u/confit_byaldi

Most years I hear cicadas in late July or early August. This year I haven’t heard any. Have others heard them yet?

Thanks to my talented and frugal mother, I learned early on how to look for quality beyond brand or price, how to see what could be restored or improved, how patience was the better part of bargain hunting. Then, in young adulthood, I had a retail job at an art supply store that taught me something more.

The store carried multiple brands within each category, and we had demonstrator products to test and share with customers. I learned that a $300 Mont Blanc Meisterstuck fountain pen was not as good as a $15 Sheaffer. And it got me thinking.

Within each type of mass-produced consumer product is one spectrum of price and another of quality. For the most part, the lowest 10 percent in initial price correlates to the lowest 10 percent in quality. Same for the top 10 percent. For the 80 percent in between, anything goes.

I’ve found products at the 11th percentile of price that were in the 89th percentile for quality and vice versa. Most of us shop in that middle 80 percent, so this principle applies almost every time we choose a product to buy. The challenge is judging quality in objects we can’t touch because they’re online, or in categories we don’t know very well.

One example that just makes me sad to remember: K Mart carried a house brand of Taiwanese hand tools called Bench Top that was far better than the price or the source would have suggested. That stuff was flea-market cheap and every bit the equal of Craftsman.

Does this match your experience? What examples can you share of an 89/11 or 11/89 split?

Back in the early ’80s, Rodale Press released a book by Roger Byepsen titled The Durability Factor. It contains detailed explanations of what made some products work better and last longer than others. More than just a list of worthy brands, it’s a guide to recognizing quality in general. Its content is dated, of course, but its principles are timeless. Anyone interested in “buy it for life” as a mindset should enjoy this book.

https://www.abebooks.com/9780878574001/Durability-factor-guide-finding-long-lasting-087857400X/plp