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- Hacker News
- I've been wearing the same pair of shoes for (Vans Camacho) twelve years now because I cannot find any that actually fit my feet. Vans made these shoes that I purchased over and over again for ten years, but discontinued them in 2016. I've had to learn cobbling to some degree to keep these shoes going, though now the bottoms of the soles are so thin that my big toe might finally wear through them in the next year. It is ridiculous that in twelve years I haven't been able to find a replacement for something so simple.by Tanoc
- I'm so impressed by your ability to keep them going but it looks like ebay still has a ton of pairs of them if you want to stock up.by hn_user82179
- I have a discontinued shoe that I really like and I've had great luck getting them on eBay lightly used. I keep a few spare pairs and swap individual shoes out as they wear. You might be concerned about odor/cleanliness but I've had a good success rate, the sellers with good reviews that are doing this professionally have the hygiene program down pat.by rickypp
- >3 .. what could be done to support a customer's choice for years?
Nothing lasts forever: be it websites you visit, your favorite food and the recipes and ingredients used, the clothes you wear or even the people and living things around you.
You can only delay the inevitable, but with perishable goods or clothing that will break over time? Buy more! Like those shoes? Pants? That special hoodie? Buy a few of them.
Not only will you have backups of that awesome item you love in case something bad happens, the wear and tear will also take longer as you are not using that same item over and over again.
Good luck out there and stay safe!
- It's all very tedious. This happens a lot with pretty mundane staples like socks, underwear, bedding, towels, umbrellas, headphones, ...
These are all "semi-durable" items that get a lot of wear and tear and inevitably need to be replaced every year or two. There really are definite quality differences, and you don't want cheap and nasty, but there's also no point overpaying because anything you get will need replacement in the not too distant future, and it's not like any of these items are status symbols.
There are often a lot of marketing hijinks in this space, like "Ralph Lauren" bedding or "Nautica" towels or whatever, where it is clear that the brand is just licensed by some no-name bedding company for product differentiation, instead of developing their own brand known for quality.
There are (very few) brands that mostly stick to a good, pretty consistent middle-market level of quality/consistency. e.g. people have mentioned Levis for jeans, LL Bean is pretty good for bedding & clothing and basically have a modest range pretty consistent / high quality stuff for shirts, trousers, etc. Crate & Barrel, Marimekko, etc. are also good usually.
I do sometimes wonder if a website/store/brand for consistently good, go-to staples could work. Something like Muji or Uniqlo, or costco "kirkland", or "amazon basics", where the store/house brand is consistently good over time, and there are few other options. I imagine it would be hard to really offer the same consistency over time with shifting supply chains/manufacturers etc, but you could try, or where that's not possible have some "transition"/"upgrade path" like our old model A sucks are no longer available, the closest new options are B, which is slightly thicker, or C, which is slightly longer.
Alternatively, there's NYT wirecutter or Consumer Reports and such that basically just tell you the right few options and cut through all the gimicky chaff.
I guess this is basically what we lost when department stores went away - a curated, modest selection of go-to items at your price point has now been replaced with millions of options, 98% of which are awful.
- "I do sometimes wonder if a website/store/brand for consistently good, go-to staples could work."
This is very close to what I want to build — basic items that don't change after 1, 5, or 20 years. The same material, color, and style. I can't solve this problem for every item on the planet. I'm starting with a T-shirt. )
by GreenPencil7 - Happens in Software and Hardware too.
Company develops product A with a crack team of developers, cutting edge stuff. Product is shipped, so the star developers go off to another project or are put in lousy roles and leave. Product doesn't change for a few years and is in maintenance mode.
When time comes to crank out a new version, those hotshot developers are gone and the new crew doesn't quite get it - they want to change the tool-chain from X to Y, remove that overly complex (but very useful) feature, radically change the UX, incorporate AI, etc. New version is mostly compatible but way different.
Seen that happen all too often.
by LarryMade2 - I’ve had this happen with the clothes I get from Patagonia. What was only a few years ago a thick plaid button down is now thin and not nearly as warm. And Patagonia still makes good stuff! But I do wonder if it’s time to start shopping around again.by dividedcomet
- take a intl trip and buy stuff from locals.
like the tribal type of people who live close or off the land.
it won’t be cheap but you also won’t be paying 60% of the price for the brand name alone.
that kinda stuff is so high quality and lasts forever. plus it looks dope af compared to whatever you can buy from a retail store made by a mix of man and machine.
by moomoo11 - Slightly related. This reminds me of this article: https://pudding.cool/2026/02/womens-sizing/
Sizing chaos (pudding.cool)
827 points by zdw 5 months ago | 435 comments
It's not about discontinuing items but about the industry incentives that seemingly go against logic making it impossible for most women to find fitting clothes.
Quotes:
"While there are no universal sizing standards, an organization called ASTM International regularly releases informal guidelines." "There are no regulations or universal sizing standards. Instead each brand is incentivized to make up its own. When size guides change — and they’re always changing — brands are not obligated to disclose updates."
by fsflover - Pah at least women get a decent number of sizes. Where are my Extra Medium t-shirts?by IshKebab
- I have the T shirt problem myself. My solution is quite simple. I have bought 500 of the shirt I like the most. My style is grayscale, so I bought greys and blacks. I’ve been wearing the same shirt style for over a decade and have only utilized about 30-40 shirts.
I do this with deodorant, soap, and shaving supplies too.
by conductr - Great solution! It completely solves the problem of favorite things disappearing.
I don't have the money to buy 500 T-shirts. And I don't have the space for them either. So I started thinking: what if we made T-shirts where the important thing is to keep them exactly the same, never change them, and never discontinue them? I'm talking specifically about T-shirts. If you knew such an option existed, would it have affected your decision about the T-shirts?
by GreenPencil7 - Your logic breaks down at the critical point of sourcing: not only must we have the means of production and the schematics, we also need the original materials required to create the stuff. If we lose access to the original materials, or if they are no longer available, then the rest of the chain doesn't matter.
However, I do find promise in one aspect of your idea: an infinite archival catalogue of items-that-once-were. Then, you can link to things like, as others have mentioned, eBay listings where you can still find the "originals.'
by summarybot - Yes, that's a good point. Schematics, manufacturing, and patterns are powerless if the original materials disappear or change. I haven't researched this yet, but I assume that the same variety of apples, cotton, paint pigment, or grapes will be different if it is grown in different countries. Even though it's the same variety. And that's a problem.
I have a hypothesis that it's possible to make the paint independent of the supplier, so that it is the same paint every time, after 1, 5, and 20 years. We can standardize not the raw material, but the result. Using paint as an example, it's possible to create a digital color passport, and then comparing the standard with the incoming raw materials will allow us to identify the difference and compensate for it. This would make it possible to achieve a color that does not depend on the place of production or on time.
I don't know if this will work in practice. I think this kind of engineering solution could bring us closer to the idea of unchanging clothing.
What do you think?
by GreenPencil7 - There might be something to this. It does seem older models of things are better than newer models of things. So it could be the drive to lower costs and increase profits are causing this, at the appliance, car, etc. level.
It doesn't explain why every couple of years I have another four or six pairs of yet another set of socks, from the same company, but with enough variation that now I have multiple different generations of CK socks that aren't pairable.
by mancerayder - > It doesn't explain why every couple of years I have another four or six pairs of yet another set of socks, from the same company, but with enough variation that now I have multiple different generations of CK socks that aren't pairable.
Most sock brands don't actually produce socks, they license the brand name out to third-party textile manufacturers to make the product.
They'll often switch partnerships to new manufacturers which has a drastic impact on the produced product in terms of materials, feel, overall quality, etc.
In many cases they even license the brand out to multiple manufacturers simultaneously, using different manufacturers for higher end stores than cheaper department stores, so even in the same time period you could get very different socks of the same style from the same brand depending upon where you buy them.
Same core problem as typical cost-cutting enshittification -- everything is hyper-optimized to extract the maximum amount of value at the expense of every other consideration.
by georgemcbay - That's why I repurpose or discard all of my old socks every time I Invest in a new set. I do this about every two years. I rotate them for uniform wear. I've successfully eliminated the possibility of mismatched socks.by LandStander
- > Where does my logic break down? What am I overlooking?
(1) Clothing manufacturing is a lot more complicated than sockets
(2) Generally products aren't discontinued because they're popular. So what you're describing is a lot of cost, for products that a lot of people don't care about.
(3) Even if someone did write up a spec for a t-shirt—what would you do with it?
(4) The need for standards is a lot more important for things like sockets which have multiple ends, and need to ensure that both sides work consistently, than for things like a piece of clothing where there's a single wearer at a time.
by mcphage - > Where does my logic break down? What am I overlooking?
You're in a room of software developers who keep breaking and changing everyone's "favorite everyday" workflows, every time a piece of software is changed.
Even something as dumb as changing a design language is the same thing as a brand discontinuing your favorite every day item. Why did my UX have to get ugly for no reason? Why can't I go back? people cry out.
What do we do to support peoples' choice of software over the longterm when they can't choose to 'roll back'?
Your favorite T-shirt is still available for sale. It's just got a giant black box strapped to the back of it called AI. The t-shirt companies said that's good for you so you have to wear it now.
by kotaKat - Discontinuing a product breaks the cost-comparision chain. It makes it easier to increase prices or reduce quality without direct backlash. Releasing new products also makes for marketing announcements that work like advertisement (or is advertisement directly).by explorigin
- A consumer watch dog that meticulously tracks equivalents to combat this would be an interesting project.by CSSer