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Go read the story… the east german manufacturer tried exporting it, but resellers thought selling virtually unbreakable glassware was a bad business. Same thing happened with the GE/Osram cartel for pushing shorter lived incandescent lamps to the market.

It’s naive to believe only buyer behavior drives what products are available, when the market is fixed to limit offer. You’re probably confused between the meaning of capitalism and free market.

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The Phoebus cartel isn't comparable, because incandescent lamps have an inherent tradeoff between lifespan and efficiency. Most of the output of an incandescent lamp is infrared. Running it hotter shifts it more into the visible spectrum, increasing lumens per watt, but also makes the filament fail sooner.

It's easier to sell long-life lamps than high-efficiency lamps (bulb failures are obvious, but few people had the test equipment to measure efficiency of individual bulbs). The cartel avoided competition on lifespan that would have wasted a lot of electricity.

Market fixing as you are describing is generally short lived.

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