<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/10/consumed-consumer-goods-quality>
"When Keyana Sapp, 31, went shopping for a new backpack, the brands he
remembered as a kid were just not the same.
He researched the companies, from North Face to JanSport and Eastpak, and soon
realized they were all owned by the VF Corporation after a wave of acquisitions
in the 2000s. After a Reddit post he made about his discovery picked up
traction, he started looking at other types of consumer goods – cookware,
shoes, tools, clothing.
“It seems like that was a story that just repeated in every industry,” Sapp
told the
Guardian.
Big conglomerates and private equity were buying up “trusted brands and riding
that reputation out until it was a husk of what it was”.
From a zipper jam on a nearly new coat to a casserole dish cracking in the
oven on its third use, Americans are finding that the quality of many
once-beloved name brands is declining. Three-quarters of Americans had a
quality or service issue in 2025, the
National Consumer Rage Study found,
double the rate since the survey started in 1976. And customer complaints have
reached record levels, according to the latest
University of Michigan
American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Sapp channeled his personal frustration into building a database of hundreds of
brands and ranking them “approved” to “avoid” based in part by their corporate
ownership. And as part of his publication,
Worse on Purpose, he explains the
financial transactions that have undercut the quality of some of the biggest
name brands.
Sapp sees a structural problem within the consumer retail industry: founders
who built brands they love take lucrative offers from big corporations or
private equity investors. While they cash in on the decades it took to build
their product’s brand, the new corporate owners eventually prove they don’t
have the same emotional investment and are distanced from loyal customers."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
