Alfred "Pappy" Brunet
July 30, 2009
Joseph Henry Elkins
August 3, 2009“Papa, my bike has a flat tire.” Those were the words my granddaughter uttered last weekend in a plea for help.
“No problem,” I replied, at which time I grabbed a brand new tire pump my wife had purchased the prior day. It was a foot pump with a built-in pressure gauge, and after I attached it to the tire, I stepped on the pedal and began to pump.
After the first compression of the pump, the rubber cover fell off of the foot pedal. I tried to put it back on, but it kept falling off.
After a few more compressions, the pedal began bending. It eventually tipped on its side, resulting in the cover falling off of the pressure gauge. I tried to put the cover back on but noticed the cheap, thin plastic ring that had covered the gauge was broken in half.
“Where did you buy this pump?” I asked my wife. Her answer was “Wal-Mart.”
In our demand for the lowest price, we have created a market for increasingly low-quality products.
When I was a child, Japan was the country making such products, and my father would never buy things made in Japan. He was raised on the philosophy that if you bought quality merchandise and took care of it, it would last a lifetime.
I remember being an impatient teenager and hating to wash tools every time we did yard work. We couldn’t just hose off a shovel, it had to be scrubbed, and the lawnmower was squeaky clean when we finished with it.
As a result, when I became an adult, I embraced the philosophy of buying discount merchandise and throwing it away when it rusted or broke.
My first lawnmower was purchased from Wal-Mart for $99 and lasted for over 10 years without washing or painting. A clock radio I purchased about the same time was just retired.
Our generation created the disposable society, and the ramifications are only now being felt.
As Wal-Mart’s sales increased, the discount merchandise they sold from Japan and Taiwan ran quality manufacturers in America out of business. It would not take long before quality was no longer an option. Purchasing decisions would have to be based exclusively on price.
Eventually, even products made in Japan and Taiwan weren’t cheap enough. Manufacturers began moving to China for what would become the next level of quality degradation. Much of the merchandise now sold at discount stores would be labeled by my father as “junk,” if he were alive today.
The $99 lawnmower I bought at Wal-Mart in 1989 made of steel and aluminum is now increasingly being made of plastic. Whereas a clock radio might last 20 years when purchased in 1989, you’d be lucky to keep today’s clock radios running after two years. In the case of the bicycle pump, it didn’t even last long enough to fill up one tire.
I remember stories of empty store shelves in the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, but in America today, the shelves are equally as empty – of products that work.
This all happened because we put price before quality, but this trend can be reversed. If the need for quality increases, manufacturers adjust to meet this need. A quality product can last a long time and pay for itself in a short time.
Tomorrow, I intend to ask Wal-Mart for a refund on the cheap bicycle pump, and then I’m headed to the bicycle shop to see if a quality option is available.
I also intend to take better care of what I buy … who knows, I may even start washing my lawnmower.
