(Denim head) Anecdata - buying Levis from Amazon (or any other store), pick up at least a couple of pairs in the same size. It's likely different people/factories making them, but often you'll find variation in size/denim even when the labelling in the same. One pair of 32/32 might feel 'off' and the next is the best pair you've ever owned. Completely agree with going 'smaller' brand if you want consistency though (and that's a whole different world).
But better tip - (if you're not looking for 'smart' denim) buy from eBay. Only buy pairs where everything has been measured properly (waist, inside leg, rise, etc) so you can get close to what you know you fits. You can find 20+ year old Levis for less than $20 - the denim is heavier, the quality is good and they have that perfect 'broken in' feel that makes the jeans feel like your best friend. Plus you can afford to try a few pairs to find ones you love.
Same experience ordering Lucky brand jeans… from Lucky themselves! Same exact model would result in different material composition / origin country. It could be 0-2% spandex/100-98% cotton or something. I wound up making a little spreadsheet to try to figure out which ones I liked the best (origin country, materials)
Ha, glad to know I'm not not alone doing that re: country of origin.
I only wear Oxfords and casual button down shirts, and found that I only ever like the ones made in Bangladesh because of fit and material. I could talk your ear off for 20 minutes about how clothes from X feel cheap, clothes from Y have nice materials but don't fit right, etc.
I just checked my closet, and every single shirt I regularly wear across three brands is made in Bangladesh!
Supply chains matter. There may be a good mill in whatever the textile producing region of Bangladesh is that is the preferred supplier for those making that style of shirt.
Well, I'm relegated to tall sizes so my options are probably a bit more limited.
The brands I typically wear are Izod, RL Chaps, US Polo(not RL Polo), and lately some from Kingsize. The latter fit nicely but I find a lot of styles a bit wonky or dated.
Most of mine are the 'wrinkle free' variety that actually work pretty well. I have a few 'nicer' shirts that aren't and you learn the tricks of the trade - hanging it near your shower, wiping with a hot wash cloth, not drying completely, etc. Irons are a hassle and I rarely use them.
Still, I rarely wear those for that reason. They also look like crap at the end of the day from sitting in cars or padded chairs.
I would love to wear more shirts, but I’m not a fan of wearing cloths that contain a significant amount of plastic. Cotton shirts are a pita, but I’ll try these tips, thanks!
It's not really the style anymore (and they were wildly expensive), but some of the best jeans I've had were True Religions. I could go to the store, try on a ton of pairs, and then get the length tailored. I used to power lift, and at the time, finding jeans that had 32" waist while still being bigger in the butt/thighs was a huge challenge. Only TR seemed to have them.
I worked at the Gap and Banana Republic all through high school and college. This was well known amongst the sales staff. There's a small amount of variation between each pair of jeans because of how they're cut and how the material stretches during cutting. Also just different people on different sewing machines makes a difference. We always advised customers to try on a few pairs of the size they were looking for to get one that fit best.
I once took a pair of jeans back to Gap (UK) because they didn't fit. After trying on pairs for fifteen minutes I ended up on a pair that fitted perfectly, but which were the exact same size, style and fit. Weirdest experience exchanging an item for the exact same item.
I'm surprised they even get as good of results as they do with those cutting methods. Aligning the direction of the threads (called the grainline) before cutting is extremely important. To the point that the approach they are taking almost seems like making a knowingly defective product.
I had the same experience when buying from Macy's, which I felt would avoid any possible shennanigans from Amazon. Same story. 4 pair of the same style and size, but different colors. All fit differently.
Physical products are HARD. Programmers take for granted our digital assembly line, where it's possible to generate millions of byte-identical products with ease. As a software "engineer" I do not envy real engineers one bit.
> As a software "engineer" I do not envy real engineers one bit.
Obligatory link to Hillel Wayne's Crossover Project [0]. The short version is that of 17 "real" engineers he interviewed who switched to software engineering, 15 said they consider software engineering to be an engineering discipline. Over the three blog posts he reviews the supposed differences between fields and finds that the crossovers don't agree with most of the stereotypical differences software people believe are there.
There are real differences that they identify, but they're not any more significant than the differences between traditional engineering fields, which are vast. But yes, one of the differences that they do point out is that software is not constrained by the physical world in any meaningful way.
As I like to say, if the construction world could tweak a $CEILING_HEIGHT parameter and hit the big "REBUILD HOTEL" button, and the entire hotel would systematically tear itself down and rebuild itself from scratch in about 5 minutes for a net cost of $5, and then run a large set of automated checks for code compliance, making sure the doors don't conflict with each other, etc. in the next five minutes, and spit out a report of all the results, you'd expect them to operate differently. VERY differently.
Coding is 100% an engineering endeavor. And just like any other one, a particular project may not be following engineering best practices and that project may be producing some dangerous garbage as a result, but I'm actually fairly satisfied with my engineering practices, as engineering practices, what with my automated testing, automated acceptance criteria, automated security checking, automated style checking, integrated peer-review practices, performance testing practices, engineering for redundancy and resiliance. If $YOU're thinking the coding world is awfully cowboy maybe that's a sign that $YOU need to up your game with the already-existing and well-documented best practices in our industry. To be honest most other "real engineers" would be green with envy at what we have available to us!
I know a few civil engineers and have been surprised at how many similarities that work has to software engineering. Some of the poor practices that people gripe about in tech are similar in that world, and the same goes for many good practices.
There are meaningful ways in which software interacts with the physical world.
Latency is the first to come to mind. The realities of how systems are designed and how permanent the storage in question is translate to latency and thus frequently performance bottlenecks.
Data durability is another thing to consider. Though frequently that's mostly abstracted away in the lower layers of hardware, system composition, and operating system / file system / libraries generally.
Limitations also exist in raw hardware performance (state machine speed, how parallel the computation can be, how parallel the desired process can be made) and capacity, for processing, temporary memory (RAM), and long term storage. Thermal considerations might also be a factor, but those are usually managed by lower layers and present as capacity limitations to typical software.
Software as a domain for achieving goals does offer an unusually wide degree of flexibility in approach. Today we also stand on the shoulders of many giants, with relatively easy access to extremely powerful systems that can obscure many sins for 'reasonable' workloads.
I mean that seems like a methodology that would run a heavy risk of sampling bias. This is literally people who have chosen to switch to software engineering, and who are currently software engineers.
The only way to make the sample better would be to also sample people who moved the other direction, but there haven't been nearly as many of those because software engineering jobs have been in much higher demand than other engineering positions.
What you certainly cannot do is sample people who have only experienced one field.
But yes, it's not meant to be a quantitative study, but there are a lot of very valuable insights in the blog posts.
You have to consider, most engineering disciplines learn how to program, but almost no one in a software engineering program learns how to design stuff.
And the jump from building academic programs in C/Matlab to building commercial software products is much smaller than the jump from having never used Fusion 360 to designing a commercial product.
Plus, there are many more resources out there for switching careers into software engineering. With CAD, you're kind of stuck with YouTube videos and the odd online course for foundational material.
Wait but then why is one physical iPhone identical to another physical iPhone of the same model?
I’m not asking to criticize. I’m genuinely curious.
Not even all electronic products always feel the same in one’s hands like iPhones of the same model do. For example I remember back in the day my Xbox controllers would feel different from my friend’s Xbox controllers even though they were the same model and supposedly manufactured the same.
> why is one physical iPhone identical to another physical iPhone
Apple is willing to pay the cost to minimize the margin-of-error at every step.
Another approach to keeping yield high (at the possible risk of hurting your brand) is to do what Intel did with their Celeron line. The equivalent for Apple would be a "value iPhone" which would not come with the same set of expectations from customers.
It's worth noting Apple (likely) do this with the SOCs - the bucketed variants with fewer operational GPU cores are the output. They just don't do it with the packaging.
It's much easier to get molded plastic into the same shape repeatedly, than it is to get fabric stitched together exactly the same way every time.
As for the Xbox controllers, it could be a lot of differences. Microsoft does not feel the need to keep different runs exactly the same. They may be more willing to buy different types of plastic depending on what's cheapest this quarter.
Or it could be much simpler, maybe iPhones do feel different. How much time do you actually spend interacting with someone else's phone (Have you ever even actually touched another person's phone, or just their case?), vs how much time did you spend with your buddy's Xbox controllers?
why is one physical iPhone identical to another physical iPhone of the same model?
It probably wouldn't be if human beings had to drill holes in the PCB by hand, place and solder components by hand, and hand-machine the case.
different from my friend’s Xbox controllers even though they were the same model and supposedly manufactured the same.
This could be things like slight changes in the sourcing of, say, springs for an analog stick, composition of rubber used under other buttons, and actual wear on components of the assembly line, like the molds used for injection molding of something with a pebble texture. Not to mention, obviously, that each controller will break down differently over time depending on use.
> Wait but then why is one physical iPhone identical to another physical iPhone of the same model?
Hard materials are easier than soft materials in some ways. If you lay a soft fabric out before cutting, is it slightly folded, perfectly flat, taut? It will all make a difference.
Moulding plastic or cutting a hard material like aluminium is more amenable to tight tolerances since you can use the same mould over and over, use the same cutter and the material doesn't flex, stretch or change in any significant way.
Well, partially its that for all of Apple's faults, this is one thing that they're neurotic about. But the xbox controller comparison isn't really good because controllers have moving parts. An iPhone, except for the side-buttons, doesn't.
Clothing is handmade. It doesn't matter if it's luxury or from Shein; it's all handmade. Artisans can work tirelessly to make sure everything is stitched the exact same way but anything below that is made for the mass market. Those tend to be people paid nothing to work as fast as possible to make as many items as possible. In that environment, you're going to get a lot of inconsistency. The only tech that helps here is the sewing machine and using lasers to cut the pieces. Compare that to iPhones where there are a lot of industrial machines that are used to create each of the pieces paired with highly trained individuals helping assemble it. The iPhone is also a "luxury" good so they have a lot of QC whereas a shirt from Old Navy is cheap and as long as it "looks" correct then they'll sell it for $8.
As to the iPhones: Apple does some really neat stuff with respect to tolerance stacking. As an example, they had a video from the iPhone X showing how they would measure the camera module, and then pair that to a cover that fit it best.
> One pair of 32/32 might feel 'off' and the next is the best pair you've ever owned
My understanding is that this isn't tied to Amazon or any specific retailer. But rather the cutting process for the fabric. They'll cut large stacks of denim cloth in a single go, and that's not an exact process. And that's why you can buy multiple supposedly identical pairs and notice differences.
> One pair of 32/32 might feel 'off' and the next is the best pair you've ever owned.
Honestly, even in the store, that's been a thing forever. You'd have to go to the department or mall store and try on a whole bunch.
Lately I've switched to a brand that has stretchier fabric (so small variations in size matter less) and more long-leg sizes (my size is 31 or 32/34 and difficult to find in department stores) and been content.
Sure, start with 501s in Levi's LVC line. You'll get better quality, selvedge denim and they'll be based on 501s from different eras (so slimmer legs, wider hem, etc etc). If you're lucky you can find some with Japanese or Cone Mills (USA) denim. LVC are often in the sale, shop around.
Then look at the Japanese brands. Most of them are reproducing 501s from various eras. FWIW, I like TCB (https://tcbjeans.myshopify.com/) - the price/value ratio is superb, the quality is better than LVC and retail is cheaper. Their 40s and 50s jeans are both brilliant and they age amazingly.
It does, thanks! I know what I like, but at the same time I know very little about the Japanese selvedge denim scene. I'm fascinated by how Japan successfully copies and, in many ways improves upon, American designs. The paradigm I'm most familiar with is Japanese Fender electric guitar copies.
Last time I bought jeans I accidentally got the 501s because I didn't realize they were button fly. I thought I was going to return them but I ended up giving them a shot and now I love them. They're way less trouble to do up than I was expecting. (And because you work from the bottom up, I've never forgotten to close my fly... something that I managed far too often with zip flys)
> buying Levis from Amazon (or any other store), pick up at least a couple of pairs in the same size.
At least for Amazon, keep in mind that they’re likely not put back into normal circulation if you return them so you’re creating waste where there doesn’t have to be.
I'm skeptical of this. Used sales are a thing, plus I've gotten "new" products that had definitely been previously opened. Throwing away returned products seems to go against the ethos of squeezing every drop of profit out of things.
This is not true. You can even see in tons of product listings where you can buy from "Amazon Resale". The prices are cheaper because they were returned from customers and are missing packaging, tags, etc.
Amazon absolutely resells returned items when possible. And if it's not through Amazon Resale, it's by reselling them in bulk lots to people who then make money listing the items on eBay.
Yes some of the absolute cheapest stuff gets tossed because it's not profitable to resell. But in many cases you're not even asked to return -- just keep it and get refunded. (As long as you don't have a history of abusing that.)
Levi's are absolutely going to be resold. Amazon is a business. They're not going to eat a loss when they don't have to.
> Undercover filming from inside Amazon's Dunfermline warehouse reveals the sheer scale of the waste: Smart TVs, laptops, drones, hairdryers, top of the range headphones, computer drives, books galore, thousands of sealed face masks – all sorted into boxes marked “destroy”.
And you think they'll keep a pair of shoddy trousers? I'm sorry to disappoint you but that's unlikely...
And I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the very article you linked to clearly states it has nothing to do with returns. Rather:
> Many vendors choose to house their products in Amazon’s vast warehouses. But the longer the goods remain unsold, the more a company is charged to store them. It is eventually cheaper to dispose of the goods, especially stock from overseas, than to continue storing the stock.
It is about vendors who remove their merchandise from stock because nobody will buy it.
And what are you talking about "shoddy trousers"? It's a pair of Levi's. Why wouldn't they resell them? They already sell them in the first place. It's profit. Amazon isn't exactly in the business of not making profit.
Any advice on how to shop for older jeans? I have >10-year old Lee jeans that are much better quality than what I can buy now. I didn't think it was possible to find such old stock of clothes but I'm willing to try.
For what it's worth: Wearing hand me down clothes has been the norm throughout most of modern human history. To the point that it's been a major influence on fashion. For example, a lot of the ribbons and trim on Victorian clothing was a way to cover up where the clothing had been altered or repaired after being handed down (often from an employer to their servants).
I don't say that to be critical if wearing previously worn clothing bothers you. I just bring it up because sometimes things stop bothering me once I realize that they are fairly common experiences.
I know that wearing hand me downs was common in history. I've worn plenty of hand me down clothes when I was a baby/growing up. But currently, where circumstances aren't pressing, I refuse to wear clothes worn by somebody else. I can be a bit of a germaphobe, so that probably explains most of it
> [...] one pair ordered from Amazon, one pair sent by Levi’s for each style. [...] It seemed the tipster was half right. The tests confirmed a lot of variability between two pairs of the same jeans — you could buy the same style from Amazon and Levi’s and feel a difference. But it didn’t add up to gaps in quality; there was no indication that the Levi’s from Amazon were worse.
All this time, researchers have been wasting money on sample sizes larger than 1 before drawing conclusions.
Also, I find the word "commingling" nowhere in the article. It's very relevant to the question of what product you're receiving when you buy from Amazon.
Its journalism not research, this is absolutely the norm for any type of product coverage, e.g "my [press] car (with 50k in upgrades) had an incredible sound system, the cabin noise was non-existent, and the ($2000 extra) paint looks incredible). Even wirecutter does n=1 coverage, and it shows! You expect all LL Bean sheets to feel the same?! They probably ship a million sets a year.
Good point that reviews tend to be n=1. But reviewing a car is different than doing investigative journalism on a "tip" about jeans bought on Amazon, and dismissing it.
I don't think anyone is alleging that BMW is cutting corners on materials shipped to only some dealers for a given market.
Nor is anyone alleging that there's counterfeit Ferraris constantly being snuck onto dealer lots.
What happened here looks closer to lowbrow propaganda or PR, than journalism.
And I suspect that any kids reading pieces like this -- rather than learning from good example -- are instead being confused about journalism, science, and critical thinking.
It's still bad journalism. Given the inherent nature of variances in garment manufacturing, individual fitment, and item cost, they should've at least done a sample size of 3.
Please also don't use The Wirecutter as an example of good journalism. It's the worst of a bad lot of Consumer Reports clones with all the disincentives of rapid-fire constant publication and ad-driven revenue. It was bad prior to the NYT acquisition, but it's "bottom of the barrel" atm.
Much akin to CNBC for securities, it's now just a source of noise and, occasionally, even negative signal.
FWIW and only anecdata, I have been using the same Buy It Again link for a pair of Levi's on Amazon for about a decade and they vary wildly from order to order.
They have been notorious for this for generations, to the point where it's sort of surprising to see it mentioned explicitly. Obvs this isn't a fashion forum and not everyone knows, but probably most people who want a specific pair of levis does know.
> All this time, researchers have been wasting money on sample sizes larger than 1 before drawing conclusions
It's a case study. We should, as a public, be scientifically literate enough to parse them. If someone wants to take the bait and publish a double-blind study, by all means. In the meantime, there is more signal than noise in this article.
I don't know if Levis are, but I have absolutely ordered other branded items that are different on amazon compared to in a store, including entirely different and lower quality fabric on amazon.
It's not at all surprising for anything to happen after co-mingled inventory, which should absolutely be illegal.
Walmart created a business practice where many black Friday deals were lower quality products produced explicitly for black Friday sales. So underhanded deceptive business practice in large retailers isn't anything new.
Without a regulatory authority we can expect companies to act in decreasingly bad faith, because who will provide consequences, the other definitely not colluding competitor?
I don't know that I would call them fickle. Real wage growth hasn't happened (effectively) in at least 40 years. Of course people are going to be sensitive to price increases especially if the price increases faster than people's wages increase.
Yes, it lies chiefly on our government and regulatory authorities.
Governments exist to maintain a commons in the tragedy of the commons.
The market, as well as societal trust, is a commons. People in power make individuals responsible for the commons, which creates a collective action problem, which creates a structural incapability of addressing what is best for everyone, such as being able to trust merchants.
I ordered the same model of Gilette razor that I get from Target and the ones from Amazon didn't last nearly as long. Either they were counterfeit or sort of binning was done by Gilette. But the ones from Amazon lasted very literally half as long.
You have to assume that anything you buy on amazon that is shipped from one of their warehouses is counterfeit, regardless of any effort you put in to avoid it. That doesn't stop me from buying things there, but it does stop me from buying certain things from there.
People, read the article. The conclusion is not as "terrible" as what you may infer from the title (we all think the worst I guess).
Basically, it says Levi's jeans are manufactured in several different countries, so that most likely accounts for the variations. And that some of the jeans she bought from Amazon were actually better than non-amazon.
Still. I prefer buying from the Amazon competition in my country. Amazon regularly sends me wrong items.
Outlet clothes are often made specifically for outlets, and are generally lower quality. I wouldn't go to the Levi's outlet and hope to get the good stuff.
I've noticed that "outlet stores" (stores with names like "<Brand X> Outlet" that you can find at outlet malls, such as the San Francisco Premium Outlets) sometimes sell SKUs that aren't sold by the company normally. Likewise, on Black Friday, you might find inventory in stores that isn't there normally. If an item isn't normally in stock, it's retail price is only hypothetical, and they can get away with saying that it's "60% off" or whatever.
Once upon a time, outlet stores generally were all end-of-season, B-stock, etc... but fickle consumers didn't like that it was possible to go to an outlet store and not find anything to buy, so the brands started making cheaper "outlet" lines to fill the shelves.
Stuff like this, or the JC Penny experiment years ago where the new executive team tried to get rid of deep discount sales and have consistently low prices only to be met with consumer uproar, make me really glad that I don't work anywhere near consumer retail.
I remember being very confused on this when going to an outlet store after college. They were basically rebranded malls, at that point. Not at all what I was expecting from high school days going to outlets.
I apologize for jumping in this convo with unrelated stuff but I was looking at my history and since I can't message you I just wanted to let you know years later how much your reply here resonates with me now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18475792
Wow, that is a blast from the past. I don't recall my frame of mind in writing that, well. Hopefully it isn't quite as cynical as I feel the past few months. At least, hopefully that isn't the part that is resonating! :D
The outlet stores often have small text on price tags saying that the items may never have been sold at their "original" price. It's a convoluted way of saying that the sale discounts are imaginary.
From Nordstrom Rack's web site:
This comparable value and corresponding percentage are based on what the item, or similar item, was originally offered for by Nordstrom or elsewhere in the market, which may have been reported to us by the manufacturer.
Coach Outlet’s revenue is something like 10x the revenue of Coach proper. In some cases, the outlet is the primary brand, or sometimes just an entirely separate brand.
I believe it. My wife shops at Coach and their outlet stores are much better than their main stores. The store footprint is at least double, which means they also carry more product. The outlet has more men's products as well. Plus the staff is generally more grounded.
I had a purse of hers sent back for reconditioning and the regular store didn't seem to notice that it was originally an outlet product (granted, it was like 8 years old at that point).
Granted, not every retailer is like that. GAP brands definitely sell inferior products at their outlet stores. But I don't notice a difference in quality for Levi's stuff at their outlet stores vs department stores.
I think outlet malls are generally seen by consumers as "malls that focus largely on clothing". The only regular malls that have survived in my area are maybe 30% clothing, with the rest being the huge Apple store, restaurants, cafes, jewelry, car showrooms (?), LEGO, overpriced home goods, etc. While the outlet mall remains like 80% clothing.
I don't know about Amazon, but years ago I read an article about Walmart that made the case that products sold there from the same brand tend to be worse than those available elsewhere. Levi's jeans were an example.
For Walmart, they have scale and a monomaniacal focus on lowest cost. Each time a contract with a vendor is renegotiated, Walmart demands a lower cost, and they're big enough they get it. The predicable effect is the vendors skimp and cut costs on what they send to Walmart because they're under so much pressure, and Walmart doesn't care as long as they get a lower price. That can mean vendors doing stuff like binning by quality, and sending the worst stuff to Walmart; using a special grocery-store shrink ray for Walmart, special Walmart-specific cost-reduced designs; etc.
Like the majority of "Don't buy from Amazon" articles I've read, this one doesn't seem to make any mention (unless I missed it!) of if these Levis were shipped by _and_ sold by Amazon.
There's no doubt Amazon has a problem with fake or imposter products. But every post I seem to read about this is people who unwittingly by from a marketplace seller.
Of course Amazon should do better to regulate those marketplace sellers, but it seems similar to me to someone buying a Rolex from a street peddler in Times Square and being shocked it isn't the real thing.
I've heard that even shipped and sold by Amazon isn't a guarantee because of how they lump inventory together. I haven't run into the problem myself, but I still buy electronics from Best Buy or direct from the company rather than Amazon much of the time, just to avoid the chance of getting a fake from their comingled inventory.
This isn't a "Don't buy from Amazon" article and the conclusion of the article is that while there's a difference it's quite plausible that they aren't fake.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot make two pairs of jeans that are identical.
Same pattern, same denim, same person making them (me), they don't fit/feel the same.
Consistent results when using fabric is hard. Also keep in mind that good denim is practically sheet metal in comparison to most fabrics, so on one hand easier to get consistent results, but on the other hand, even small differences are more noticeable than something lighter or (god forbid) stretchy.
You cannot just engineer your way out of some of the challenges inherit in garment construction (trust me, Ive tried).
Not Amazon but I bought some Levi's trousers from their brand outlet in Woodbury Commons and the quality is so much better than the stuff I usually see outside US (not sure why/how because all of it probably gets made somewhere in Asia). Also, there are multiple lengths available for a given waist size so you retain the original hem stitching compared to the cut-and-stitch common in non-US locations.
i have had issues with clothing I think is inferior quality and likely counterfeit from amazon -- including when buying from what looks like "official" brand stores on Amazon. One example is Gold Toe socks.
I have wondered if even when buying from what looks like an official amazon brand store, you can still get product from multiple suppliers/locations, including some that have counterfeits? Anyone know if this is feasible?
It doesn't seem likely to me that (eg) Levi's or Gold Toe are doing this on purpose. It would also mean it would be hard to 'test' because you might get different things on different orders, it's not that the entire amazon supply is counterfeit, but that counterfeit stuff is in there somehow.
I've made two big purchases from Amazon in the last year and had to return both because the supposedly new item was obviously a return (one had missing pieces, the other had visible damage). It really is at the point where you can't trust Amazon to ship you what you actually purchased due to how they manage inventory.
> I have wondered if even when buying from what looks like an official amazon brand store, you can still get product from multiple suppliers/locations, including some that have counterfeits? Anyone know if this is feasible?
Yes, it's called inventory commingling, there are plenty explanations online. The TL;DR is that if two sellers claim to have the same item, amazon will ship the item from the closest warehouse rather than from the seller you bought from.
To be fulfilled by Amazon it has to go to Amazon's warehouse where they don't differentiate sellers. If seller A sends in "widget Z" and seller B sends in counterfeit "widget Z", Amazon puts them both in a box for widget Z and pulls from it randomly.
AFAIK for items shipped by Amazon the only way to rule out commingling is after delivery: If the barcode starts with an X that's an FNSKU (specific to a seller), meaning the item did not come from commingled stock. Items sold by Amazon itself never start with an X, so...
The only pair of Darn Tough socks I've had trouble with, I bought on Amazon. I'd bought others on there, and they were fine, but these looked and felt odd and developed holes in strange places after like five wears. That'd have been poor performance for a $2 pair of cotton socks, let alone a $20ish pair of supposedly tough-wearing socks. Normally, Darn Tough wear well for so long that the high prices aren't actually high on a per-wear basis, but these? Yeah, I stopped buying stuff on Amazon in general after that (I still buy Darn Tough, but straight from their site)
What makes Levi's "genuine" given the diversity within Levis' supply chain quoted from the article below? Is a cane sugar Coke from Mexico a "genuine" Coke when it is imported to the US, where it is made with corn syrup? [0]
Levi’s sources its fabric from dozens of mills across the world, from luxury
supplier Candiani in Italy to sites in India, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Turkey.
The six pairs I tested were manufactured in three places: Cambodia, Macau,
and Mexico. The company’s supply chain is vast, and to some extent, it makes
sense that jeans made to the same specifications from different mills, dye
facilities, and factories would result in different products.
Mexican coke made for the US market is made with cane sugar, not corn syrup.
Sucrose in cane sugar decomposes to glucose and fructose via hydrolysis. With an acidic bottle of coke, a week after bottling nearly all of it is converted. The ratio of glucose and fructose is 50/50 from sucrose, with high fructose corn syrup it's a 55/42 ratio.
Yes, acknowledging the difference in composition between countries of a product named the same was my intended question. Not certain how to format the question:
Assert different and equally genuine:
a Coke
cane sugar
from Mexico
a Coke
corn syrup
from US
The bigger question for me is if Levi’s from outlet stores is worse quality - I’ve heard that originally outlets sold surplus, but when they realized it was a good business bringing lots of customers they started making inferior products specifically for the outlet market. Maybe it’s not true, but I had 3 pairs fall apart and it’s made me stop buying Levi’s. I’m interested in ways brands can damage their reputation for short term gains, but never knew if this one is true or a rumor
I know this is only a sample size of 1, but I get my Levi's from the outlet store. I got two pairs of 531's about 6 years ago and basically lived in those two pairs. I wasn't sliding around on the ground, but I was doing woodworking so they took a beating and got pretty dirty. I just took a look at them and they only spot that even looked worn was at the top of the seat, right where 4 seams come together. Otherwise nothing. I only replaced them because I dropped 4 inches off my waist and they'll just fall off me now.
From what I understand this is a Levis thing. They supposedly use lots of different factories where the product has a surprisingly wide range. For example, one size from one factory will be noticeably bigger or smaller than other. Stretchiness seems to vary also as well as tightness.
I had honestly thought this was my imagination of years of using them, but ran into more than one person shopping for jeans that randomly brought this up. I guess Levis super fans can spot each other.
Lots of companies DO make different skus for different retailers. I don't know if Levis is doing this with amazon.
A friend of mine worked in construction and said paint from a retail store was thicker and better, compared to the "same paint" from home depot. I think it might be the same paint, with a special "home depot" sku for paint that is more watery or somehow made at lower cost.
Here's an (archived) article talking about name brands and walmart:
Personally, I have found amazon with name brands to be hit or miss. It seems you might get a name brand through an intermediary (like a retail store) when the name brand won't sell through amazon itself.
Part of the “paint thing” is that Sherman Williams can assume the buyer knows what they’re doing - Home Depot needs to sell paint that works for anyone and even when badly applied.
Wrangler 13MWZ for the win... Mexican co-workers turned me on to them and I have never looked back. Heavy duty, well made, and a good value. Keep in mind they are cowboy cut, 14.5 oz., with no stretch.
I just bought one of these... from Amazon. Now I'm wondering if I got the real thing or some cheap knockoff created specifically for Amazon. I paid only $30 for my jeans!
Gap's soft jeans have been my go to for the past couple years. I could sleep in them they're so comfortable and are more durable than Levi which I wore for many years before.
I wore Levis 501s and 505s for decades then gave up about 15 years ago due to their severe drop in denim quality and jump in price at my main source (Kohl's). I find they wear out in less than a year now.
I switched to All American Clothing AA101s and Duluth Trading Ballroom relaxed denim (not flex). The Duluths are durable, look like denim should, fit consistently, are triple stitched and gusseted, and sell for only $60. And gladly, neither of these jeans contains any elastic.
I don't know about Levis, but I can attest that Ernie Ball guitar strings from Amazon are different / crappy. It is almost like Amazon is selling knock-offs or something.
What country are you in?
Haven't seen this in Germany yet and I've probably bought close to over hundred packs of Ernie Ball strings in my life, both from Amazon and Thomann as well as local shops.
I actually order a bunch of Levi's to try on from Amazon last year. I wasn't expecting much out of Levi's since there denim has felt very thin at every physical store I have went to, but the sale price was good. Every pair I recieved had pretty good quality denim, like the denim they sold from 20 years ago. They all had pretty close fits to each other, so I kept all of them. I guess I will pay more attention to country of origin in the future.
In 1962, Avis was in search of a new advertising campaign. Since its
inception, the car rental company had trailed behind the market leader,
Hertz. So the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach decided to embrace Avis’
second-place status as a sneaky way to tout the brand’s customer service.
“When you’re only No. 2, you try harder,” went the new tagline. “Or else.”
Manufacturers can have different graders of products for full retail, different price point department stores (Nordstroms vs winners vs ..), amazon, Costco, etc.
Imagine meeting price points, within a range of supplied products.
I'm sure denim experts could expand on why some jeans still last and others wear out.
I noticed that in the early 00s, GAP would produce a product, then use cheaper materials and sell it through Old Navy, and use more expensive material the sell it through Banana Republic. Same style, different materials.
But better tip - (if you're not looking for 'smart' denim) buy from eBay. Only buy pairs where everything has been measured properly (waist, inside leg, rise, etc) so you can get close to what you know you fits. You can find 20+ year old Levis for less than $20 - the denim is heavier, the quality is good and they have that perfect 'broken in' feel that makes the jeans feel like your best friend. Plus you can afford to try a few pairs to find ones you love.