TODAY'S MODELS - TOMORROW'S JUNK

...An especially striking example—an open secret in the appliance industry —is the washer and washer-dryer turned out by a major company between 1955 and 1957...

...TODAY'S MODELS-TOMORROW'S JUNK by JOSEPH J. SELDIN Thumbing through back issues of the Saturday Evening Post for 1933, one is struck by the repetition of a single selling theme in almost every advertisement—the durability of the product...

...Only eleven per cent report the handling and resale of trade-ins is profitable," but the practice "magically facilitates the sale of new goods...

...A field check disclosed an inordinately high number of service calls, two or three times more than the number expected...

...The furniture industry jogged consumers to replace ten- and twenty-year-old living room and bedroom suites...

...At a recent marketing conference of the National Association of Home Builders, 1,000 of the nation's biggest builders were urged to embrace the trade-in principles developed by the automobile industry...

...Trade-ins were reported by retailers throughout the nation as a sales booster of expensive new furnishings...

...And Advertising Age gently reminded manufacturers that "consumer respect for the product is an essential part of any marketing mix...

...This consumer benefit is being lost as more and more manufacturers push multi-million dollar trade-in programs...

...It almost seems as if the repairman is a member of the family...

...As manufacturers continue to shorten the useful life of their products, and Madison Avenue mounts an $11 billion annual advertising barrage to sell consumers on the middle-class ethos that ownership of the up-to-date is prima facie proof of superior status, it is time for a reassessment of individual and national objectives...

...Recently, Representative Leonor K. Sullivan, Missouri Democrat, suggested that so many U.S...

...What new car owner in recent years has not replaced a blown-out muffler several times...

...All promised faithful, long-lasting performance...

...together they form a syndrome characteristic of our times, in which, ironically, the continuance of product durability would threaten the nation's prosperity...

...Ten or twenty dollars was offered for old watches "regardless of age, condition or make...

...Singer offers a $50 allowance toward a new sewing machine...

...In the last three or four years appliances are even worse than they were after the war...

...This company, like other blue chip companies, would not tolerate the installation and use of plant equipment that was faulty...

...Repairs are becoming more and more costly to consumers...

...The Carpet Institute urged the trade-in practice on carpet retailers...

...Says Harold Van Doren in Industrial Design, "The cost of continuous restyling, not because of design fees, but because of tool expense and constant revision of merchandising and promotional plans, tends to cancel out the advantages of mass production by keeping prices artificially high...

...A published report stated: "Thousands of housewives complained bitterly that their 1955-57 washers and washer-dryers needed six or seven annoying and costly repair calls a year...

...Thousands of watches were purchased and junked by the companies, which called the promotion "spectacularly successful in obsoleting old watches...

...Product durability in an economy of JOSEPH J. SELDIN it a New York consultant on advertising and promotion who has written for a number of American publications...

...Today, one out of three builders pushes new home sales by inducing the buyer to trade in his old .home...

...Every line is straight, every corner is square, the whole look is sheer...

...There are only so many good ways at a given time of designing a product," says Walter D. Teague, Sr...

...Unhappy With Your Rugs and Carpets...

...Color promised quicker obsolescence of the ninety-five million refrigerators, ranges, and washers sold in the last ten years...

...Not only was the public reeducated that a watch was not a lifetime purchase, but fashionable people bought a "wardrobe" of watches for various social functions...

...more fun it is to live in a fine new house than in the present old one...

...But shoddy goods only produce irritations, vented in angry letters to manufacturers, retailers, newspapers and magazines, and particularly women's service publications...

...But part is the direct result of built-in infirmities in products...

...Many industries, particularly in the major appliance field, face steadily shrinking markets and individual manufacturers ultimate extinction...

...It is my belief," remarked a company executive, "that color . . . will enable us to reduce significantly the trade-in span from eleven years to perhaps seven, or even lower...

...It denotes what one adman calls the "what-do-you-expect" attitude by manufacturers...

...A target himself for consumer anger, the repairman is quick to point out the loose wires, poor insulation, faulty filters, and other defects...

...Today, millions of dollars are spent on promoting "the square-look" in kitchen appliances, wafer-thin watches, free-form furniture, sculptured-look irons, wrap-around chrome on cars...

...If the trade-in is one side of the coin, the other is shoddier goods...

...They view with both pleasure and anxiety the mad scramble by today's consumers to accumulate household and personal goods...

...Clearly, the nation as a whole is suffering an irreparable loss in the process of speeding up consumer goods consumption...

...One repairman said: "Things are made too fast now...

...How meaningful is the achievement of a $500 billion Gross National Product when so much of it represents goods that are junked yearly or so poorly put together that they fall apart quickly in use...

...a few years ago it was just another automotive part...

...Industrial officials have felt they simply had to shorten the useful life cycle of so-called "durable" consumer goods to hasten the return of the consumer to the market...

...Previously, consumers had allowed fifteen years and longer between carpet purchases...

...RCA Victor gives a one dollar credit for each old record toward the purchase of new records...

...Part of the cost, of course, results from the growing number of appliances in the home: today's housewife operates perhaps $2,000 worth of equipment...

...If the trade-in advice is fully heeded, "tomorrow may find trading homes as common as trading cars and appliances is now," editorialized the American Builder...

...Probably the most frequent visitor to the American home today is the serviceman for the washer, dryer, TV, and other electrical appliances...

...The watch industry, which had been plagued by the durability of its products—"watches just won't wear out"—opened a drive to change the public's mind about the desirability of old watches...

...Directed mostly at automobiles and electrical appliances, resentment runs high at glaring examples of slovenly workmanship, poor materials, careless assembly and inspection...

...And recently, the National Institute of Real Estate Brokers noted the passing from the American scene of something held dear by every prior generation: the goal of owning a home without a mortgage...

...As a proven inducement to consumers to "replace rugs and carpets earlier and more often," it opened up the big, new "carpet replacement market that awaited exploitation in this country...

...Consumers were enticed by charcoal gray, Mayfair pink, Stratford yellow, Sherwood green...

...The company is making good, repairing and replacing some 40,000 units at an estimated cost of $10 million...

...But totally unexplained is how thousands of defective appliances were turned out for three solid years without detection...

...Company repairmen discovered faulty clutches, transmissions, and filters in alarming numbers...

...A New York City furniture chain told consumers: "Trade in your old furniture as you would your old car...

...They are silent for good reason...

...In less than two decades, in the changeover from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance, product integrity had tragically fallen victim...

...Now, retailers automatically picked up an extra bonus, because the old rug is prevented by the trade-in practice from landing on the floor of a secondary room, thus keeping the channel clear for an additional carpet sale...

...Benrus, Bulova, and Gruen turned to style obsolescence as the psychological lever to raise annual watch sales from twelve million to a more profitable twenty million...

...Electric shaver companies offer up to $8.50 as a trade-in allowance toward the purchase of a new shaver...

...The recently established President's Commission on National Goals would do well to look into this disturbing development of planned obsolescence as it searches for ways to chart more hopeful roads for America...

...Even the sterling silver industry, an ancient symbol of wealth and aristocracy, has succumbed to the trade-in practice...

...Packard sold the "toughest, longest-lived cars built in America today...

...A Chicago housewife told Printer's Ink, a sales publication: "I always have a 'man' coming...

...No one knows this better than manufacturers...

...Today, industrial engineers and designers are hired by the thousands to perform annual face-liftings on consumer products...

...Detroit's automobile industry is today the mecca for many other industries, each seeking salvation and redemption by shortening the useful life of its products...

...Johnson Motors acknowledges that half its outboard motor sales are trade-ins...

...How many new cars would Detroit sell if Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors spent all their advertising dollars telling motorists how easy it is to fix up a 1950 car to be just as good as a new one...

...That is why car design has grown so extreme in this country...

...National Furniture Review, a trade publication, told retailers how to pry loose the extra cash of the middle-income class, which is particularly susceptible as a group to the blandishments of "new, modern furniture," citing examples of successful advertising approaches...

...one out of three said the appliance was less than five years old...

...But manufacturers are silent on the durability of their wares...

...In recent years, many have adopted the venerable Detroit practice of the Annual Model Change...

...A San Francisco store urged consumers to "Trade-In and Spruce-Up...

...The builders were told they were inadvisedly "spending four dollars advertising to the fix-up market for every one dollar spent to tell customers how much...

...Annual restyling of cars, appliances, radios, carpets, watches, TV's, furniture, and thousands of other items tends to debase American taste...

...People buy these flamboyant jobs because nothing in better taste is offered...

...Recommended consumer advertising approaches were: "Don't Be Chained to Your Old Rugs," showing a pretty young thing handcuffed to a rug...

...Cars were inexpensive, economical to operate and maintain, and long-lasting...

...abundance is nothing less than economic suicide...

...Trade-in is partly justified by the psychological satisfactions it gives to owners of the up-to-date...

...Nor was it only automobiles which were sold on durability...

...A study had indicated that color loosened the purse strings, particularly in the mushrooming middle-income class, where the extra money lies today...

...One came yesterday, one came today, there'll be one tomorrow...

...A man will wear the latest in shirt fabrics, the short brim hat, new striped tie, Dacron shirt, but he will take pride in showing a watch that's twenty years old and looks it...

...The American motoring public," Automotive News has warned, "will not put up with the missing bolts and nuts, the malfunctioning parts, the squeaks and rattles and frequent return trips to dealers for adjustments—all of which are the rule and not the exception in present American cars...

...Big photographic supply houses agree: "Trade-in allowances are the life-blood of our sales...

...Four out of five retailers today gladly accept old furniture as trade-ins...

...Major appliances, such as refrigerators, radios, television sets, washers, and dryers, whose life cycles extend to ten or twelve years, already have saturated nearly all the nation's households, and other consumer goods are approaching saturation...

...If you must do something different, you are apt to do something bad, something bizarre...

...is enough to buy several nice accessories, or make a monthly payment or two...

...She sympathized with the "millions who find their new gadgets of all kinds falling apart in use...

...So were refrigerators, radios, furniture, clothing, shoes, clocks, irons, carpets, and paints...

...Their years of training equip them to make useful consumer products still more useful...

...What is the point in the company's spending millions of advertising dollars building up its image in the public mind as a producer of reliable goods, and then losing every nickel in the bitter consumer cry: "I'll never buy that brand again...

...Four out of every five buyers of the new tinted refrigerators admitted that the refrigerators at home were still in good condition...

...manufacturers are cutting so many corners to keep costs down that "shoddy" may eventually become the national norm...

...and the painless cure for anybody's "homito-sis," another way of tagging old-fashioned styles...

...A Uniontown, Pennsylvania, store offered "$50 for your old living room or bedroom suite regardless of age or condition...

...Still more serious is the debasement of a key mass production principle, by which standardized products are produced in quantity at low cost...

...Many "can scarcely hold together for shipment," E. F. Tanger-man noted in Product Engineering...

...another more inelegantly calls it "the great goof-off...

...Why should the consumer, any more than the manufacturer, tolerate second-class equipment...

...Chevrolet sold solid construction, modest gas and oil consumption, and suggested that "the money you save on a car like this...

...Today, the muffler is the product of a $300 million industry...

...The average family spends an estimated $100 to $150 annually to restore appliances to working order...

...But their training is wasted, and the textbook precept that good design must be built in, not draped on, is violated in their daily work...

...The replacement sales campaign succeeded: retailers reported a twenty per cent rise in new carpet sales, and the problem of inducing consumers to replace rugs less than ten years old seemed solved...

...asked of a brow-furrowed housewife...

...He hoped the appliance industry would be "as successful as the automobile people...

...The widespread application of automation, enabling factory production of consumer goods even more easily to outrace consumption, increases the problem...

...They do the job, but most of them resent it bitterly...

...Frigidaire broke with twenty-five years of uninterrupted production of "streamlined" white appliances when it offered new "Sheer Look" styling in color-tints...

...Another executive told the American Marketing Association that creating psychological obsolescence was absolutely essential to industries selling in saturated markets...

...A Dallas builder skyrocketed his annual sales from $250,000 to $2,250,000 in three years by persuading buyers to swap modest for more luxurious homes...

...Today, we are in another merchandising world...

...Buick hailed all the Buicks on the road that had traveled 200,000 miles and more, and were still serving a useful life after "five, ten, even fifteen years of use...

...Where was the company's inspection staff...