Take a well known, respected brand; remove all the things that made it respected, sell shoddy replacements instead (and throw the name at everything else it might stick to); and when you've milked it dry, walk away from the debts.
I wish I could still easily buy real borosillicate glassware.
Are modern instant pots actually shoddy? I haven't looked at the legal documents but maybe the problem is making a product that is durable and doesn't need replacement resulting in no recurring sales.
Edit: I bought my instant pot after the buyout and it seems great and as if it will last another 10 or 20 years
We had an instant pot from before the purchase which stopped working. But Instant Pot replaced it for free some time after the acquisition and the new one works significantly better than the old one and has lasted much longer as well.
They were referring to Pyrex when talking about "shoddy replacements", not Instant Pot (although they didn't specify this in their comment, so confusion is very understandable).
Yup.. If I go search for Pyrex on Amazon Spain, I find the real borosilicate stuff made in France since 1922. They never decided to cheap out on the materials.
thanks for that tip, i have PYREX measuring cups bought over 20 years ago that are still going strong, but this is good to know if i ever need to replace them with the same quality product.
> I wish I could still easily buy real borosillicate glassware.
You can, in NA and ANZ at least. Last I looked “lock & lock” storage containers were still borosillicate instead of soda lime. ISTR that there are a few other similar and easy available options.
I don’t see how they managed to mess this up. The entire world bought an Instant Pot a few years ago when they were all the rage on Reddit, etc. We bought my brother one for a gift.
Instant Pot was purchased in 2017 by Cornell Capital, a private equity company.
I discovered this just now by when I thought "I bet some private equity company bought them and destroyed them in order to make short term profits" and then googled "instant pot private equity" to see if that was the case. It appears so.
This article talks about debt likes its free money. Getting a loan means convincing a lender that you are very likely to pay it all back. If PE firms had a history of not paying back debts, why would lenders continue to lend to them? Like, who is this moron losing money on loans every day?
If you look at Google trends, searches for instant pot peaked after the 2017 buyout.
I think the examples of leveraged buyouts destroying brands is exaggerated. If it is a good brand, it will exist. It is just a chance of ownership from a capital firm to a lender.
That’s part of the problem with durable or semi-durable businesses. You sell a ton - one to everyone- and then you only sell to people coming of age or to those who have failures. If you want to play with the math look up Bass models or diffusion models. Fascinating but quite sobering. Once a market is saturated it’s very hard to grow.
Mine’s main purpose is dealing with dinner when I forgot to defrost something the night before. Besides that it collects dust. I know it can do more but I view it as a machine that does everything ok and nothing perfect.
Modern consumer brands have essentially nothing to do with selling consumer goods. They are financial vehicles for private equity to lever up on.
In a decreasing liquidity environment many of these schemes will blow up. They could have sold 100x more insta pots and it wouldn't have mattered, it's pure financial gambling under the hood
I don’t know what we’d do without the InstantPot. We literally have this thing going every night making veggies, beans and lentils, soups, and stews for the family. It really takes a ton of stress out of mealtimes, particularly with a toddler in the house. Even before we had a kid we were using the thing constantly, and telling all of our friends and family to buy one.
Our first Instant Pot unit had a faulty pressure release seal in the lid and so Insta replaced and shipped a brand new lid to us free of charge.
Asia had multi-cookers for a long time, for some reason US audience isn't yet "disrupted" with those.
It's basically the same, but without handing high pressure, which makes them much lighter, simpler, easier (just a simple click-in lid).
High temperature destroys many vitamins and useful nutritions, it's only makes sense when you need to cook something ASAP. Other than that it's healthier to go slower.
You could buy a fissler pressure cooker if you needed a different pressure cooker. Yes it goes on the stove and doesn’t have variable pressure settings but it gets the job done, is mechanically sound and should last decades with occasional seal replacements
Yes it goes on the stove and doesn’t have variable pressure settings
The whole point of the instant pot is those two features. Being able to tell it what I want to make, turn it on, and then just walk away and forget about it until I need it is the whole point of having an Instant pot
Considering how popular instapots and pyrex products are, the company executives must have sucked the company dry. This can be a case study of corporate raiding from within.
"Credit crunch and high interest rates weighed on liquidity" is language usually attributed to extreme risk taking in financing, another sign of fraudulent intent-- short term focus, get what they can while they can, leave a carcass behind.
That's sad. When I last checked, insta pot was the only brand offering stainless steel vessel. Everybody else were offering only non-stick options, which I did not want to use.
I just bought some extra copies of my 6qt just in case this goes off a cliff pretty soon...
I'm pretty sure I've cooked at least a ton worth of food in my original instant pot from 2015. It is still going strong. I cannot imagine using something else. I don't really care if there's something shinier/faster/whatever. I have a fuckin system now and the instant pot has timings critical to it.
Readit News
I wish I could still easily buy real borosillicate glassware.
Edit: I bought my instant pot after the buyout and it seems great and as if it will last another 10 or 20 years
We had an instant pot from before the purchase which stopped working. But Instant Pot replaced it for free some time after the acquisition and the new one works significantly better than the old one and has lasted much longer as well.
Tons of it on amazon or with a quick google tbh. I buy a lot of Simax glass.
You can, in NA and ANZ at least. Last I looked “lock & lock” storage containers were still borosillicate instead of soda lime. ISTR that there are a few other similar and easy available options.
Deleted Comment
I discovered this just now by when I thought "I bet some private equity company bought them and destroyed them in order to make short term profits" and then googled "instant pot private equity" to see if that was the case. It appears so.
Gotta love those private equity companies. I'm no expert, but this article is a good overview of how they can be incentivized to kill good brands. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/6/21024740/private-equi...
I think the examples of leveraged buyouts destroying brands is exaggerated. If it is a good brand, it will exist. It is just a chance of ownership from a capital firm to a lender.
We have 2, but the 2nd one has never needed used.
And if you know how to pressure cook then it easily becomes the #1 tool in your kitchen, which is what it’s become in ours.
In a decreasing liquidity environment many of these schemes will blow up. They could have sold 100x more insta pots and it wouldn't have mattered, it's pure financial gambling under the hood
Our first Instant Pot unit had a faulty pressure release seal in the lid and so Insta replaced and shipped a brand new lid to us free of charge.
It's basically the same, but without handing high pressure, which makes them much lighter, simpler, easier (just a simple click-in lid).
High temperature destroys many vitamins and useful nutritions, it's only makes sense when you need to cook something ASAP. Other than that it's healthier to go slower.
The whole point of the instant pot is those two features. Being able to tell it what I want to make, turn it on, and then just walk away and forget about it until I need it is the whole point of having an Instant pot
"Credit crunch and high interest rates weighed on liquidity" is language usually attributed to extreme risk taking in financing, another sign of fraudulent intent-- short term focus, get what they can while they can, leave a carcass behind.
Korean brand Cukoo preceded Instant Pot, and will exist for a long time still. Their automatic pressure cookers are better in every way.
I'm pretty sure I've cooked at least a ton worth of food in my original instant pot from 2015. It is still going strong. I cannot imagine using something else. I don't really care if there's something shinier/faster/whatever. I have a fuckin system now and the instant pot has timings critical to it.