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Comment by cushychicken | Hacker News Reader

I suspect targeted ads are a part of the phenomenon the article is talking about.

Since targeted ads got so cheap, tiny little businesses could buy super targeted social media ads for less money than they could selling their products wholesale at a store. Net result is that they can flood social media with targeted ads for some geoarbitraged thing that tiny startup found on AliExpress decided to sell DTC, and end run around consumer wholesaling and all rigamarole involved there.

The barrier to entry for that is super low. All you really need to be good at then is matchmaking some real niche product you found on Alibaba to a real niche consumer need.

Net result: lower prices, greater net profit for the company, tons of new entries to the game of social media enabled DTC.

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> flood social media with targeted ads for some geoarbitraged thing that tiny startup found on AliExpress decided to sell DTC

This is a gem of a phrase. I'm going to use 'geoarbitrage' from now on.

I live in a place full of this sort of nonsense, such as resold Clevo ODM notebooks, overly-cheap 'desktop projectors', overly-cheap TVs, water purifiers, and even air-conditioners. Oh, and the 'advertisers' are typically skimpily-dressed young women barely in university.

I simply refuse to buy anything that isn't European, Korean, Taiwanese, or Japanese for home appliances and electronics.

Brands like Miele, Bosch, Samsung, LG, Sony, Brother, Nikon, Philips, Smeg, Liebherr... They're usually up to 2-3x as expensive as the equivalent on AliExpress, but the quality and service is unbeatable.

I agree with the whole list except Samsung for appliances, I’ve had terrible experiences with them. I have a guy coming in for the 3rd time to fix my dishwasher - the first time he came in he found out the wrong chip was installed for this model

Funny, Kitchenaid and Wolf/Subzero are US made and most products I have owned from either are far superior to Japanese/Korean. For instance, my Samsun refrigerator is three years old now and has a poorly engineered ice maker that has been repaired twice, the light for freezer is now working intermittently, and the digital inverter with its obnoxious 10 year warranty sticker on the front of fridge is now is noisier than when it was brought into the house. I continue to use a kitchenaid dishwasher and microwave, 16 and 10 years old respectively, which still look and run amazing.

I never said anything at all about American brands; I simply don't get them where I live much (if at all). My LG refrigerator and dishwashers, Sharp microwave, and LG monitors + TV have all been working fairly well for several years.

That being said, personally dislike American brands but only because they usually advertise and use USC units, which make them hard to wrangle in a purely SI country.

My mom has an old-ass IFB dishwasher (Indian brand) that has outlived two of my Bosch dishwashers (currently using a Miele). And it was half the price!

Your argument breaks down as soon as there are economies of scale. Gillette can probably buy the same quality as Jeremy's at a better price, because they order larger bulk shipments. That means the new niche DTC companies will most likely be a worse value to consumers than the established big brands.

Also, the article links to a study which found DTC to be 10% more expensive than traditional retail.

> That means the new niche DTC companies will most likely be a worse value to consumers than the established big brands

Umm, I bought a no-name (but Gillette-compatible!) razor last week while travelling due to having left my usual kit at home.

Having used the no-name one for a week, I can no longer see any reason to pay the extra for a razor brand ever again.

As someone that has not changed razor blades in 5ish years, I'll warn that you probably can't generalize how well a razor will work for all skin and hair types. I'm thankful that I don't have issues with mine, but I also don't recommend others change.

Granted, I haven't looked at prices in a long time. I am mostly assuming not insane costs.

> Granted, I haven't looked at prices in a long time. I am mostly assuming not insane costs

I'm not sure what "insane" would mean in this contect, but replacement blades for the no-name Gillette clone I bought are half the price of original Gillette ones.

My week using the former showed that, for me at least, the performance of the latter really doesn't justify its price. YMMV.

I haven't bought blades in 5 years; so I don't have a gauge. I was underlining the YMMV for folks. I remember back when I was a lurker. :)

Lol I made absolutely no argument about product quality. All I point out is the underlying reason for a glut in companies selling stuff through social media advertising.

Economies of scale diminish quickly when overheads are low, which the tooling costs for making razors will be.

It's likely that even small companies are selling enough that these costs amortise to near zero.

That is not a bad theory, but I can't tell you the difference when I try using one of their shavers vs the store brand ones I usually get.

I also cannot tell the difference between that and just buying safety razor blades, though there is a huge advantage (for me) in the pivoting head.

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