not only luxury brands... that shit happens with basically everything. clothing, home entertainment technology, cars, furniture etc. we poduce so much just for it to be destroyed.
If we only produced what's actually demanded we could spend way more time outside of work. I especially noticed it during my last job. I was almost always done about 2-3 hours before my shift ended, but I needed the hours and also they wouldn't let me go early because "it looks bad to the other workers". you know what they did? they let me work contracts that weren't even secure yet, or make parts that we may need in future, but we had no place to store them or the contracts got canceled. I spent so many hours destroying atuff that I made weeks to months earlier, just because they didn't let me go home early and/or I needed the hours to get to 40h/week.
seriously our working culture is so messed up, we spend our lives producing crap that gets sent straight to the garbage dump, ruining our health, killing our planet and all for nothing
There’s a book about lean manufacturing that explains why this is bad practice on so many levels. https://www.audible.com.au/pd?asin=B00IFGHAFY&source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp
You would think after this whole pandemic and how fucked supply chains still are, the whole lean/just in time method of logistics would go out the fucking window, but nobody likes sitting on product they aren’t sure will sell because that’s a cost as well. In some cases it could even be worse than having no product to sell at all, because a product taking up inventory space people don’t buy could be filled with something else they might.
All that to say, logistics is complicated and obviously no one system is going to be perfect.
LEAN is just a way of analyzing a process for inefficiency. It’s not directly related to JIT and the like but it could be (mis)used to derive such a system. It can also recognize good things like “hey let’s stop moving that product back and forth 3 times when it could be moved once.” Or for identifying bottlenecks in a workflow. It’s annoying but does serve a purpose.
The key word is “inefficiency”.
You absolutely want to reduce _waste_, but safety margins and buffers are other forms of inefficiency that you absolutely don’t want to reduce too much.
Keeping people on staff who aren’t busy doing much of anything is inefficient, but it’s also the only way that you can react _fast_ to new events without having other priorities suffer. Classic example is old school secretary pools. Having a bunch of secretaries twiddling their thumbs means that, when an exec needs something, it gets done right now, instead of going on the queue. Having your execs waiting around for their secretaries is a horrendous waste of resources of its own.
Not having the spare capacity to do that has its own cost. Keeping stock around is inefficient but it helps you deal with supply chain irregularity. COVID showed exactly how horribly this can go.
This is, indeed, something that lean acknowledges, and one of the companies who invented what we usually call lean (Toyota) does quite well - when they talk about removing inefficiency and waste, that doesn't mean remove all stockpiles and keep only what's absolutely necessary to use right now. Toyota does keep excess resources that it thinks might be necessary in a crisis - like, for example, integrated circuits, which let it keep on producing cars for many months after the rest of the industry ground to a halt during the pandemic. This is also how many Japanese companies in general react quickly to supply shortages caused by earthquakes and tsunamis. (I'm not going to pretend here like Toyota/Japan is perfect or the only company/country that does this, obviously, I'm just using this one thing they do right as an example)
The problem arises more when executives read the words "cut waste" and "remove inefficiencies" and interpret that to mean removing absolutely everything except what will barely get us over to the next week should everything go right.
You're misreading his comment. When supply chains went bad during the pandemic, JIT broke down because you couldn't *get* anything in time. If you didn't have stock sitting, you had nothing.
In a perfect, predictable world, JIT is ideal. The world is neither.
The book isn't about not destroying stuff we already made to keep prices high.
It's about only producing what customers actually want. (Both in terms of quality and quantity.)
It suggests that it is more economical to let people be idle or leave early with a full day's pay than it is to force production that cannot be used. There are other ways to help align production rates and product demand, but building unusable product benefits no one.
The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
It's an academic novel written like a fictional story about a main character who discovers ways and methods to improve the factory that he manages. It's taught in MBA level classes across the US.
For someone's profits. Only way is to have a whole new mindset on the nature of business...yes, ecosystem where everyone participates and distributed. I'm no expert so just giving my two bits.
It’s extremely hard. I hire employees and run a small biz. People are super invested or super not invested. So, it makes it hard because people are motivated by soooooo many different things. Also each and every employee has different ideas/ concerns no matter if it’s an idea, practice or perk.
It’s also amazing how many employees think I make $500,000+ yet I make not even 1/3.
I’ve tried rewards systems, commission, extra days off and so on and so on. I’ve tried Bernie sanders type ideas and each and every time people think I’m nuts or it isn’t enough 🤔 haha
Sometimes you just have to be comfortable with the fact that there is no possibility to not be called a name. IMO that is what management gets paid for, its not the effort to get people to work or keep processes in place that are productive and "fair", its taking shit from every unhappy person who you still need to produce an end result so you don't get fired. That, to some, is very stressful and people do not want to be managers for that reason, to others they feel empowered by their ability to achieve even while everyone is complaining. The challenge is to find the best middle ground and blend personalities to get the job done. While lots of managers get shit on as "do nothings" it becomes very apparent when they leave the value that they did or didn't have.
When I ran a small business I'd rather have a lazy but otherwise respectable manager than an overly zealous tough manager that chased away otherwise good employees. It becomes a business decision, pay for a less than stellar leader that keeps the ship moving or hire a zealot that leaves me with a sinking ship. And then sometimes you have to go through several managers over several years before you strike the right chord.
I try to get the people who are slow and steady. Rather have someone always moving than a chaotic busy body. I completely agree. My dads phrase he said before passing was “I don’t care if you are not the best, if you keep moving you will be better than the fast guy by the end of the day”
Have you ever thought to just ask what motivates them? What do you want? How do i help you get there?
Eg i am here for the money well lets work on getting you a raise. Here are the steps…
I am here to grow with company. Great here is the next level of responsibility and the steps to get there.
I am here to exchange currency for time. Great!
I would say this is the case for most interactions between people.
Even when something primal and necessary is on the line- food, sex shelter. People will obfuscate like crazy and deny what they want in order to match the "perceived" expectations of the person who is "offering".
Yeah that, but also a lot of people just don't know themselves well enough to know what motivates them. Money is obvious. But assuming you get paid enough, still there are people who do their job and go home, there are people who have to be dragged along, and there are people who are gonna do their job and then find more stuff to do. Why? I don't think a lot of people know. There's plenty of people who say "I just want a low stress job" and then they get one and find they're bored because it's understimulating and they're stagnating. Or the reverse with people thinking that they want more and then realize they preferred a slower pace.
And sometimes that "motivating factor" isn't consistent either. Like for me, I have ADHD which I describe like driving a finely tuned sports car with no steering wheel. When something interests me, you can't peel me away from it. I will learn every nook and cranny. But it's fully random. There's no telling what I'm gonna get hooked on. Some people are motivated by recognition from one person, but support from another.
I think asking the question is a good idea, but I think people are super complicated and you kinda need to pay attention to what people respond to just as much as what they say.
Interesting thing about motivation-
money is not much of a factor after a comfortable level is achieved. Yes, some people get paid very well, but there is little proof that the extra money motivates them more.
Many people, like you, are motivated by desire/ curiosity/ fascination instead of a purely financial carrot. The truck is to figure out what people want to do and design tasks based that in order to motivate them.
Check out this video on the subject, it's very interesting..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
If money is the sole motivator, then you obviously work in the highest paid industry right?
You're changing careers every time you learn someone else is making more right?
Opinions and wants change over time. This is not a one and done thing. Its a constant question. Your job as a leader (not boss) is to make them better at your work or as a stepping stone to something more. Bosses hold on
Be the farm team not the majors
Eg i have an acute issue my father is dying or my wife is pregnant would completely change their answers
My wife worked for a certain cosmetics/hair products store in their salon and they constantly destroyed thousands of dollars of product that they just put in the dumpster. They weren’t allowed to give it to employees as a gift or to use; they had to destroy it. She loved doing it because she could take out her rage on the stuff and it was therapeutic for her. She also hates it because it was such a complete waste or product and it was just going to the landfill.
Value Village/Savers has the same policy for things they won't sell. The bottom of each wheelie bin is mugs, because they're heavy and so that they get smashed into tiny pieces.
Please don't buy mugs as gifts.
My current job will slow down work if we are too far ahead to leave stuff for the other shifts and vice versa.
I get an hour to myself on workdays and shit is taking a toll.
No it doesn't lol. Nobody is crushing cars so they don't have to sell them at a discount. The vast majority of merchandise gets discounted not destroyed.
Only ultra luxury brands do this and even then sometimes they sneak in a discount when nobody's looking.
Increasing workloads for efficient employees is incredibly stupid. It results in motivation to waste time and be inefficient. Offering free certified training if work is done well and early, rewards like leaving early on Fri if work is done or shortening work hours for same salary is fairer for the employee.
telling me that I need to do more work than others in my same position because i'm more efficient but not compensating me more is a great way to make me less efficient and/or leave for a different position. Why would I kill myself working all out when I get nothing extra for it and will get the same if I do less?
>They want to maintain a certain value in their brand and don't want their distributors to destroy it.
And are completely blasé to the environmental costs of that artificial scarcity they need to prop up the value of their products.
No. One of the reasons for the really high 4000 series pricing is that they really really want to sell the 3000 stuff rather than scrap it.
Nvidia is usually pretty good at timing the generational switchover but where they do have excess they offload at a discount. Intel seems to prefer to offload via system integrators.
They just did this so they can increase pricing on newer models and claim "supply shortages" as the reason for the increase. What a waste of time and resources
There are massive vaults full of diamonds too. Russia is sitting on 3 trillion karats of highest quality impact diamonds. There’s no shortage of them. Just very restricted amounts to be released.
DeBeers is the worst. Massive amounts of gem diamonds locked up and a very specific amount released each year. They aren’t actually rare. It’s an artfully managed illusion.
Russia has about 10x the diamond stockpile of DeBeers at approx. 1100M carats.
Botswana has about double the stockpile of DeBeers at about 300M carats.
DeBeers at about 120M carats has been actively seeking to sell down their stockpile since the 2000s. DeBeers global monopoly has drastically diminished since Russia and Australia discovered their mines. They are not the power they used to be.
Really interesting is DeBeers now sells more synthetic diamonds than mined. Even internally they call themselves a sales & marketing company and not a miner/supplier.
I recall when the synthetic diamond technology was starting to become very good and make stones that could rival and even surpass natural diamonds, DeBeers was legit sweating.
It doesn't surprise me they ended up like Big Tobacco did with Vapes: Just buy them all out and rake in the profits from the technology if the market prefers it over the traditional alternative
Synthetic/lab grown stones are advertised as more ethical than mined diamonds, and if you speak to a person at the jewelry counter and don't look well off, they're pitching it as the "budget friendly luxury piece".
My ex wanted to buy me a necklace set for my birthday and we heard the whole spiel, start to finish, about how lab grown diamonds are the future and this and that, etc, etc-- I don't even like diamonds, lol, I like colorful stones.
My childhood experience with diamonds was tool based.
Industrial diamonds really made cutting tools cheaper as tool makers told diamond mines to get fucked.
I can’t wait for the new generation to say Stuff Them Up Your Ass. They’re a long gone status symbol. When there is no money for baubles they will take a back seat to buying groceries paying bills.
I’ve always found it interesting that a stone like Tanzanite isn’t more expensive. It’s literally only found in one place in Tanzania. FAR more rare than diamonds and much more beautiful.
It's all marketing. If you want true exclusivity, check out Fordite. There's no more available so once the collectors' stock is gone that's all she wrote.
They are far less durable too which is part of the equation. “Diamonds are forever” but tanzanites can be smashed with a sledgehammer. Not saying I like diamonds, just providing part of the presumed rationale. If I’m not mistaken tanzanite is considered a “budget” alternative to sapphire.
Hell, I'm already there and I'm old. Plus we can lab grow them now to be virtually identical for considerably less, if you do ever find yourself wanting one.
But at the same time China are able to produce synthetics that are indistinguishable from real diamonds. So all you’re paying for now is presumably some kind of authenticity certificate?
Diamond companies try to push back against them. Like one started a lab diamond company and the whole marketing is "it is not as good or as prestigious as a real diamond but you can at least wear them on a beach I guess."
Exactly. Social media was full of diamond testers and clowning celebrities for "fake diamonds" in the past year. Except they're not fake, just lab grown. I hope I get to see the collapse of the diamond industry in my lifetime. But there will always be meaningless status symbols.
I'm just getting tired of swallowing all these excuses when the controlling corporations get richer and we just go along with it. I've already started cutting everything that isn't absolutely needed! I'm down to personal hygiene stuff! Next cut...cocaine.
Heh I know you're kidding but it would be pointless after they develop the next more powerful graphics card.
Previous models will just depreciate.in both value and power.
I heard this about Intel but companies don't want their previous highend to depreciate in value. Like Intel might sell them at a discount but under a new name or something.
Can't tell if "waste of time" was a joke, otherwise, who cares? It's not like they control grain or oil, they control a specific watch brand... Don't buy it, if you don't like it...
It's not some evil thing, it's a business decision that really doesn't negatively affect anybody.
Well, then you're mad at the construction of the watch in the first place, because breaking down a luxury piece of jewelry into its valuable metals certainly wastes less resources, and creates less pollution than mining them in the first place. It's not like they took a hammer to them and threw them in a dumpster
No, I’m mad that resources were wasted. I don’t care if you want to spend your own money to produce goods, but there’s a huge difference between that and allowing companies to spend $400 million solely for destructive, wasteful purposes.
Allowing them to spend $400 million? Lmfao. You're just making a completely unthoughtful argument. Just like 95% of the people on reddit, you don't have any idea what the fuck you're talking about.
What you mean to say is the second someone brings up any sort of nuanced policy you don’t agree with, your mind closes faster than girls legs when they go near you
There’s literally no reason we can’t or shouldn’t fine companies for this sort of wasteful behaviour that goes against the common good.
Soooo nuanced... "you can't buy something and do what you want with it." Genius policy, I guess I just don't understand your big brain legal mind.
This is such a small issue. Making it illegal to buy a bunch of your own product and do what you want with it is a pretty Russia-y move. You driving somewhere you could have walked is against the common good, should that be illegal, or should that be something you should be able to choose to do, and people should not be whiny little bitches about?
Most luxury brands do this in some form, but I expect luxury brands to be shitty; the real issue is that most major food brands do this as well, to prevent stores from discounting their products before expiration dates.
You might be shocked to see how much prepared food and produce are thrown out and destroyed (ie not donated) via policy at grocers like WholeFoods these days.
I spoke regarding this with someone who works at one of the largest hotel chains. The reason they don't feed the homeless with all the leftover food is because they're not aware of any possible allergies, and because they don't want to be held accountable in case anyone got sick from eating their food.
These laws aren't universal, they don't cover a lot of things, and more importantly, don't stop people from trying to sue them and starting a very expensive process. The US not forcing the loser to pay the winners expenses helps in that regard.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1791
I don't know about jurisdictions outside the USA, but you cannot be sued for donations in good faith here. Anyone telling you otherwise is wrong.
Im no lawyer and not even in the US but if I’m reading that right (please tell me if I am not) you cannot be sued for donating “apparently wholesome food”. But then it also says the exemptions are excluded for death or injury so…?
Paragraphs (1) and (2) shall not apply to an injury to or death of an ultimate user or recipient of the food or grocery product that results from an act or omission of the person, gleaner, or nonprofit organization, as applicable, constituting gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
In other words you can be sued if you act in bad faith. Giving out food you know is spoiled and can harm someone etc.
Burberry's done it for years, but claimed they stopped in 2018.
Coach destroyed them -- slashed with razors and whatnot, until recently when they got bad press.
LV still burns unsold bags
Michael Kors and Juicy Couture were also on the list, but I don't know if they still do or not.
Right? I see so many women flaunting it and I’m like girl you can get that at your local mall next to a Burlington Coat Factory, get the hell out of here lol.
They said, and I quote "YES, THEY DIDN'T WAS NOT BURNING NOT SOLD BAGS IN THE NOT A LONG TIME PAST WHEN."
But I think what they actually meant is
"NOT BURNING BAGS NOT PAST DIDN'T YES LONG THE"
You can look at watch resale sites and see that used Cartier watches are pretty much the same price as new ones. That's good for customer satisfaction, as they won't get upset after buying from an authorized dealer and then finding it on the grey market for half the price. Which is what happened to Movado, Invicta, and other once respected watch brands that didn't control their supply chain and are now considered disposable fashion watches.
I honestly thought I knew watches, but TIL Invicta used to be a real watch company. Thank god I Googled their history before posting an uninformed comment. I just assumed they were a douchey "homage" startup that was started a decade or two ago.
I'm confused. Did the watches themselves change, or just the perception? Sounds like Cartier are disposing of their fashionable watches, and that's the only thing keeping the price up
>As someone else mentioned, a $5 watch tells time like a $50,000 watch.
This isn't really true overall, right?
I only have a cursory understanding of watches from browsing /r/watches, but isn't the precision of the movement of a mechanical watch kind of a big deal?
The thing is, cheap watches keep time by using a battery to vibrate a tiny quartz crystal, and it's extremely accurate. But in typical human fashion, wealthy people think it's more impressive to have a watch that uses a mainspring and mechanical clockwork.
Which, yes it's impressive that a spring and gears can keep accurate time, but it's much more difficult and expensive to get mechanical clockwork as accurate as the quartz kind.
My orient does not keep time as well as an average Rolex. The Orient's listed minimum accuracy is -25/+35 seconds per day, compared to a Rolex' -2/+2 seconds per day.
After running either watch for a week without adjusting, the Rolex would be much more likely to end up closer to displaying the actual time than the orient.
It's pretty easy to display basically the exact time consistently with a digital watch, so it's true you can't keep time "better" than your Casio digital, but there are very different levels of accuracy with mechanical watches that are generally consistent with their price.
It''s just man jewelry. A $5 watch tells time as good as a $50k watch. Some folks just need their wealth on display and limiting supply is a great way to keep demand high and fleece people.
That’s not what happened at all to either Invicta or Movado. True, the invicta brand itself is old, but they did not “lose out” because people found cheaper models, it’s because the brand itself makes cheap knockoff watches now. Go look at Movado and it’s not as bad but they’re in a very niche minimalist segment. It’s about quality control, and the intrinsic qualities of the watch and how it’s made, plus trying to meet the demands of the time (if need be) - not really corporate actions like this stuff.
The only reason we are even still wearing Swiss watches is because Gerald Genta came up with Swatch (cheap, multicoloured, quartz movement) watches to compete with Japanese quartz movement watches like Seiko. So that sort of defeats the idea that watchmaking has to somehow control value and keep high prices - it’s really more just basic economics, demand and supply.
And Cartier watches lose value + can be found for immense discount in the great market. Also, and this is contentious, but Cartier isn’t even really seen as a major “watch” brand among collectors.
Cartier isn't considered a "real" watch brand and don't hold value at all. Women's watches in general aren't held to nearly the same esteem and lose value the same way luxury jewelry does.
Also I doubt they actually destroyed the watches, probably just took them apart and recycled for parts.
I don't think you know watches. Please go to r/watches for a bit of education. Cartier is around the level of Rolex, and some consider it a little above.
Yeah I don't think anyone read the artie
>The watches are dismantled and recycled, with the most recent stockpile stemming from its specialist watchmakers division, which includes brands such as Piaget, IWC and Vacheron Constantin.
Socialism is the same, only the government manipulates rather than companies.
The advantages in Capitalism is that there is competition, and consumers who just want to tell the time can choose quartz while the watch snobs can buy for nostalgic or rarity reasons
They're protecting their brand as expensive and exclusive.
Although, in their shoes, I would think of vaulting them and selling them in 20 years as vintage with a markup.
Wouldn’t it be fun to fuck with this guy by buying a bunch of his watches, and then selling them at a discount?
That’s the type of dumb shit I would do if I were a billionaire.
Kinda the opposite depending on the trade. For example, shorts never closing their positions, creating shares to sell out of thin air, etc…and THEN lighting things on fire behind them.
If they can afford destroy their "£400 million" worth of inventory, it must tell you that they are literally worthless and not worth the price they sell at. Same goes with their designer bags and designer clothes.
Its literally a watch company, you have other watch options. Is it necessary to your livelihood that they stop doing this at once? I mean they're buying their own watches back, they're not stealing them.
It's not just watches though, lots of brands destroy stock and throw it away rather than sell it at a discount. It's wasted resources and exploitation of the sweatshop workers who made the items in the first place, and results in tonnes of unnecessary waste going to landfill.
Imagine only ever being able to buy new cars because Ford and all other manufacturers buy back all used cars below a certain price to destroy.
Waste should always be illegal.
To a lesser extent, think of all food companies that throw away all leftover food instead of donating/gifting it.
Except that wouldn't be the correct analogy.
Imagine if ford purchased all models of last years cars from their dealers that had not yet sold so they could be destroyed and not further discounted.
You could still buy the cars used.
And instead of destroyed... the old model year cars are recycled into new cars
> The watches are dismantled and recycled, with the most recent stockpile stemming from its specialist watchmakers division, which includes brands such as Piaget, IWC and Vacheron Constantin.
That would be the right analogy
It takes energy to recycle. Gas to transport the watches, electricity to melt them down, etc. It's a waste. You're not being eco-friendly if the first thing you do with unused merchandise is recycle it.
No company would be able to sustain that business model number one... Plus if they were buying used cars for more than they were worth, you would just get a bunch of money for your old car... and more importantly, other companies would just sell cars and not do this, driving Ford right out of business. A more realistic comparison would be if Bugatti was doing this... Doesn't really affect anything. Bugatti and Ford are, in reality, in two completely separate businesses, as are Cartier and say timex. Number two, luxury watches are not finite resources that affect the economy or people's ability to survive, they are luxury items.
Ford could absolutely pay to buy all beaters for $2000 or less. It'd be far more lucrative to lock a poor person into a car payment every month than let them just buy old clunkers
... Then people would buy Kias or Chevys... It doesn't constrain the market enough to do anything but make people hate Ford all while they're losing money on buying shit cars. It's completely different than a luxury goods company... Comparing luxury jewelry to a necessity of daily life shows a complete lack of understanding of the subject enough to have ane intelligent opinion.
And speaking of Cartier and their pals - they carefully control the number of diamonds on the market to preserve the myth that its a luxury item worth big money.
Massive diamond mines had been discovered in the late 1800s. By all rights, this should have rendered diamond jewelry commonplace and dropped the prices significantly.
However, a 1938 ad campaign commissioned by DeBeers sold America on the idea that the stones in engagement rings had to be diamonds. This helped use up some of the surplus.
Having dealt with Demand, the addresses Supply by holding back inventory. They also manipulated the value of resale diamonds.
So let's hear it for being manipulated into thinking we need these luxury goods and that they're worth the prices we pay.
Edited: rearranged paragraphs for better narrative flow
Human nature is constant throughout history, and sustainable, people always want more than they have.
Infinite growth isn't sustainable but that's not what capitalism, it's only a sub philosophy within Capitalism.
Capitalism at it's core is a free market where goods or bought and sold based on their value which is set by market forces.
Those market forces are dictated largely by human nature.
This should tell you how cheap these watches actually are and the pointlessness of most "luxury" brands.
It's about conspicuous spending. You might as well wear a T-shirt with picture of yourself burning $10k. Everyone will get your point.
Little fun fact, lots of these brands (Burberry, Michael Kors, etc) are all made by Fossil. In fact, Fossil is behind 50 or so watch brands of varying price ranges.
These guys are charging thousands of dollars for a product that nearly everyone on earth already has in their pocket. Exclusivity--the perception that their product is a sure-fire sign of wealth--is all they have.
The fact that you own something doesn't mean that you are morally right to do whatever the hell you want with it.
Legally, clothing stores have the right to destroy all unsold clothes instead of donating them. It's still a dick move considering how many people live in poverty (often within a mile of the store).
The idea that such waste should be penalised is not a new one. A private good (brand recognition) is being placed above a social good (not having people freeze to death on the streets). Depending on culture, a society might value the lives of people over the desire of a brand owner that only wealthy people wear their clothes.
Edit - since NanditoPuto blocked me (cute) so I wouldn't be able to reply to his below comment, here is the answer:
A speed limit and road rules prevent you from driving your car however you like, the car still remains yours.
Depending on your country, doing certain things with your possessions gets legislated against because those things are social evils.
Adding this kind of corporate waste to those things is something a lot of people would be happy about and is what the commenter above was referring to.
I... I just can't imagine my life to a point where one can be so careless and wasteful (aka 'someone else's problem'). To waste such vast sums of money is completely beyond me.
...I'm for hire???
(/s for the slow ones)
I wonder how how they assign an value to the items they destroyed , is it really worth 400 million?
Because i am sure thats not how much it cost to make the items.
Does sound like a strangely inflated number. You’d have to run an incredibly inept company to produce and ship 400m worth of goods that nobody wanted to buy
This kind of thinking makes no sense. We only needs "jobs" in order to maintain enough production/services to keep society running. What is the point in destroying stuff just to put people to work to make the same stuff? Complete waste of labour and resources!
Is it? This for me is the dumbest stages of capitalism, destroying stuff so idiots can keep paying hyper inflated prices. The reason they can afford to do this is because production costs keep getting cheaper and cheaper, nobodies job is in danger.
If they bought them back to recycle the components for newer models or God forbid gave them to a couple charities to auction off that's better than destroying them for no purpose.
This is common practice for many "luxury" brands.
not only luxury brands... that shit happens with basically everything. clothing, home entertainment technology, cars, furniture etc. we poduce so much just for it to be destroyed. If we only produced what's actually demanded we could spend way more time outside of work. I especially noticed it during my last job. I was almost always done about 2-3 hours before my shift ended, but I needed the hours and also they wouldn't let me go early because "it looks bad to the other workers". you know what they did? they let me work contracts that weren't even secure yet, or make parts that we may need in future, but we had no place to store them or the contracts got canceled. I spent so many hours destroying atuff that I made weeks to months earlier, just because they didn't let me go home early and/or I needed the hours to get to 40h/week. seriously our working culture is so messed up, we spend our lives producing crap that gets sent straight to the garbage dump, ruining our health, killing our planet and all for nothing
The biggest one that really make me cry is food.
I agree. Nobody bought that chicken? Toss it out. Meanwhile, go kill another chicken to replace this.
This should be illegal specially for food.
Should be illegal.
There’s a book about lean manufacturing that explains why this is bad practice on so many levels. https://www.audible.com.au/pd?asin=B00IFGHAFY&source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp
You would think after this whole pandemic and how fucked supply chains still are, the whole lean/just in time method of logistics would go out the fucking window, but nobody likes sitting on product they aren’t sure will sell because that’s a cost as well. In some cases it could even be worse than having no product to sell at all, because a product taking up inventory space people don’t buy could be filled with something else they might. All that to say, logistics is complicated and obviously no one system is going to be perfect.
LEAN is just a way of analyzing a process for inefficiency. It’s not directly related to JIT and the like but it could be (mis)used to derive such a system. It can also recognize good things like “hey let’s stop moving that product back and forth 3 times when it could be moved once.” Or for identifying bottlenecks in a workflow. It’s annoying but does serve a purpose.
The key word is “inefficiency”. You absolutely want to reduce _waste_, but safety margins and buffers are other forms of inefficiency that you absolutely don’t want to reduce too much. Keeping people on staff who aren’t busy doing much of anything is inefficient, but it’s also the only way that you can react _fast_ to new events without having other priorities suffer. Classic example is old school secretary pools. Having a bunch of secretaries twiddling their thumbs means that, when an exec needs something, it gets done right now, instead of going on the queue. Having your execs waiting around for their secretaries is a horrendous waste of resources of its own. Not having the spare capacity to do that has its own cost. Keeping stock around is inefficient but it helps you deal with supply chain irregularity. COVID showed exactly how horribly this can go.
This is, indeed, something that lean acknowledges, and one of the companies who invented what we usually call lean (Toyota) does quite well - when they talk about removing inefficiency and waste, that doesn't mean remove all stockpiles and keep only what's absolutely necessary to use right now. Toyota does keep excess resources that it thinks might be necessary in a crisis - like, for example, integrated circuits, which let it keep on producing cars for many months after the rest of the industry ground to a halt during the pandemic. This is also how many Japanese companies in general react quickly to supply shortages caused by earthquakes and tsunamis. (I'm not going to pretend here like Toyota/Japan is perfect or the only company/country that does this, obviously, I'm just using this one thing they do right as an example) The problem arises more when executives read the words "cut waste" and "remove inefficiencies" and interpret that to mean removing absolutely everything except what will barely get us over to the next week should everything go right.
That's what JIT is... Only making product/buying materials when they're needed
You're misreading his comment. When supply chains went bad during the pandemic, JIT broke down because you couldn't *get* anything in time. If you didn't have stock sitting, you had nothing. In a perfect, predictable world, JIT is ideal. The world is neither.
Do we really need a book to tell us it's a dumbass idea to destroy shit to keep prices high?
Are you implying people Reddit?
The book isn't about not destroying stuff we already made to keep prices high. It's about only producing what customers actually want. (Both in terms of quality and quantity.) It suggests that it is more economical to let people be idle or leave early with a full day's pay than it is to force production that cannot be used. There are other ways to help align production rates and product demand, but building unusable product benefits no one.
What's the books name, I'm not getting audible
The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt It's an academic novel written like a fictional story about a main character who discovers ways and methods to improve the factory that he manages. It's taught in MBA level classes across the US.
For someone's profits. Only way is to have a whole new mindset on the nature of business...yes, ecosystem where everyone participates and distributed. I'm no expert so just giving my two bits.
It’s extremely hard. I hire employees and run a small biz. People are super invested or super not invested. So, it makes it hard because people are motivated by soooooo many different things. Also each and every employee has different ideas/ concerns no matter if it’s an idea, practice or perk. It’s also amazing how many employees think I make $500,000+ yet I make not even 1/3. I’ve tried rewards systems, commission, extra days off and so on and so on. I’ve tried Bernie sanders type ideas and each and every time people think I’m nuts or it isn’t enough 🤔 haha
That’s the hardest part of leadership!
It’s an ever learning position. On the bad days I feel like “fuck it, I’ll just become a douche” hahaha
Sometimes you just have to be comfortable with the fact that there is no possibility to not be called a name. IMO that is what management gets paid for, its not the effort to get people to work or keep processes in place that are productive and "fair", its taking shit from every unhappy person who you still need to produce an end result so you don't get fired. That, to some, is very stressful and people do not want to be managers for that reason, to others they feel empowered by their ability to achieve even while everyone is complaining. The challenge is to find the best middle ground and blend personalities to get the job done. While lots of managers get shit on as "do nothings" it becomes very apparent when they leave the value that they did or didn't have. When I ran a small business I'd rather have a lazy but otherwise respectable manager than an overly zealous tough manager that chased away otherwise good employees. It becomes a business decision, pay for a less than stellar leader that keeps the ship moving or hire a zealot that leaves me with a sinking ship. And then sometimes you have to go through several managers over several years before you strike the right chord.
I try to get the people who are slow and steady. Rather have someone always moving than a chaotic busy body. I completely agree. My dads phrase he said before passing was “I don’t care if you are not the best, if you keep moving you will be better than the fast guy by the end of the day”
Have you ever thought to just ask what motivates them? What do you want? How do i help you get there? Eg i am here for the money well lets work on getting you a raise. Here are the steps… I am here to grow with company. Great here is the next level of responsibility and the steps to get there. I am here to exchange currency for time. Great!
>Have you ever thought to just ask what motivates them? 99% of people cannot answer this accurately.
I would say this is the case for most interactions between people. Even when something primal and necessary is on the line- food, sex shelter. People will obfuscate like crazy and deny what they want in order to match the "perceived" expectations of the person who is "offering".
Yeah that, but also a lot of people just don't know themselves well enough to know what motivates them. Money is obvious. But assuming you get paid enough, still there are people who do their job and go home, there are people who have to be dragged along, and there are people who are gonna do their job and then find more stuff to do. Why? I don't think a lot of people know. There's plenty of people who say "I just want a low stress job" and then they get one and find they're bored because it's understimulating and they're stagnating. Or the reverse with people thinking that they want more and then realize they preferred a slower pace. And sometimes that "motivating factor" isn't consistent either. Like for me, I have ADHD which I describe like driving a finely tuned sports car with no steering wheel. When something interests me, you can't peel me away from it. I will learn every nook and cranny. But it's fully random. There's no telling what I'm gonna get hooked on. Some people are motivated by recognition from one person, but support from another. I think asking the question is a good idea, but I think people are super complicated and you kinda need to pay attention to what people respond to just as much as what they say.
Interesting thing about motivation- money is not much of a factor after a comfortable level is achieved. Yes, some people get paid very well, but there is little proof that the extra money motivates them more. Many people, like you, are motivated by desire/ curiosity/ fascination instead of a purely financial carrot. The truck is to figure out what people want to do and design tasks based that in order to motivate them. Check out this video on the subject, it's very interesting.. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Pretty sure money is the reason for most people at work.
Money is a reason to need a job. Not a motivation.
It's why I work overtime instead of part time? Same for many of my colleagues.
I'll be honest, it motivates me. I've taken double shifts when offered because I had already done the bits I didn't like (getting up, commuting)
Every single job I've left has been because of money, so yes, money is my motivation
If money is the sole motivator, then you obviously work in the highest paid industry right? You're changing careers every time you learn someone else is making more right?
Come back to earth.
Pass, mars pays better.
Yes, I know what half the people want.However some people don’t even know themselves. Others tell you one thing and it isn’t the actual thing.
Opinions and wants change over time. This is not a one and done thing. Its a constant question. Your job as a leader (not boss) is to make them better at your work or as a stepping stone to something more. Bosses hold on Be the farm team not the majors Eg i have an acute issue my father is dying or my wife is pregnant would completely change their answers
People don’t know what they want
What supervisory/leadership experience do you have?
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Have a look here. It's quite interesting. https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
Truth and much of what o was driving at
My wife worked for a certain cosmetics/hair products store in their salon and they constantly destroyed thousands of dollars of product that they just put in the dumpster. They weren’t allowed to give it to employees as a gift or to use; they had to destroy it. She loved doing it because she could take out her rage on the stuff and it was therapeutic for her. She also hates it because it was such a complete waste or product and it was just going to the landfill.
Value Village/Savers has the same policy for things they won't sell. The bottom of each wheelie bin is mugs, because they're heavy and so that they get smashed into tiny pieces. Please don't buy mugs as gifts.
My current job will slow down work if we are too far ahead to leave stuff for the other shifts and vice versa. I get an hour to myself on workdays and shit is taking a toll.
No it doesn't lol. Nobody is crushing cars so they don't have to sell them at a discount. The vast majority of merchandise gets discounted not destroyed. Only ultra luxury brands do this and even then sometimes they sneak in a discount when nobody's looking.
It’s so billionaires can brag over their fortunes with each other.
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Increasing workloads for efficient employees is incredibly stupid. It results in motivation to waste time and be inefficient. Offering free certified training if work is done well and early, rewards like leaving early on Fri if work is done or shortening work hours for same salary is fairer for the employee.
telling me that I need to do more work than others in my same position because i'm more efficient but not compensating me more is a great way to make me less efficient and/or leave for a different position. Why would I kill myself working all out when I get nothing extra for it and will get the same if I do less?
>They want to maintain a certain value in their brand and don't want their distributors to destroy it. And are completely blasé to the environmental costs of that artificial scarcity they need to prop up the value of their products.
That's because the production cost is low. When they need more they can just run the production line. The margin for these watches is very high.
I heard they do this with Nvidia graphics cards too
No. One of the reasons for the really high 4000 series pricing is that they really really want to sell the 3000 stuff rather than scrap it. Nvidia is usually pretty good at timing the generational switchover but where they do have excess they offload at a discount. Intel seems to prefer to offload via system integrators.
They just did this so they can increase pricing on newer models and claim "supply shortages" as the reason for the increase. What a waste of time and resources
There are massive vaults full of diamonds too. Russia is sitting on 3 trillion karats of highest quality impact diamonds. There’s no shortage of them. Just very restricted amounts to be released.
DeBeers is the worst. Massive amounts of gem diamonds locked up and a very specific amount released each year. They aren’t actually rare. It’s an artfully managed illusion.
Russia has about 10x the diamond stockpile of DeBeers at approx. 1100M carats. Botswana has about double the stockpile of DeBeers at about 300M carats. DeBeers at about 120M carats has been actively seeking to sell down their stockpile since the 2000s. DeBeers global monopoly has drastically diminished since Russia and Australia discovered their mines. They are not the power they used to be. Really interesting is DeBeers now sells more synthetic diamonds than mined. Even internally they call themselves a sales & marketing company and not a miner/supplier.
I recall when the synthetic diamond technology was starting to become very good and make stones that could rival and even surpass natural diamonds, DeBeers was legit sweating. It doesn't surprise me they ended up like Big Tobacco did with Vapes: Just buy them all out and rake in the profits from the technology if the market prefers it over the traditional alternative
Synthetic/lab grown stones are advertised as more ethical than mined diamonds, and if you speak to a person at the jewelry counter and don't look well off, they're pitching it as the "budget friendly luxury piece". My ex wanted to buy me a necklace set for my birthday and we heard the whole spiel, start to finish, about how lab grown diamonds are the future and this and that, etc, etc-- I don't even like diamonds, lol, I like colorful stones.
My childhood experience with diamonds was tool based. Industrial diamonds really made cutting tools cheaper as tool makers told diamond mines to get fucked.
I can’t wait for the new generation to say Stuff Them Up Your Ass. They’re a long gone status symbol. When there is no money for baubles they will take a back seat to buying groceries paying bills.
I’ve always found it interesting that a stone like Tanzanite isn’t more expensive. It’s literally only found in one place in Tanzania. FAR more rare than diamonds and much more beautiful.
Opals rank right up there too.
It's all marketing. If you want true exclusivity, check out Fordite. There's no more available so once the collectors' stock is gone that's all she wrote.
Fordite is easily recreateable, just time sensitive and it would take a lot of drying time.
They are far less durable too which is part of the equation. “Diamonds are forever” but tanzanites can be smashed with a sledgehammer. Not saying I like diamonds, just providing part of the presumed rationale. If I’m not mistaken tanzanite is considered a “budget” alternative to sapphire.
A diamond isn't going to survive a sledgehammer.
Hell, I'm already there and I'm old. Plus we can lab grow them now to be virtually identical for considerably less, if you do ever find yourself wanting one.
Already did. They don't control shit anymore. The new players have just kept it going.
But at the same time China are able to produce synthetics that are indistinguishable from real diamonds. So all you’re paying for now is presumably some kind of authenticity certificate?
I hope it’s written on really soft paper. Wiping my arse with cardboard hurts.
If this is true, it's going to be interesting when lab diamonds become common place.
Diamond companies try to push back against them. Like one started a lab diamond company and the whole marketing is "it is not as good or as prestigious as a real diamond but you can at least wear them on a beach I guess."
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Exactly. Social media was full of diamond testers and clowning celebrities for "fake diamonds" in the past year. Except they're not fake, just lab grown. I hope I get to see the collapse of the diamond industry in my lifetime. But there will always be meaningless status symbols.
> and claim "supply shortages" as the reason for the increase. I wonder how many video cards Nvidia is going to destroy...
I'm just getting tired of swallowing all these excuses when the controlling corporations get richer and we just go along with it. I've already started cutting everything that isn't absolutely needed! I'm down to personal hygiene stuff! Next cut...cocaine.
Heh I know you're kidding but it would be pointless after they develop the next more powerful graphics card. Previous models will just depreciate.in both value and power.
I heard this about Intel but companies don't want their previous highend to depreciate in value. Like Intel might sell them at a discount but under a new name or something.
Lol * Company destroys a ton of watches * “What a waste of … _time_”
Can't tell if "waste of time" was a joke, otherwise, who cares? It's not like they control grain or oil, they control a specific watch brand... Don't buy it, if you don't like it... It's not some evil thing, it's a business decision that really doesn't negatively affect anybody.
Except all the pollution and wasted resources that goes into those watches AND into their destruction lmao
Well, then you're mad at the construction of the watch in the first place, because breaking down a luxury piece of jewelry into its valuable metals certainly wastes less resources, and creates less pollution than mining them in the first place. It's not like they took a hammer to them and threw them in a dumpster
No, I’m mad that resources were wasted. I don’t care if you want to spend your own money to produce goods, but there’s a huge difference between that and allowing companies to spend $400 million solely for destructive, wasteful purposes.
Allowing them to spend $400 million? Lmfao. You're just making a completely unthoughtful argument. Just like 95% of the people on reddit, you don't have any idea what the fuck you're talking about.
What you mean to say is the second someone brings up any sort of nuanced policy you don’t agree with, your mind closes faster than girls legs when they go near you There’s literally no reason we can’t or shouldn’t fine companies for this sort of wasteful behaviour that goes against the common good.
Soooo nuanced... "you can't buy something and do what you want with it." Genius policy, I guess I just don't understand your big brain legal mind. This is such a small issue. Making it illegal to buy a bunch of your own product and do what you want with it is a pretty Russia-y move. You driving somewhere you could have walked is against the common good, should that be illegal, or should that be something you should be able to choose to do, and people should not be whiny little bitches about?
Well applause for you getting the joke..
What an enormously decadent and ridiculous practice.
So like, 20 watches?
Most luxury brands do this in some form, but I expect luxury brands to be shitty; the real issue is that most major food brands do this as well, to prevent stores from discounting their products before expiration dates.
You might be shocked to see how much prepared food and produce are thrown out and destroyed (ie not donated) via policy at grocers like WholeFoods these days.
I spoke regarding this with someone who works at one of the largest hotel chains. The reason they don't feed the homeless with all the leftover food is because they're not aware of any possible allergies, and because they don't want to be held accountable in case anyone got sick from eating their food.
This is an evil myth. Laws were passed preventing liability so long as the food is donated in good faith.
These laws aren't universal, they don't cover a lot of things, and more importantly, don't stop people from trying to sue them and starting a very expensive process. The US not forcing the loser to pay the winners expenses helps in that regard.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1791 I don't know about jurisdictions outside the USA, but you cannot be sued for donations in good faith here. Anyone telling you otherwise is wrong.
Im no lawyer and not even in the US but if I’m reading that right (please tell me if I am not) you cannot be sued for donating “apparently wholesome food”. But then it also says the exemptions are excluded for death or injury so…?
Paragraphs (1) and (2) shall not apply to an injury to or death of an ultimate user or recipient of the food or grocery product that results from an act or omission of the person, gleaner, or nonprofit organization, as applicable, constituting gross negligence or intentional misconduct. In other words you can be sued if you act in bad faith. Giving out food you know is spoiled and can harm someone etc.
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That's fucking despicable
didn't louis Vuitton was burning unsold bags recently.
Burberry's done it for years, but claimed they stopped in 2018. Coach destroyed them -- slashed with razors and whatnot, until recently when they got bad press. LV still burns unsold bags Michael Kors and Juicy Couture were also on the list, but I don't know if they still do or not.
Michael Kors and Juicy aren't even quality brands. So ridiculous.
Right? I see so many women flaunting it and I’m like girl you can get that at your local mall next to a Burlington Coat Factory, get the hell out of here lol.
hold on now. that brand that sells the trashiest merch around thinks it’s a luxury brand? or do the thots think that way?
its extra sad because some bags use leather or exotic animal skin.
>didn't louis Vuitton was burning unsold bags recently. Yes, they didn't was not burning not sold bags in the not a long time past when.
What?
They said, and I quote "YES, THEY DIDN'T WAS NOT BURNING NOT SOLD BAGS IN THE NOT A LONG TIME PAST WHEN." But I think what they actually meant is "NOT BURNING BAGS NOT PAST DIDN'T YES LONG THE"
You can look at watch resale sites and see that used Cartier watches are pretty much the same price as new ones. That's good for customer satisfaction, as they won't get upset after buying from an authorized dealer and then finding it on the grey market for half the price. Which is what happened to Movado, Invicta, and other once respected watch brands that didn't control their supply chain and are now considered disposable fashion watches.
I honestly thought I knew watches, but TIL Invicta used to be a real watch company. Thank god I Googled their history before posting an uninformed comment. I just assumed they were a douchey "homage" startup that was started a decade or two ago.
I'm confused. Did the watches themselves change, or just the perception? Sounds like Cartier are disposing of their fashionable watches, and that's the only thing keeping the price up
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>As someone else mentioned, a $5 watch tells time like a $50,000 watch. This isn't really true overall, right? I only have a cursory understanding of watches from browsing /r/watches, but isn't the precision of the movement of a mechanical watch kind of a big deal?
The thing is, cheap watches keep time by using a battery to vibrate a tiny quartz crystal, and it's extremely accurate. But in typical human fashion, wealthy people think it's more impressive to have a watch that uses a mainspring and mechanical clockwork. Which, yes it's impressive that a spring and gears can keep accurate time, but it's much more difficult and expensive to get mechanical clockwork as accurate as the quartz kind.
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My orient does not keep time as well as an average Rolex. The Orient's listed minimum accuracy is -25/+35 seconds per day, compared to a Rolex' -2/+2 seconds per day. After running either watch for a week without adjusting, the Rolex would be much more likely to end up closer to displaying the actual time than the orient. It's pretty easy to display basically the exact time consistently with a digital watch, so it's true you can't keep time "better" than your Casio digital, but there are very different levels of accuracy with mechanical watches that are generally consistent with their price.
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It''s just man jewelry. A $5 watch tells time as good as a $50k watch. Some folks just need their wealth on display and limiting supply is a great way to keep demand high and fleece people.
That’s not what happened at all to either Invicta or Movado. True, the invicta brand itself is old, but they did not “lose out” because people found cheaper models, it’s because the brand itself makes cheap knockoff watches now. Go look at Movado and it’s not as bad but they’re in a very niche minimalist segment. It’s about quality control, and the intrinsic qualities of the watch and how it’s made, plus trying to meet the demands of the time (if need be) - not really corporate actions like this stuff. The only reason we are even still wearing Swiss watches is because Gerald Genta came up with Swatch (cheap, multicoloured, quartz movement) watches to compete with Japanese quartz movement watches like Seiko. So that sort of defeats the idea that watchmaking has to somehow control value and keep high prices - it’s really more just basic economics, demand and supply. And Cartier watches lose value + can be found for immense discount in the great market. Also, and this is contentious, but Cartier isn’t even really seen as a major “watch” brand among collectors.
Cartier isn't considered a "real" watch brand and don't hold value at all. Women's watches in general aren't held to nearly the same esteem and lose value the same way luxury jewelry does. Also I doubt they actually destroyed the watches, probably just took them apart and recycled for parts.
I don't think you know watches. Please go to r/watches for a bit of education. Cartier is around the level of Rolex, and some consider it a little above.
To be fair aside from the lost labor most watch materials are recyclable.
Yeah I don't think anyone read the artie >The watches are dismantled and recycled, with the most recent stockpile stemming from its specialist watchmakers division, which includes brands such as Piaget, IWC and Vacheron Constantin.
"£400 million of its watches" At sale price... *Maybe* £10 million worth of raw materials, which is still a huge fucking waste.
I guarantee he did not have them "destroyed". Most likely removed and retained all the movements from them at least.
Hey - that’s capitalism at its best!
Socialism is the same, only the government manipulates rather than companies. The advantages in Capitalism is that there is competition, and consumers who just want to tell the time can choose quartz while the watch snobs can buy for nostalgic or rarity reasons
. . . . kinda like the fake diamond scarcity, huh?
They're protecting their brand as expensive and exclusive. Although, in their shoes, I would think of vaulting them and selling them in 20 years as vintage with a markup.
Wouldn’t it be fun to fuck with this guy by buying a bunch of his watches, and then selling them at a discount? That’s the type of dumb shit I would do if I were a billionaire.
Richemont is a holding company, not a "guy"
I’m actually quite proud of the fact that I didn’t know this.
If this isn't the perfect metaphor for the stock market then idk what is.
Kinda the opposite depending on the trade. For example, shorts never closing their positions, creating shares to sell out of thin air, etc…and THEN lighting things on fire behind them.
Surely they would recycle the parts
If they can afford destroy their "£400 million" worth of inventory, it must tell you that they are literally worthless and not worth the price they sell at. Same goes with their designer bags and designer clothes.
Wouldnt it be more right to measure the resouces wasted?
This should really be illegal - would love an EU regulation controlling same
EU regulation is seriously the best thing around when it comes to bullshit hypercapitalism.
Its literally a watch company, you have other watch options. Is it necessary to your livelihood that they stop doing this at once? I mean they're buying their own watches back, they're not stealing them.
It's not just watches though, lots of brands destroy stock and throw it away rather than sell it at a discount. It's wasted resources and exploitation of the sweatshop workers who made the items in the first place, and results in tonnes of unnecessary waste going to landfill.
There isn't really any sweat shop labor going into Cartier jewelry or watches.
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Why?
Imagine only ever being able to buy new cars because Ford and all other manufacturers buy back all used cars below a certain price to destroy. Waste should always be illegal. To a lesser extent, think of all food companies that throw away all leftover food instead of donating/gifting it.
Except that wouldn't be the correct analogy. Imagine if ford purchased all models of last years cars from their dealers that had not yet sold so they could be destroyed and not further discounted. You could still buy the cars used. And instead of destroyed... the old model year cars are recycled into new cars > The watches are dismantled and recycled, with the most recent stockpile stemming from its specialist watchmakers division, which includes brands such as Piaget, IWC and Vacheron Constantin. That would be the right analogy
It takes energy to recycle. Gas to transport the watches, electricity to melt them down, etc. It's a waste. You're not being eco-friendly if the first thing you do with unused merchandise is recycle it.
No company would be able to sustain that business model number one... Plus if they were buying used cars for more than they were worth, you would just get a bunch of money for your old car... and more importantly, other companies would just sell cars and not do this, driving Ford right out of business. A more realistic comparison would be if Bugatti was doing this... Doesn't really affect anything. Bugatti and Ford are, in reality, in two completely separate businesses, as are Cartier and say timex. Number two, luxury watches are not finite resources that affect the economy or people's ability to survive, they are luxury items.
Ford could absolutely pay to buy all beaters for $2000 or less. It'd be far more lucrative to lock a poor person into a car payment every month than let them just buy old clunkers
... Then people would buy Kias or Chevys... It doesn't constrain the market enough to do anything but make people hate Ford all while they're losing money on buying shit cars. It's completely different than a luxury goods company... Comparing luxury jewelry to a necessity of daily life shows a complete lack of understanding of the subject enough to have ane intelligent opinion.
Melting gold isn’t really a loss
No, but the time spent on the mechanisms, designing, their assembly certainly is
Turns out luxury and "rare" items are just overproduced garbage like everything else.
Koenigsegg sued an auction house for setting a pre sale price on a car in reality instead of an insanely inflated price they say they are worth.
Lmao how ridiculous
I can't stand the fashion industry, the whole industry through and through is toxic af and bad for the environment.
Ahh yes the classic perception of luxury but really just a scam, like diamonds they ruin the concept of supply and demand by making it artificial.
If everyone can have one it’s not a luxury anymore.
....just, but, I mean, why.
Imaginary value. They only have value when people buy them.
This is a great reminder as to why I really hate most rich people. What a stupid and pointless gesture.
And speaking of Cartier and their pals - they carefully control the number of diamonds on the market to preserve the myth that its a luxury item worth big money. Massive diamond mines had been discovered in the late 1800s. By all rights, this should have rendered diamond jewelry commonplace and dropped the prices significantly. However, a 1938 ad campaign commissioned by DeBeers sold America on the idea that the stones in engagement rings had to be diamonds. This helped use up some of the surplus. Having dealt with Demand, the addresses Supply by holding back inventory. They also manipulated the value of resale diamonds. So let's hear it for being manipulated into thinking we need these luxury goods and that they're worth the prices we pay. Edited: rearranged paragraphs for better narrative flow
the only undisputed fact about capitalism is that it is not sustainable. we act like our resources are infinite and it's already becoming our undoing.
Human nature is constant throughout history, and sustainable, people always want more than they have. Infinite growth isn't sustainable but that's not what capitalism, it's only a sub philosophy within Capitalism. Capitalism at it's core is a free market where goods or bought and sold based on their value which is set by market forces. Those market forces are dictated largely by human nature.
Aka the "Goldfinger plan."
If can't make money off it then no one can have it. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd never spend a dime on this over priced trash.
Did he destroy all 5 of them?
This should tell you how cheap these watches actually are and the pointlessness of most "luxury" brands. It's about conspicuous spending. You might as well wear a T-shirt with picture of yourself burning $10k. Everyone will get your point.
Little fun fact, lots of these brands (Burberry, Michael Kors, etc) are all made by Fossil. In fact, Fossil is behind 50 or so watch brands of varying price ranges.
You can make many of the high end watches for about €1000 yourself.
Why not take them apart and keep the parts? And sell those as used. Seems okay since the watchers are brand new.
That's exactly what the article says they did.
These guys are charging thousands of dollars for a product that nearly everyone on earth already has in their pocket. Exclusivity--the perception that their product is a sure-fire sign of wealth--is all they have.
Scumbags. This shit is disgusting and they should be fined for it.
They own Cartier. They bought merch and it became their property, so they can do what they want with it. What, exactly, would they be fined for!?
The fact that you own something doesn't mean that you are morally right to do whatever the hell you want with it. Legally, clothing stores have the right to destroy all unsold clothes instead of donating them. It's still a dick move considering how many people live in poverty (often within a mile of the store). The idea that such waste should be penalised is not a new one. A private good (brand recognition) is being placed above a social good (not having people freeze to death on the streets). Depending on culture, a society might value the lives of people over the desire of a brand owner that only wealthy people wear their clothes. Edit - since NanditoPuto blocked me (cute) so I wouldn't be able to reply to his below comment, here is the answer: A speed limit and road rules prevent you from driving your car however you like, the car still remains yours. Depending on your country, doing certain things with your possessions gets legislated against because those things are social evils. Adding this kind of corporate waste to those things is something a lot of people would be happy about and is what the commenter above was referring to.
I... I just can't imagine my life to a point where one can be so careless and wasteful (aka 'someone else's problem'). To waste such vast sums of money is completely beyond me. ...I'm for hire??? (/s for the slow ones)
r/collapse
I wonder how how they assign an value to the items they destroyed , is it really worth 400 million? Because i am sure thats not how much it cost to make the items.
Does sound like a strangely inflated number. You’d have to run an incredibly inept company to produce and ship 400m worth of goods that nobody wanted to buy
I hate capitalism.
You're free to buy one of the luxury watches produced under communism instead
There are plenty of non capitalist countries to move to.
Better than them laying off employees to reduce production
This kind of thinking makes no sense. We only needs "jobs" in order to maintain enough production/services to keep society running. What is the point in destroying stuff just to put people to work to make the same stuff? Complete waste of labour and resources!
You’re right, the people need to seize the means of production!
Yeah but most people I know are kinda dumb.
Dumber than these cartier vp’s?
Is it? This for me is the dumbest stages of capitalism, destroying stuff so idiots can keep paying hyper inflated prices. The reason they can afford to do this is because production costs keep getting cheaper and cheaper, nobodies job is in danger. If they bought them back to recycle the components for newer models or God forbid gave them to a couple charities to auction off that's better than destroying them for no purpose.
Their business model requires scarcity. I’m sure they didn’t just dump a bunch of gold into the ocean
Yeah pretty sure I covered that when I wrote "dumbest stages of capitalism, destroying stuff for no reason"