Carhartt

Carhartt

With all this talk about Kodak and the mess they have gotten themselves into… Seems Kodak’s only innovations in digital photography were spurred by working with Apple back when Apple created that first consumer digital camera. Apple quickly moved to Fuji seeing how well Kodak was being run.

Anyway, I wanted to say something nice for a change about an American company.

That would be Carhartt.

I love Carhartt and they are still that mythological ”family owned” business out of some small town in Kentucky we all love to think all our companies should be run just like this. Unfortunately with ever present examples like Levi Strauss that’s a pipe dream. See, unlike Levi Strauss… Carhartt has maintained a focus on making clothes that fit the price range and function of their customers.

For example… Used to be you could get a pair of Levi 501s at a reasonable price usually on sale and they would last forever through literally years of washing and wearing. Not any more! 501s fall apart in a relatively short period of time of a few months and frankly they feel thin and cheaply made even on the rack. Unless you buy those really expensive handmade jeans they sell on the Levi Strauss website but who the hell wants to pay that much for jeans?

Levi Strauss decided to only support those upscale customers willing to fork over major cash for their denim and if you don’t they sell you the cheapest made crap they got. Same name as the expensive pair and all that but what you are getting is still bottom barrel rags. Levi’s I guess, are for the haves now not the have nots.

Carhartt may not make the softest flannel shirt around and yeah you can find cheaper poorly made shirts and pants like Levi makes for the factory outlet stores. Pendleton another American company I like a lot does really nice flannel shirts but you pay more for them. Unlike Pendleton shirts these dang Carhartt flannels will let you wash them a million times over and they will last and they are still as rugged and well sewn as the day you bought them. Pendleton’s usually end up going to the dry cleaner which means I do not wear them all that often.

Carhartt red long johns and thermals now are legendary. I survived this winter wearing them every day.

So fuck Kodak and hell, fuck Levi Strauss. I don’t care if crappy run companies that make outdated or cheaply made products go out of business. Who cares? That is just the way things should be.

Let’s be smart for a change. Show love to those American companies like Carhartt or Pendleton or West Coast Shoe Company or Vanson that remain smart and healthy and concerned about serving their customers making the type of products worth buying. Quit moaning about the demise of those companies that never adapted to this digital age or did so at the expense of short changing their hard working customers by importing the cheapest Chinese made crap they could find. The difference in quality of products between say a Walmart or Amazon and something worth investing money in like Apple.

Let’s face the facts we should have let those American car & airline companies go bust. They did not change anything about the way they failed at business to begin with. Keeping around junk peddlers and crappy companies just for the supposed “jobs” is not helping anyone but the stock brokers and all those Wall Street board of directors types that keep getting their cushy paychecks for doing nothing to make their companies better or their products more sensible or practical. You are rewarding the wrong people and the American workers end up getting canned anyway.

When the Agency Six publishers start going under please try not to whine about it online. They deserve what they get and have deserved our utter distain for a very long time now.

Tags: That's Not eBooks