It goes without saying that capitalism sucks and corporations suck. I don’t have loyalty to any “brand”. But I do care about me and my comrades being able to afford to live.
There’s that phrase that “it’s expensive to be poor”, which I think is very true. When you’re poor, you can only afford the cheapest commodities. These inevitably break, so you have to spend more money on a replacement.
I’m trying to break out of this cycle myself as much as possible. Instead of buying the cheapest replacement, I’m trying to save up my money to buy a replacement that will last. Unfortunately, researching this is hard. There’s so much astroturfing and “sponsored content”. So I figured I’d ask my fellow hexbears, what products do you know of are made in a way that they will last and actually cost less than buying replacements? There’s a few suggestions I can offer:
I used to work in a pretty solid outdoor gear store, and I was really impressed with the Deuter backpacks. They were always really durable and cheaper than Osprey. I have one I bought in 2007 and I still use it regularly today.
I own a Casio G-Shock watch. The “squares” are usually relatively affordable. The bands and batteries can be swapped out. I’m pretty tough on mine and it still looks mint. I do expect I’ll be wearing mine for a very long time. Or if you don’t want to spend money the F-91W is like $10 and still works well even though it’s not ruggedized. Worn by Bin Laden, too.
Something in the ideal category of durable and cheap are Sungait sunglasses. They’re like $15-$20 each and have UV400 protection. Mine have lasted a while and have handled a lot of being thrown around
As a parent, we have some Hape toys our kids beat up and they stay together well. My wife bought some Primary dot com clothes thinking they would last but they don’t seem any better than the super cheap clothes at Walmart or Target we normally buy.
I don't usually recommend them because I assume their supply chain is likely very fluid and the quality can change at a moments notice. But I have bought 3 KAKA backpacks over the last 10 years and they have been pretty good quality and durable. they are not as dirt cheap as they used to be, but still actually cheaper than some lower quality backpacks. The last one I bought 4 years ago is still holding up and almost like new. The camping/cargo backpack has a really weird design that I don't like though.
3 backpacks in 10 years isn't a stellar lifetime imo
There were two different types. I got two every day backpacks. The first I still use as a gym bag. The plastic on the zipper pulls wore out and I replaced with paracord and one of the internal dividers ripped out at a seam after 6 years. It is still very usable, I just demoted it to a gym bag because of these issues. And these issues were fixed in the newer version I bought. I still have the camping backpack, it just has a weird and bad design, which is why I stopped using it.