Cheap goods have a short useable life.
Chinese and Korean goods don’t last.
So they cost much more eventually.
In every single category of consumer goods, market share goes to the cheapest products. These products are cheap because they use inferior components which have a lower design life. Thinner sheets, corroding metals, low end recycled plastics in place of high life virgin polymers etc. There is no avenue for cost reduction that is spared. There is no technology of any kind. The same contract manufacturer makes products for all vendors.
LG, Samsung, Hitachi or Voltas. They all use the same poor quality parts from China. They may be energy efficient, transport efficient and price efficient. But they have no life. Design life is three years. The company does not provide spares after that to make sure the product has to be scrapped. Service engineers are trained to recommend replacement and not repair.
Even the scrap dealers are troubled. Recycling doesn’t work because it all gets corroded. There is hardly any copper in the transformer or motor. The product weighs very little. And it ceases to work well after a year. The only place for the goods is a landfill.
Refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, microwaves, monitors, air conditioners are filling landfills.
But it need not be so. It is possible to build long life products. Even though upfront costs are more, the effective cost per year is much much lower. It is far more sustainable. On an overall basis, long life products:
– conserve foreign exchange
– conserve the environment
– cost less
– do not corrode
– are safer to operate
– work better
– provide more employment
– have longer useful life
– are good for the country
Given a choice between a more sustainably manufactured product and a longer lasting product, choose the latter. There is no point buying thrice (and manufacturing thrice) and filling three times the volume in a land fill.
Visiting a Dixon factory is an embarrassment and an insult to every living Indian. Thousands of Onsians are working like human robots. It is a matter of time before robots replace them all. In China they already have.
THE REGULATORS HAVE TO STEP IN URGENTLY TO ENSURE THAT ALL PRODUCTS CARRY DATAILS ON:
– GUARANTEED LIFE OF THE PRODUCT
– DURATION FOR WHICH SPARES WOULD BE PROVIDED
– WARRANTY DETAILS
India and Indians are being taken for a ride by companies like LG and Samsung selling pure unadulterated junk. They sell products that they would never sell in their home country. They use components that they would never use in their home country.
They import everything
They export nothing.
They buy from contract mfrs
They don’t even have their own design
It is not just the Koreans and Chinese. Even Japanese companies have caught up. Hitachi makes the worlds shortest life air conditioners in Gujarat. They do not have a single Japanese component in the aircon. Same with Sony.
What have we come down to as a country.
