"YKK isn’t the kind of brand that markets to consumers. (Or seeks any kind of publicity: They declined to speak to me for this story.) You don’t buy your jeans and jackets by looking for their letters on that pull. Likewise, you almost certainly wouldn’t nix a garment purchase because the zipper isn’t YKK."
I guess I'm an exception here. If I want to wear a garment more than a few times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK. If they skimped on the zippers, who knows what else they skimped on.
Unfortunately the skimpers are one step ahead of you: "Counterfeit YKK zippers are flooding the world market and undermining consumer confidence in your products." [1]
It's their own fault. According to Wikipedia, "YKK has manufacturing facilities in 71 countries". If you spread you know-how all over the world in search of better margins, of course that creates copycat spin offs based on the same people and equipment.
Anyway, it could be just a lie. Any time a genuine overseas YKK factory puts out crap, they could just dump it on the market with the YKK boss' approval. Then spin a story about how it is counterfeit so as to try to protect the brand.
Maybe the only good YKK zipper is one that is actually made in Japan using the mythical 100 year old zipper-making machines.
>>>> If I want to wear a garment more than a few times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who does this. Can't tell you how many times I try on a hoodie or a pair of pants and the zipper is completely dodgy.
I come to the same conclusion. If you just skimped on the most important of my trousers, I'm assuming you believe the material is going to last very long either.
"The EU’s General Court backed the European Commission’s fines of 150 million euros ($187 million) for YKK, based in Tokyo, and 110 million euros for Coats in 2007 over cartels involving fasteners and related machinery, one of which ran for more than 21 years. The EU said at the time that the zipper market was worth about 400 million euros a year and the market for other metal fasteners was worth 200 million euros."
> The Commission has found four separate infringements in which these companies agreed on coordinated price increases, fixed minimum prices, allocated customers, shared markets and exchanged other commercially important and confidential information
I lived in China for a while and had the occasion to experience the constant frustration that accompanies Chinese zippers. Zipping down your fly and not knowing whether you will be able to zip up. Taking 5 minutes every morning to zip up your kid's raincoat. And my favorite, having a "Golden Harvest" backpack zipper fail while on the bus and spilling its contents on the floor. Ever since then, I always make sure the zippers on my clothes are YKK.
I've bought plenty of bags, outdoor clothing, etc. which specifically advertise "YKK zippers" as a feature, similar to Gore-Tex, Vibram, or Thinsulate, so I suspect at least among "technical" consumers, YKK does have enough brand recognition and following.
I suspect many people who've ever idly looked at a zip will have noticed the letters "YKK" on them, and at least a few of those people will have made it to YKK's Wikipedia page, which is at least equally as informative as this article.
I was a bit confounded by this sentence: "The precision necessary to craft a working bicycle chain or a smoothly meshing zipper was simply beyond us for all those prior millennia." Surely the author means to write "The precision necessary to craft ... on a massive scale"; of course we've been able to build things requiring comparable or greater precision for centuries, but to build the machines necessary to mass-produce them is a relatively recent innovation. Or perhaps he was just joking.
Roller bearings are old, but no one ever made a ball bearing until the bicycle era. They grew up together, and the first ball bearing equipped bicycles dominated competition about a century ago. Ball bearings were the carbon fiber of their era.
I don't think ball mfgr technology of a level of roundness and surface quality suitable for ball bearings was compatible with ancient technology. The metalurgy would be highly questionable but that aspect would be possible.
You are partially correct that roller chain could have been built by ancient craftsmen if they had the idea, but the invention credit is about a century ago. The metalurgy would have been questionable, the ancients would have ended up with chain links the size of your fist, which would have screwed up weight and power transmission making a v-belt a lot more likely. I'm surprised bicycles don't try v-belts.
Well, those look like kilodollar+ custom jobs. I guess I was thinking more stereotypical department store bike from China, where the mechanics aren't generally much of a priority so introducing something isn't very dangerous.
You can either shove innovation in at the top where R+D fits in the budget, or at the bottom where reliability is never assumed anyway.
With a standard frame the chain goes through the rear triangle. To install and replace the chain you need to be able to open it at a master link to get it around that piece of the frame. Both the v-belt and frame do best if you don't open them.
I think that this is only part of the story. It isn't only that we didn't possess the technology to mass-produce these things, we also lacked the need to produce these things at all, let alone in mass-quantities.
The need for a chain that is used to transfer energy between two gears, like a bicycle chain, would only be apparent to you if you had a regular source of energy, like say an electric motor or internal combustion engine. After realizing that these things could be used to turn motors at unprecedented speeds, you would naturally look for ways to more efficiently transfer energy between the motor and a receiving point to harness the energy for something useful. Then you would design a system of gears and chains.
I haven't upvoted but found it mildly interesting. Point that I found interesting were mostly:
* one company dominates the market for zippers by essentially capturing the middle ground of "good product with a wide range of options, reasonably priced and flawless execution"
* the example of a company dominating the market with what seems to counter the trend of outsourcing, producing everything in house, which means keeping the knowledge in and full control over the quality. A bit like Apple in that regard.
It's more like a lightweight snack for my brain than a full meal, useless but interesting knowlege, but I also read Now I Know. May or may not be a submarine, but made me check the zippers on my hoodie (YKK :)
Yeah. I found it neat that this company dominates the industry by making a quality product, not by acquiring and enforcing a centuries-long monopoly on an idea.
I upvoted. I didn't know that stuff and found it interesting. There's something inspiring about a company dominating for years by dedicating to quality engineering rather than marketing bs. It didn't seem that 'submarine', given they "declined to speak to [the author] for this story". Though you never know.
There's reasonable skepticism, and there's paranoia. YKK owns half the market and doesn't market to end-users. It doesn't engage in that whole sphere of PR, much less this form. If this were a PR piece, the reporter might have actually managed to talk to someone from the company. (Submarining doesn't usually involve outright journalistic fraud.)
It's just an interesting puff-piece. I was curious and voted it up because I've always seen "YKK zippers" mentioned on any vaguely rugged piece of luggage.
I began reading the article and looked down at the zipper on my hoodie. I've never looked at my zipper brand before. Lo and behold, YKK. The article pointed out something that I've taken for granted pretty much my entire life.
Yoshida also preached a management principle he termed “The
Cycle of Goodness.” It holds that “no one prospers unless
he renders benefit to others.”
I particularly liked that line. That is how things ought to be but not sure that is how it plays out. For example I am quite skeptical whether removing arbitrage opportunities over a timescale of milisecond really benefits anybody.
There are other practices that surely come into play as well—you don't achieve quality simply by this "cycle of goodness."
The Japanese after WWII took Deming's quality concepts—specifically that quality is the product of management, knowledge, statistics, and systems—and ran with them, embracing them more than any other society. This turned Japan from a cheap-goods manufacturer, into a country nearly fully respected for quality production, in a matter of a decade.
Want to produce quality like YKK does? It's no big mystery, it's not special, and it's not a miracle. Learn about Deming, follow his systems of management and teaching, and it will start to become clear. This applies to any company producing anything.
"The zipper is one of those inventions—along with the bicycle—that seems as though it should have occurred much earlier in history. How complicated could it be to assemble two wheels, two pedals, and a chain? Or to align two jagged strips of metal teeth and shuffle them together?"
Only to someone ignorant of history. They both required cheap, mass-produced steel and machines to mass produce identical products out of that steel. The advantages of the industrial revolution. To make them earlier would have been ridiculously expensive.
riri - an Italian firm - makes very high quality zippers. I prefer them to YKK.
Aside: if you're looking for really good buttons, try this company: http://www.corozobuttons.com/ (Made exclusively with tagua nut, also known as 'vegetable ivory'. Very tough, plastic-like, and you get to support the Ecuadorian economy!)
My cousin is a fashion designer and her company have had to deal with Chinese garment manufacturers who are paid to use YKK zippers and instead use counterfeit YKK. That was a few years ago though, now with fast fashion trends and cut-rate prices everywhere, they have had to give up on YKK zippers altogether.
Very cool that they've brought so much in-house. I'm not quite sure why I like companies that do that, but I do. I guess it speaks to a certain seriousness about the product beyond just making money off of it, or something. And there is something oddly satisfying about a good zipper.
I always joke that I would love to own this brand. They are the only brand I ever saw (I know there are probably others...). I never got a Jeans without one of those.
I really wish I understood all the fuss about YKK zippers. I first heard the word on the street about YKK being amazing many years ago, perhaps 20 years ago, in a similar article.
Then I see plenty of support for this, but my own personal experiences are that YKK are average to middling at best.
YKK may have once been the best, but this is certainly no longer true.
All I can assume is that this is the most successful astroturfing marketing I've ever witnessed.
After witnessing a half-dozen zippers fail on my partner's hoodie collection, none of which were YKK, it is gratifying to see this article.
The Chinese garment industry has gotten really good over the past decade, but fasteners is still where they fall down, in my experience. If I buy a jacket made in China I can expect the tailoring to be perfect, right down to lining up patterns at the seams, but the zippers are crap and buttons inevitably fall off. It is very frustrating.
Here's a thought, I don't think YKK would have lasted as a publicly traded company in the US.
Pressure for profit growth from Wall St would have forced them to make cheaper buttons, until their brand name was destroyed and the company had no value.
I guess I'm an exception here. If I want to wear a garment more than a few times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK. If they skimped on the zippers, who knows what else they skimped on.