Why do manufacturers discontinue their best products?
 

Over the years I have seen the best products disappear and relatively poor equipment keeps going. Examples black Abu Big game reels , Allstar Blanks , Spectron wasn't discontinued but they changed it and its not as good now . I'm sure other people have also had their favorite equipment discontinued.

Why do the best products disappear? It seems counter to what should happen.

dependability is a loss of profitability.

because if they make such a good product there will be no need for them to sell any more. They want something that is good but not too good so they can stay in business and sell more. I think a lot of company's start out with great products so they can enter the market but once they gain a foothold they scale back the quality so they can plan out when the product will fail and project future sales. I think it has nothing to do with not being able to produce the product with high long lasting quality but more to do with how many they can sell in the future.

Bigger profit percentages on the cheaper items

Because they are the ones that know if a product is good. Not the users who spend countless hours using them. Some guy behind a desk. If they can add more bearings to a reel it must be better.

True but I feel more has to do with profit, bottom line. There are lots of nit wits out there with engineering degrees that have no clue as what is needed. I work with lots of them but most are very smart and know what keeps them employed and that is selling more stuff, not always better stuff.

while this is true for the lion's share of most markets,,,,,,,,,

Craftsman, Van Staal, ZeeBass, Rolls Royce, Klein, Calphalon, et al
tend to fly under the flag of making lifetime guarantees the norm
and product mortality/depreciation less apart of their marketing model.

one of my early mentors was fond of saying,
"Jess, you buy the best once! And for the three or four times that you will replace
middle of the road, the more money spent on 'the best' has paid for itself!!"

for me, this is the biggest FLAW in our capitalistic system and
part and parcel to the failing UAW/Auto Industry, Airlines, etc and
permeates the mindsets of TOO much of our working/thinking/owning class!!

what would yer objet(s) d'arte be like iffin ya used inferior glass/paints/tools/furnace Nebe??
some CEO's demand more of their product than others,,,,,,,,,,,,sadly more and more are going
South with their model of standard and lowering their corporate ideals from what put them into business in the first place, imho.

Hey, hey, hey now! Stop using the term nitwit and engineering in the same sentence or thread. All bonified studies have proven that no certifiable nitwits have engineering degrees. So just stop!

LOL. I was just joshing, although I have encountered some doosee's in my years. Some still can accept you can't put a round peg in a square hole though.
Noticed I said most are very smart, at least smarter than I as they chose the clean cloths field of endeavor. Me, I always have dirty finger nails and cuts on my hands and am usually bitching about some engineer.

Popular products are usually mature products. They become so widely available that people begin to try and sell them cheaper than the competition.
Usually, higher volume stores or big box stores can offer the lowest prices. This erodes the sell-through rate of the other stores that can't compete in volume, so they elect to not carry the item.

Then there's the disposability factor.
If you sell a product that is maintenance free, and guaranteed to last a lifetime, what are the odds that the customer will come back more frequently than if the product needed cleaning, recalibrating, parts replaced or entirely replaced?

Unfortunately, when you build the best product, you have to work even harder to attract repeat customers, unless they return for smaller items.
Most everyday products built today are built with an "obsolete" fact built in, so you WILL have to replace part or all of the product within a limited timeframe.

That's why I learned how to do basic (and I mean basic) tuneup/cleaning of all me reels. I don't want to have to rely on someone else to do what I can do myself.

Remember when Penn really used to be a product you could always count on?

add "whip lash" to the list ..

I was just wondering this last night too.

Whiplash was some great stuff. I still miss it :(

STILL lovin PENN,,,,,,,,,,,,
 

i fish a 704Z ~~from the 80's prolly,
slays large and spins like new each
time i repack her,,,,,,,,,LOVE that bailless baby!!!

me other reel is a 750ssm from Spring '07 that
i've done nothing to since i opened the box and
she still spins like the first night i christened her.

caught sum gooduns with that one as well and i
would own a VS if i could ever win the lottery
or a month during The Striper Cup :heybaby: :heybaby: :heybaby: :heybaby:

Great reels and an even grander American angling tradition!!

I agree the suppliers build a product that will last for ever, finds out sales have dropped due to no replacement except for parts, this is WHY I BUY old good stuff and it lasts, I still have ABU 7000 bushing with BIG brass gearing for boat rods if you take care of your equipment and clean after use it will last 4 ever. I'm old school & not buying everything thatr comes out to the market.
I stick with the same old same old and it seems work for me .
Just look at the last gen of fisherman caught fish with did they do better than us?
Big or small F' them all
I'm in 4 fun
Link Sr

Some still can accept you can't put a round peg in a square hole though.


Actally a round peg does fit in a square hole if the diameter of the peg is equal to the length of the side of the square. Now it doesn't fill it but it does fit nicely. Be careful of those engineers , they just may have a trick up their sleeve! :)

Back to the topic. I would hope that rather than planning on repeat customers because the junk breaks that manufacturers could be successful buy word of mouth rave reviews of the good products which brings more new customers to the last a life time products. I buy one and like it and tell all my friends. They all go buy one. That seems better than i buy one , it breaks , i buy a second , it breaks , then I tell everyone to stay away from their product.

i do agree that many manufacturers want to sell disposable stuff but I will not give in to the idea that that is the best way to do business.

LOL. very true. In all seriousness, I owe my job to them.

Bekeley Big Game Inshore was another if you ever tried it - for us old monofilament users

Some big stores have vendors sign "buy back" agreements. So if your stuff does not sell, they send it back and you have to refund the money. You get in 500 stores nationwide, but the stuff does not sell well, then you got to write a whopper refund check that wipes you out.

EXACTLY my point in the beginning,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

look at the market share that VS is enjoying.
COSTS more, but lasts a lifetime. and many VS guys own
more than one of those babies :btu: :btu: :btu:

much BETTER way to do business, imho.

GS Loomis/Lamiglass is going to be my next two or three rods,
i only regret that i didn't go with them sooner. i've gone thru
two Wally Worlds, and two TICAS en route to what will hopefully
be my last rods EVER, and ones that i can hand down to my daughter/nephews/neices
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,along with sum PENN's or VS's.

hopefully they'll still be in the surfbidness and there will still
be a healthy stock biomass for them to harvest/C&R when it
becomes their turn to enjoy NE's finest recreation.