Jeremy Smith

Style Savage has a good breakdown on creating a wardrobe to last, and the concepts behind building such a thing.

[A] man’s wardrobe was like a house – he bought pieces of clothing and he maintained them so they would last, shirts were mended and ultimately their character was enhanced.

There’s very little ambiguity about the value of living and dressing this way. Less consumption, shorter supply chains, more local jobs.

Check out Bobby Orr’s old hockey bag. It was repaired again and again from getting punctured by his skates. These days, the bag wouldn’t be considered worth the time to stitch up, and likely, the material wouldn’t take it.

Therein lies the defense of higher pricepoints for “investment” pieces. If one could buy a new duffel for $15, why would they spend half an hour fixing it? Make the price of the piece truly reflect the labor and other costs, and the equation changes drastically. Same for everything from shirts to shoes.

There’s a higher up front cost, but a much smaller lifetime cost to everyone, not just yourself. Less time spent acquiring replacement goods, more time to enjoy what you have.

I’ve read a few good guides to email etiquette and getting responses. Recently, I had a couple of experiences where I was on the wrong end of miscommunication.

I read an entire email from a friend, mashed reply and asked them a question that I could have answered myself IF I HAD CLICKED THE LINK HE PROVIDED.

My new ideal email format:

Subject (Verify that if this is a reply, the content is still a part of the thread. Break out new subjects into a new email).

Greeting line

Context sentence to set the tone, unless the email is a reply to a thread.

Information to convey with links summarized and key points from links or attachments inline with the text.

Calls to action, placed last and together so each one gets attention, rather than forcing the recipient to do the work of finding action items in the email.

I’m going to try this template for a while and see if I get better responses with fewer follow up questions.

The story about Tropicana’s failed redesign wouldn’t have caught my attention or ire if I hadn’t read the Brand Week article referenced in the New York Times.

The part that bothered me:

Here is the capper: Tropicana wanted a physical mnemonic for the brand. The design team at the Arnell Group took half of a mid-season orange and created a cap that mimicked its peel in both color and texture… The cap is made from a special gauge of plastic with a soft rebound to it, he said. “It’s got a tactile quality, not unlike an orange. It helped us create a whole new ritual for Tropicana.

Clever, but completely and entirely irresponsible. Creating a new plastic, non-renewable widget to sell a purportedly natural product seem counter-productive. The entire process of creating a new piece of plastic is destructive, even if the end-product can be recycled.

This was a golden opportunity to reinvent the packaging to reduce waste and materials, or the product to be pesticide-free, and they blew it on a squishy piece of rubber that no-one noticed or cared about.

Seth is right, marketers can be evil. And dumb. In this case, more dumb than evil.

Patagonia recently announced that most of their footwear can be resoled by Mountain Soles out of Portland.

Resoling is nothing new to footwear, up until maybe 25 years ago. Shoes now have enough externalized costs that it makes more financial sense to throw them out and buy a new pair whenever the old ones are done. Blundstone encourages this behavior on their website, claiming:

“There have been many technical advances in footwear construction methods, which enable volume manufacturers to produce a quality product economically. As a company we have expanded our use of this technology, particularly through the use of direct injection sole moulding in preference to the method of ’sticking on soles’. The security of the sole bond and the economies realised through adopting this technology, make it impractical to repair and resole footwear…”

However, a little bit of research (ok, 30 seconds and Google), and I found out that my boots can get new soles for the princely sum of $65. Not a bad deal for boots I paid $120 for 5 years ago. I’m sending my boots in early next month, to see how it comes out.

There are better choices than after-market hacks for dealing with poorly thought-out (at least from the re-use / re-new side of the sustainability picture) footwear. Alden, Allen-Edmonds, Russell, White’s, Wesco, and a few other companies make shoes and boots that can be rebuilt, and usually for significantly less than a new pair of shoes.

None of these companies make an inexpensive product, but they’re made in the US, of quality materials. No global wage or environmental arbitrage is used to offset the cost of production, unlike the average pair of sneakers.

What’s the upside in this for retailers and marketers? This is another facet of selling less as more. One pair of White’s is going to cost your customer the same as 3 or 4 pairs of Kenneth Cole or what-have-you, but last well more than 4 times as long. Much longer, when you counted recrafting. It’s a value, rather than price sale.

From my twitter, a little bit ago :

“Small and impeccably curated is the new huge and miscellaneous.”