Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

Guidelines:

Things that are well-made and durable (even if they won't last a lifetime) are A-Okay!

Unlike that other BIFL place, Home-made and DIY items are encouraged here, as long as some form of instruction is included in the body of the post.

Videos links are not allowed as post titles, but you may use them in a text post.

A limited amount of self-promotion is accepted, IF the item you are selling aligns with this criteria:

The item must be made with sustainable or recycled materials.
If electronic in some way, the item must be open-source.
The item must be user-serviceable (if applicable).
You cannot be a large corporation.
The post must be clearly marked with a [Self Promotion] tag in your title.

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The Instant Pot Failed Because It Was a Good Product (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] 2pt_perversion 183 points 2 months ago (3 children)

This is an older story. The narrative that it failed because it was too good is false. It was a private equity leveraged buyout that doomed it. The company got saddled with like 8x debt with a lot of that money going to dividends for the PE firm.

The product and the brand were strong enough that they've been sold to a different firm in the bankruptcy. If they are competently managed they should be fine.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago

The lede is buried at the end.

The problem is how the debts got there in the first place—in pursuit of growth for its own sake, of increased output with no clear needs that the new output would address.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What i still don't quite understand with these kind of buyouts is who lends them the money and who gets saddled with the debt? Surely banks know the drill and wouldn't want to borrow and hold debt for a company destined to fail in such a way.

Do banks get repaid before that happens and the only people being owed are small contractors and employees? Does the bank repackage the debt and sell it to someone else? Or are the interest payments high enough to just factor in losing part of the money borrowed with high certainty?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I’m guessing D) All of the above.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

competently managed lol

maybe a few years of it to pump up the value, before it's dumped again.