Now if we could change fashion from fast fashion to focus on durability that would be an even bigger change. And it is not completely unrealistic:
While I have no hard and fast rule to go by on how exactly this could turn out I do sense a huge opportunity for one or more smaller brands to more or less utterly disrupt big chunks of the clothes manufacturing industry by providing reliable, repairable and nice garments.
Such efforts exist, but I'm waiting for something to hit mainstream:
- Nudie Jeans (expensive but not extremely expensive jeans) has repair spots :https://www.nudiejeans.com/repair-spots
- Norrøna (high end sports wear) repairs: https://www.norrona.com/en-GB/Help-me/Repairs/
- Alfa-for-life (trekking shoes, about $500 a pair) are replaceable part by part: https://alfaoutdoor.com/alfa-for-fe
As it it happens I work next to a Norrøna store, and they are serious about: When I was there there was a long row of garments waiting there, and some of them must be well above 20 years old based on how the logo and the style has changed over the years.
A good start would be an iron clad right to repair law, making it illegal to include non-user replaceable batteries in any consumer electronics, and requiring anything cloud enabled to opensource the server side if they close the service.
That still won't help if a) the device talks to a fixed domain name or pins a particular TLS certificate or key, or if b) you get the code, but no instructions on how to build and run it.
If anything, the virus just did a chaos monkey test on global supply chains. In the aftermath, it's going to be pretty apparent where the just-in-time approach caused most problems. I would really hope this would make some companies reevaluate their approach of cycling crap through consumers as fast as possible (e.g. fast fashion), but the cynic in me thinks they'll just chalk it up to a black swan and resume business as usual.
I wonder if money could be made (or if anyone is doing that already) by serving as a buffer/capacitor in the supply chain. I'm a layman in this space and don't even know what keywords to search to learn more; can anyone here tell me how people go about supply and price volatility reduction?
Columbia says they have a lifetime warranty, but a $300 running rain jacket I bought at their flagship store sometime ago they refused to repair or replace it when all of the inner liner started flaking off and it was no longer usable. I'm never buying anything from them again.
The most durable day-bag / school backpack I have ever owned was a Trager. It was needed because I went through 9 backpacks in high-school since our school didn't have lockers. Supposedly in the 70's pipe-bombs were detonated in them and the lockers created shrapnel. Anyhow, that backpack held 4-6 books like a champ. It had/has a lifetime warranty and they even replaced the zipper on a 10 year old product for free. Sadly, they're out of business now.
It's the difference, though, between buying, say, fine china vs. a set of wooden or metal tableware. Or more typically in my experience, camping or outdoors gear, which gets rough use but remains highly functional.
Luckily for me a bit of wear and tear is considered OK with many of those products. I'd have far bigger problems if I tried to keep my shirts around for 5 years.
It also matters a lot if one product end up at the landfill after 10 years or if one product end up at the landfill every year, resulting in ten products at the landfill during the same period.
Edit: scrolling is part of the shtick. Mi scuzi, mi scuzi!
People were told 15h before the event started that they cannot group like that, so arena was basically empty.
I'm not a web guy, so don't know if this is common or not, but I've never seen a "body" tag (or any tag...) with this many attributes before:
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And the coronavirus is pretty much a case of "Evidence of massive-scale biological contagion through capitalistic networks"
Capitalism is a greedy process, and the governments pretty much took what they could until they couldn't ignore it any more. I know that people need to work to eat, and capitalistic losses also mean losses of lives. But at the same time, I feel like the U.S and other countries were playing fast and loose while China was getting ganked by the virus. We should have showed more solidarity instead of acting like we are invincible. And now the retribution is hell to pay as the virus ravages large cities like NYC.