria, so I bought two pairs.

If anyone with fashion sense looks at my footwear and attempts to infer anything more interesting than "this chap likes ankle support and dislikes laces", my general view is that that's their own lookout and I can't be held responsible for any misunderstandings they thereby acquire :-)

[aldabra]

Yes, I get annoyed by this. Ebay is sometimes good for finding discontinued things.

[furrfu.livejournal.com]

M&S seem to bring out a new clothing range every 5 minutes, and at that point remove all traces the previous one ever existed. Even if it only takes a month to decide that a pair of trousers is really nice it's often already too late to stock up on more of them.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

You seem much more interested in things matching than I am. I can't really relate to the idea of wanting all one's glasses or cutlery or wall-clocks to look the same (so long as they work pretty much equally well). But then, my crockery and cutlery are a bizarre mish-mash of stuff my mum gave me when I came up to Cambridge in 1992, stuff I found abandoned in college kitchens when staying up in the Long Vac, stuff liberated from college after feasts etc., presents from people, and beer festival glasses. And I don't own any wall-clocks; I use a watch :-)

But the shoe thing makes sense; I bought two pairs of non-leather ultra-cheap boots in a style I liked from that place Shoe Zone on ex-Bradwell's Court, before it closed down, because I find it hard to get shoes than meet all my requirements. I wore one pair until it fell to bits; I'm currently wearing the other pair. Also food; it's very annoying to develop a taste for some obscure Quorn product only stocked by one place in Cambridge, and then have them discontinue it.

I agree it's stupid and wasteful for a society to devote so much effort to constantly designing new varieties of things which were perfectly good in the first place, but then I'm a communist at heart, and would rather buy everything from state-run businesses that didn't need to work on that model :-)

[deerfold.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I used to like quite a lot of the Linda McCartney range (for occasional use; not the sausages). They keep reformulating them - and it always seems to involve making them non-vegan or thoroughly tasteless.

I was very pleased to find out that I can buy identical trainers to the ones my girlfriend forced me to get rid of after 5 years (due to their state).

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Consider buying old glasses/other stuff from antique shops. They're not that expensive and they're nice; you can't get 100% matching sets, though.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I bought a rather ridiculous amount of black socks and black t-shirts a few years ago, because I found a cheap range of each that seemed to be fairly good quality and fit well (I have small feet, the normal range of sizes in mens socks irritates me greatly). On the plus side, this reduces thinking in the morning, and means I have lots of them. On the down side, it means my laundry pile can take over entire rooms if I leave it until I'm nearly out of clean clothes. Which I tend to. :)