If you wear glasses, you’ve
probably been mightily annoyed when the screw
dropped out of your glasses and then fell
into the car seat, never to be found again.
If you’re one of those organized types,
you might even have had an extra case with
a tiny screwdriver and extra screws so you
could repair your glasses—providing
you could see what you were doing without
your glasses! And unless you have the manual
dexterity of an eight year old on a mission
to get big candy out of a small box, forget
it.
We made tiny
locking eyeglass screws for a glasses
company, and they were fantastic.
With our locking screws, people’s
glasses lasted on average, two years
instead of four months; the previous
average life expectancy of their
glasses. Market research has found
that if glasses break inside of four
months, customers tend to return
them for replacement of refund, but
after four months, they think the
breakage must be their own fault.
So, the planned obsolescence for
their eyeglasses is right about at
that four month mark.
You might say
we screwed up. Our locking glasses screws
lasted so long, they negatively impacted
sales. The product was too good; it lasted
longer and people were satisfied with
their purchases. The company decided
to return to the cheap screws they’d
used before. |
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