Companies with decreasing product quality (Read 1154 times)

One thing you should know, and maybe you already do, is that many clothing makers have a line of clothes especially for outlets and discount stores. I'm not sure if Columbia is one of them, but Bauer is. They may look the same, and have the same name, but the fabric is usually thinner, and have components of lesser quality. QC is not as strict, either. Used to be an "factory outlet" was for overruns, discontinued styles, or slight blems, but with the advent of outlet malls, producers have started making cheaper lines specifically for these stores.

This pisses me off--I used to love outlet shopping back in the day, granted you had to dig through the clothes to find decent quality merchandise (otherwise you might have a sweatshirt with one arm twice as long as the other, or a big color run in it or something), but when you did find something, it was the same quality as their normal clothes. Now outlet stores are either just small little extensions of the main store, or they sell lower-quality stuff cleverly designed to look like the real thing.

LL Bean has been great for me. My current winter jacket was bought from them in 1996 and is still nearly as good as new. Granted it was their top-of-the-line winter parka back then, but it's got a heck of a lot of use. Realize there are these 3rd-world factories in China and southeast Asia that contract with these big manufacturers to produce goods. That is why you'll see variations in fabric etc, various actual manufacturers contract to produce the same product to a set of specifications. They are not NEARLY as good at quality control etc as we are here, so this is why you end up with big variability -- like cloth durability or melamine in your food.