Post Capitalism

The Road to Profit

The road to profit is paved with a lack of responsibility. The Google rating of the most profitable companies is usually around 3 stars. Let’s see why this is! Typically, companies strive to sell in quantity and not to provide quality service, and when any problem arises, they try to solve it as quickly as possible in order to invest the fewest working hours in which equals money for solving a problem. This is a typical case where the dealer is only interested in sales only until the point where the purchase price has been paid. In the era of high-volume E-commerce, this common phenomenon can cause a lot of headaches for customers.

Shipping Nightmares

The goal of the game is to pass all responsibility to the end user or at least try to. This is done in several phases. Let’s start from the beginning. Until a product arrives to the end user, it goes through several logistics processes. It is not uncommon for a package to travel huge distances that leads across countries. For this reason, the role of the courier services is significant. A very common practice for shipping companies to use the General Terms and Conditions as a protective shield and hide behind it to avoid responsibility for damages caused by mishandling. Such are, for example, the requirements regarding the packaging that the shipment must withstand a 1 meter drop, which is quite unrealistic for many products due to its weight or fragility factor. Unfortunately, it is clear that the goal is to avoid compensation.

We also have to realize that this legal maneuver is necessary because if all of their employees were to pay for broken goods when the courier drops one, no one would want to work as a courier anymore. However, even this would be an avoidance on the part of the company, because the responsibility than would lie directly on the employee, so the company as an entity still does not assume the financial risk. There have already been examples for this practice, and partly because of it the logistics costs have risen significantly recently. At the moment, the insurance options that can be purchased for extra fees give customers some reassurance, however, the cunningly crafted conditions also give plenty of room for rubber rules, which can always be extended in such a way that the profit stays at the company.

B2B Risks

Before the product reaches the consumer from the dealer, it has already traveled a long way, as it must also travel from the manufacturer to the distributor. This also has a cost and even more formal obstacles that can stand between the trading company and its planned profit. Such a general problem, for example, is that in the case of goods traveling from China or other long distanced location, the product must withstand the vicissitudes of transportation. We can think here of containers that heats up in which case it can be up to 60 degrees while the sun bakes them for weeks, but even the cold can damage or completely destroy certain goods.

If it cannot exceed this temperature tolerance level, it is not suitable for international commercial distribution and can only be spread in local circulation, as it will not survive the transportation. Many Chinese manufacturers use the reprehensible practice of selling scrap goods that have already arrived faulty from the production line in the same way as their new products that passes the tests, and then exempt themselves from a refund of the purchase price or any kind of warranty administration by referring to improper transportation, thus leaving the dealer in a vulnerable position. Leaving no other choice but to swallow the loss or trickily pass it on to the end user. For this exact reason the European Union was introduced not long ago that it is now mandatory to give the end user a 2 year warranty thus curbing the influx of huge amounts of garbage.

Old Tricks New Problems

Unfortunately, planned obsolescence is a common business concept well known to everyone. The realization by the manufacturers happened surprisingly early in the 1900s, when they began to deliberately produce light bulbs with shorter and shorter lifespans in order to generate higher sales numbers. Nowadays, the situation is no different, companies try to make more profit in the same way, using old classic recipes such as the generation of artificial shortages. Here we can think of the pharmaceutical industry, where the production of ADHD pills was limited, which was a direct path to the price increase, which Ben Jordan also reported in his recent video. An event of historical importance in 2020 that is very closely related to our profession is the incident at the AKM factory, during which a significant part of the production line burned down, and thus the deservedly popular converter chips were unavailable for a long time, and the remaining stock was bought up by companies at a significantly higher price.

Previously, in the 80s, there was a record long waiting time for new cars, which meant up to 4-5 years in some countries. Fortunately, we are currently talking about months instead of years, but this is also much more than usual. ATC, one of the most popular high end studio monitor brands for mastering studios, is no different. Currently, they can deliver with an average waiting time of 6 weeks, but a few years ago, in the case of some popular models, this interval crept up to 9 months. In the case of the justly popular Dynaudio subs, there was a similar fluctuation in supply, and dealers kept waiting lists of several months. Another essential device for studios is the audio interface, here the well-known RME products, which suffered the most from the AKM chip shortage mentioned earlier, had an even longer waiting time, which only increased the sales prices, since those who got them could call themselves really lucky. Later they even marked their devices that used the traditional old AKM chips and distinguished those that used the new ESS Sabre versions.

Definition of Post Capitalism

Capitalism’s competition should basically bring the best possible services and products as the result of actions necessary for the sake of profit, so companies should outbid each other in order to pamper consumers with products that are more and more durable and surpass previous generations in quality, but this competition turned very backwards and strictly focuses only on profit. It is often dishonest by using methods that are particularly harmful to customers. The consumer society has become so dependent on the manufacturers that they will buy anyway no matter how bad the products are thus “the new iPhone meme” has become a reality. Unfortunately, several industries have chosen to cheapout and simultaneously increase their prices as a new strategy. As a response to this, many new companies will be born that want to represent the old values, but the raw material situation and taxes that affect manufacturers can easily lead them to the dark side too, where they have to play tricks to stay alive.

Fight back!

These cheapout trends called many DIY enthusiasts to step in the game and teach big companies a lesson. For example We can build the products of the very popular PMC brand for a tenth of the original price or I could even mention ATC as We saw a team of professional sound engineers develop their own brand from a basic idea that was only aimed at building ATC clones for themselves in their own studio. But as the reality of the market gap was proven the price of their products is also significantly increased over time with further product development.

We can’t do anything about the worldwide processes, such as hyperinflation or the withholding of raw materials for political purposes. However, We can buy smartly and sometimes even build for ourselves, as We saw in the previous examples. Building a PMC clone, for example, is a bucket list project even for us! Of course, We can start small.

For example, the purchase of patch cables, an essential accessories for our modular synthesizers, was the point where We felt that We had enough of the poor quality and that We can confidently manufacture for ourselves. Going beyond this basic need, We started product development purely out of passion and a completely unique design was created, which We now sell as our own brand. This is an excellent example of how, with a little effort and research, We can already save a lot and free ourselves from vulnerability.

If you need expert advice before buying, feel free to contact us in such topics as follows:

• studio build
• workspace design
• 500 series modules
• 19′ rack effects