Why do manufacturers discontinue their best products?

[Nebe]

dependability is a loss of profitability.

[BassDawg]

Originally Posted by Nebe

dependability is a loss of profitability.

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.

[rphud]

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!

[ProfessorM]

Originally Posted by rphud

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.

[Joe]

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.

[FishermanTim]

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?

[Tagger]

add "whip lash" to the list ..