Hacker News Reader

Comment by ndespres | Hacker News Reader

"YKK isn’t the kind of brand that markets to consumers. (Or seeks any kind of publicity: They declined to speak to me for this story.) You don’t buy your jeans and jackets by looking for their letters on that pull. Likewise, you almost certainly wouldn’t nix a garment purchase because the zipper isn’t YKK."

I guess I'm an exception here. If I want to wear a garment more than a few times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK. If they skimped on the zippers, who knows what else they skimped on.

View on HN

Unfortunately the skimpers are one step ahead of you: "Counterfeit YKK zippers are flooding the world market and undermining consumer confidence in your products." [1]

[1] http://www.ykk-usa.com/menu/faq/counterfeit1.html

Yeah, but you can pretty much always tell by actually trying it a few times. It's easy to stamp those letters in, but very hard to nail the quality.

It's their own fault. According to Wikipedia, "YKK has manufacturing facilities in 71 countries". If you spread you know-how all over the world in search of better margins, of course that creates copycat spin offs based on the same people and equipment.

Anyway, it could be just a lie. Any time a genuine overseas YKK factory puts out crap, they could just dump it on the market with the YKK boss' approval. Then spin a story about how it is counterfeit so as to try to protect the brand.

Maybe the only good YKK zipper is one that is actually made in Japan using the mythical 100 year old zipper-making machines.

>>>> If I want to wear a garment more than a few times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who does this. Can't tell you how many times I try on a hoodie or a pair of pants and the zipper is completely dodgy.

I come to the same conclusion. If you just skimped on the most important of my trousers, I'm assuming you believe the material is going to last very long either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com