Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The essence of quality


I finally wore my Adidas Samba shoes out! They’ve had more than 6 years of constant and heavy use - indoor soccer, soccer coaching, table tennis, daily wear to work … in other words 7x12 use!

Comfortable, good-looking and reliable. I just replaced them with …. Adidas Samba shoes!

I have a t-shirt that was free gift when I made my first “large” investment in graduate school after I came to the U.S. - a pair of Bose 4.2 Bookshelf speakers that cost almost half my monthly stipend! The shirt has been used for many many years (I date myself by getting more specific) and it still does not have a hole in it or a broken stitch. My bookshelf speakers now double as surround speakers and sound just as good as the first day I bought them. Bose seems to not only make good speakers, but also buys high quality shirts to go with them. The result - I bought, over the years, more expensive Bose free-standing 701 music speakers as well as a Bose center-channel speaker to complete a custom surround setup that sounds fantastic. My son has a bose Companion 5 system and we both own Bose headphones.

Since graduate school, I’ve purchased a total of 6 automobiles, of which 5 have been Toyotas(Lexus). The sixth was another Japanese car (Suzuki Sidekick Sport) which saved my life by not flipping over when I skidded across 5 lanes of the freeway when someone cut me off. I was happy with it, but I did not want to drive an SUV after that incident. These Japanese cars have all been (fingers crossed) good quality vehicles. Yeah...I’d love to buy a Porsche, but my next car will likely be a Japanese car for multiple reasons :-)

There are various ways to judge product quality, but there’s one metric that only high quality can drive - loyalty.

And repeat use!