this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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Single Purpose Devices
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This is bullshit, IMO.
It's profitable. It's just not as profitable as being a douchebag with business decisions - like enshittification and planned obsolescence. The moment you try to to publicly fund your company, you suddenly have a fiduciary duty to your investors to maximize returns. And let's face it, appliance manufacturing has high up front costs that will likely require an IPO to satisfy your initial private investors.
Just because you make quality appliances doesn't mean you can't make money maintaining and manufacturing parts for quality appliances.
I'm not talking about companies trying to make a buck for investors. Fuck investors. I'm just talking financial sustainability. It's more about maintaining inflow to keep up with outflow than building wealth. I'm trying to consider the viability for that kind of company, even privately owned. I mean, best case is you find investors who dont want a return, but want to do good. But that being nearly impossible (the rich got rich for a reason), private is probably your best bet. But still, I guess you'd want vertical integration and a commitment to long-term support and part recycling. If you make most of your parts, sustaining a commitment to support should be easier. That way, you have complete control over each part of the process and arent beholden to any more suppliers than you absolutely need to be. But you're essentially running several businesses at that point instead of one, so some costs go up. You need a bunch of different kinds of licenses and certs, depending on your part variability. Like, your PCB manufacturing section will need completely different facilities, approvals, licenses, management skillsets (so extra employees, skills dont transfer) etc compared to milling metal, assembly, or casting plastic. It's not something a lot of companies do because of the upfront cost and longer time to make it up. Going with 3rd party suppliers not necessarily always out of impatience, but because a reliable supplier is just cheaper. And if you get to the point of having to charge 3x your competitors because they can afford to undercut you, most consumers will not be choosing you. Sales drop to the point you can't afford to operate and, again, unless you have deep pockets to cover it.
It's a malicious environment for any kind of good-willed company to thrive. Price-undercuts work, and people dont always spend with long-term cost and company ethics in mind. They should, imo, but they simply dont always do that. And many can't afford to save up for the better or more ethical version, because they need one today and payday isn't for another week.
If you're a good company, you're already at a disadvantage because you have more lines you won't cross to keep yourself going. Amd te simplest way to offset the disadvantage is either deep pockets or luck.