[1]Tom MacWright

tom@macwright.com

[2]Tom MacWright

  • [3]Writing
  • [4]Reading
  • [5]Photos
  • [6]Projects
  • [7]Drawings
  • [8]Micro⇠
  • [9]About

I want brands

2024-12-03

I think a weird thing that’s happening with capitalism right now is that I want
brand consistency more than ever. It’s come up in conversations with friends,
too, how brands like OXO, IKEA, Costco or Muji are starting to feel like an
escape, rather than a luxury. Even Target, in-store, is kind of a place where
you can, mostly, buy a thing that is fine.

It’s mostly because of the Amazon effect. Amazon went from a store to a
‘marketplace’ of drop-shipped nameless junk that takes too long to wade
through. Alibaba was this kind of experience before Amazon even thought about
it. Walmart is the same sort of experience now. It’s an overwhelming and
complicated experience: I’ll look at t-shirts, and for the same ‘brand’, there
are multiple ‘sellers’ from whom Amazon dynamically picks to serve my sale. The
color blue is two cents cheaper than green. For anything more complicated than
a t-shirt, the odds of it being a [10]counterfeit are fairly high.

I don’t want to engage in the supply chain this much, and I don’t think most
people do either, even if it enables incredible new levels of cheapness.

To some extent, Amazon has to be a reflection of consumer preference: buying
more stuff, faster, for the cheapest price possible. And e-commerce is a hard
industry.

But I strongly believe that there’s an opportunity for a brand like Costco’s
‘Kirkland’ or OXO to become the standard place for middle-class people to buy
stuff. Paying 5-10% more for something with better odds of being genuine and
high-quality, and for a less overwhelming junk-pile buying experience… there’s
something there.


References:

[1] https://macwright.com/
[2] https://macwright.com/
[3] https://macwright.com/writing/
[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
[9] https://macwright.com/about/
[10] https://prospect.org/power/2024-08-28-amazon-counterfeit-problem-ink-cartridges/