Posts Tagged ‘repair’
“No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”*…
Revisiting a topic we last considered about six years ago: the modern zipper was invented (or, at least, first patented) in 1913. But, as Michael Knispel explains, story of the zipper-as-we-know-it began in Japan in 1934…
Here’s a test you can do right now. Look down at your jacket. Your jeans. Your bag. Find a zipper—any zipper—and check the pull tab. Three letters. YKK.
Try another. Your backpack. Your hoodie. Your tent, if you’ve got one nearby. YKK.
It’s everywhere. And once you start noticing, you can’t stop. It’s like discovering a secret language written into the fabric of modern life.
Those three letters stand for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha—Yoshida Manufacturing Corporation. And they represent one of the most successful, least-known companies in the world.
YKK produces roughly half of all zippers made globally. Seven billion zippers a year. In some markets—Japan, for instance—their share approaches 90%. If you’ve ever zipped anything, there’s a better-than-even chance it was theirs.
But here’s what fascinates me: they didn’t get there through aggressive expansion or undercutting competitors. They got there by being better. By obsessing over a component most people never think about. By treating the humble zipper not as a commodity, but as a craft.
And after ninety years of that obsession, they’re not resting. They’re constantly evolving—pushing the zipper into territory it’s never been before.
Let me tell you the story…
[And tell it, he does: the company’s remarkable history, turning the to a survey of recent innovations…]
… For most of YKK’s history, innovation meant incremental improvement. Better corrosion resistance. Smoother sliders. More durable coils.
But in the past few years, something’s shifted.
YKK isn’t just refining the zipper anymore. They’re rethinking it entirely.
After ninety years of mastering the fundamentals, they’re finally asking: what else could a zipper be?..
[Knispel recouns recent developments– the “AiryString” (tapeless) zipper, the self-propelled zipper– concluding with “The Revived Collection”…]
… Here’s the most important innovation—and it’s not a single product. It’s a philosophy.
The YKK Revived Collection is a series of repair-focused components designed to keep zippers functional and maximize a product’s lifecycle. The goal is simple but radical: the zipper should never be the reason a product is thrown away.
YKK has developed three main components in the Revived series, each targeting a specific failure mode. Together, they represent a fundamental shift in how YKK thinks about their products—not just as components to be manufactured and sold, but as systems to be maintained and repaired.
Traditional center-front zippers—the kind you find on jackets and hoodies—have a problem. When the slider breaks or the pull tab snaps off, you’re stuck. The standard repair requires cutting off the top stop, that metal or plastic piece that keeps the slider from flying off the end, and replacing the entire slider. It’s destructive, time-consuming, and often requires specialized tools.
The Revived Top Stop changes that. It looks like a standard top stop, but with a zigzag groove pattern cut through it. That channel allows you to orient the slider through the stop and derail it, removing it without cutting anything…
[Knispel explains the ingenious fixes for regular zippers, pocket and accessory zippers, and bag zippers. Then he draws the wisdom they embody…]
… Here’s what ties the Revived Collection together: YKK is building repair infrastructure.
They’re not just selling replacement parts. They’re designing zippers to be repairable from the start, and they’re working with brands, warranty centers, third-party repair shops, and even consumers to make those repairs accessible.
“We’re targeting this for warranty and quality centers, third-party repair centers, potentially in-store retail repairs, and eventually consumer repairs,” says John Holiday, YKK’s Senior Product Development Manager. “We want to make sure the fastener or the zipper is not the reason a product is no longer in use or why it needs to be warrantied.”
That’s a shift. Traditionally, YKK sells zippers to manufacturers in bulk—cut zippers or chain-and-slider assemblies. The Revived components are sold as standalone parts, which means YKK is rethinking its distribution model to make replacement parts available outside traditional manufacturing channels.
I started this piece with a test: look at your zippers. Three letters. YKK.
Now you know why they’re there. Not because of aggressive marketing or locking out competitors. Because a man in 1934 Tokyo decided that if you make something genuinely better—more reliable, more consistent, more thoughtful—success follows naturally.
Ninety years later, YKK still operates on that philosophy. They’re still privately held. Still vertically integrated. Still obsessing over a component most people never think about.
And it looks like they’re not done. They’re constantly evolving…
“The Company That Zips the World | YKK’s Ninety-Year Obsession,” from @carryology.bsky.social.
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As we zip it, we might that on this date– Halloween– in 2005, Gary Estrada, met his goal to visit at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom Haunted Mansion 999 times. Estrada had begun riding in January of that year and finished on Halloween in just ten months. Why 999 times? Because that is how many “happy haunts” are said to live there.
“If the world’s 223 international undersea cable systems were to suddenly disappear, only a minuscule amount of this traffic would be backed up by satellite, and the Internet would effectively be split between continents”*…
Your correspondent is hitting the road, so (Roughly) Daily will be a good bit more roughly than daily for a bit. Regular service should resume on or around May 6. Meantime, a fascinating– and meaty– piece to hold you…
Josh Dzieza goes deep on an undersung technology and the folks who keep it functioning…
The world’s emails, TikToks, classified memos, bank transfers, satellite surveillance, and FaceTime calls travel on cables that are about as thin as a garden hose. There are about 800,000 miles of these skinny tubes crisscrossing the Earth’s oceans, representing nearly 600 different systems, according to the industry tracking organization TeleGeography. The cables are buried near shore, but for the vast majority of their length, they just sit amid the gray ooze and alien creatures of the ocean floor, the hair-thin strands of glass at their center glowing with lasers encoding the world’s data.
If, hypothetically, all these cables were to simultaneously break, modern civilization would cease to function. The financial system would immediately freeze. Currency trading would stop; stock exchanges would close. Banks and governments would be unable to move funds between countries because the Swift and US interbank systems both rely on submarine cables to settle over $10 trillion in transactions each day. In large swaths of the world, people would discover their credit cards no longer worked and ATMs would dispense no cash. As US Federal Reserve staff director Steve Malphrus said at a 2009 cable security conference, “When communications networks go down, the financial services sector does not grind to a halt. It snaps to a halt.”
Corporations would lose the ability to coordinate overseas manufacturing and logistics. Seemingly local institutions would be paralyzed as outsourced accounting, personnel, and customer service departments went dark. Governments, which rely on the same cables as everyone else for the vast majority of their communications, would be largely cut off from their overseas outposts and each other. Satellites would not be able to pick up even half a percent of the traffic. Contemplating the prospect of a mass cable cut to the UK, then-MP Rishi Sunak concluded, “Short of nuclear or biological warfare, it is difficult to think of a threat that could be more justifiably described as existential.”
Fortunately, there is enough redundancy in the world’s cables to make it nearly impossible for a well-connected country to be cut off, but cable breaks do happen. On average, they happen every other day, about 200 times a year. The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks…
The internet cables that knit the world together and the people that keep them working: “The Cloud Under the Sea,” from @joshdzieza in @verge. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Nicole Starosielski, The Undersea Network
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As we dive deep, we might send effectively-transmitted birthday greetings to a pioneer of telecommunications, Granville Woods; he was born on this date in 1856. An inventor, he held more than 50 patents, for innovations that ranged from a locomotive steam boiler to an egg incubator. But he is probably best remembered for his Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, a variation of the induction telegraph that relied on ambient static electricity from existing telegraph lines, allowing railroads to send messages between train stations and moving trains.
He is often referred to as the first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War and as “the Black Edison” (sic).
“Off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony”*…
Elly Fishman, with the story of a master craftsman…
It’s a few minutes past 10 in the morning, and John Becker stands just inside the door to his company’s office in the Fine Arts Building downtown. He wears a black workman’s apron, which he fits to his body by wrapping the ties around his torso twice. With his shoulders slightly hunched, he quietly observes the almost surreal scene unfolding before him.
A few feet away, Joshua Bell and James Ehnes, two of the most prominent solo violinists on the planet, hover over an Arts and Crafts–style wood table. Normally, Bell, a former child prodigy known for his virtuosic, animated playing, and Ehnes, a musician’s musician celebrated for his technical prowess, would be the superstars in the room. Both have won multiple Grammy Awards, and between the two of them, they have performed in nearly every major concert hall and with all the best orchestras in the world. But here, in Becker’s studio inside his office, another icon takes center stage.
“I’m really nervous and excited,” says Bell, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “It’s like meeting my wife again after two months. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
“Oh yeah, I understand the feeling,” Ehnes chimes in, his tone nearly giddy. His eyes are set on an object perched on a gray cloth that covers the tabletop. “I’ve never seen this violin before. It’s incredible. It’s so beautiful.” He pauses as though to take in every contour. The spruce wood — a swirl of orange and red hues — glows under the morning light. “It’s stunning.”
The violin in question belongs to Bell. The 310-year-old instrument, which Bell has said is worth as much as $15 million, is among the roughly 650 made by the renowned 18th-century Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari that survive today. Bell left it with Becker for repairs, and over the past two months, the master luthier applied protective polish to preserve the original varnish, removed the top to make internal repairs, and handcrafted several cleats to reinforce tiny cracks in the wood. Bell has flown in from New York to retrieve the violin, which has been his concert instrument since 2001, before he departs on a tour of South America and Italy.
Ehnes plans to leave his own Strad with Becker for more minor repairs — a bridge adjustment, a varnish touchup, a new sound post — which will take only a day. The Canadian has made this essential stop before heading to concerts in South Korea and Japan.
Becker turns to Bell and asks if he wants to give the violin a try. It may look beautiful thanks to the fresh polish, but after 213 hours of painstaking work, the true test is how it feels and sounds…
He’s trusted to repair some of the world’s most fabled — and expensive — instruments. How does John Becker manage to unlock the sound of a Stradivarius? “The Violin Doctor,” from @Elly33 in @ChicagoMag.
* Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
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As we treasure timbre and tone, we might send sonorous birthday greetings to Fritz Kreisler; he was born on this date in 1875. A composer and violin virtuoso, he one of the most noted violin masters of his day, and is regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing– instantly recognizable as his.
Kreisler owned several extraordinary violins made by luthiers Antonio Stradivari, Pietro Guarneri, Giuseppe Guarneri, and Carlo Bergonzi, most of which eventually came to be known by his name (e.g., “Kriesler’s Stradivarius”). He also owned a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin of 1860, which he often used as his second violin.
“If You Can’t Fix It, You Don’t Own It”*…
A just-issued report by the US Federal Trade Commission confirms that anti-repair actions by large companies are hurting small businesses, undermining your ownership rights, and hurting the planet. Of course, these are the very problems that we’ve been fighting for the past fifteen years—but it’s validating to see US government confirmation of the market imbalance.
The unanimous report, nearly two years in the making, follows public hearings and testimony from the FTC’s “Nixing the Fix” workshop in July 2019, and a demand from Congress in 2020 to report back. iFixit and other repair advocates told the Commission then how manufacturers design products that frustrate repair and force owners to use the manufacturers’ branded repair services, hurting consumers and stifling competition. Manufacturers claimed the market was working fine, and that opening up repair access would undermine the safety and security of their products. Today’s report is a rebuke to their arguments.
The FTC’s long-awaited report provides a thorough analysis of broad market failures, and recommendations for government action to address those failures. Some major findings included in the report:
– Warranties are being routinely voided, in violation of the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act. “The Commission takes these allegations seriously and will continue to address illegal practices in the marketplace.”
– “[T]he burden of repair restrictions may fall more heavily on communities of color and lower-income communities.”
– “The pandemic has exacerbated the effects of repair restrictions on consumers.”
…
The report summarizes the problems that consumers are facing from a variety of monopoly strategies. “Many manufacturers restrict independent repair and repair by consumers through:
– Product designs that complicate or prevent repair;
– Unavailability of parts and repair information;
– Designs that make independent repairs less safe;
– Policies or statements that steer consumers to manufacturer repair networks;
– Application of patent rights and enforcement of trademarks;
– Disparagement of non-OEM parts and independent repair;
– Software locks and firmware updates; or
– End User License Agreements.”
…
A rebuke of Apple, John Deere, and other manufacturers whose practices frustrate repair by “owners”: “FTC Report Finds Manufacturers’ Repair Restrictions Unwarranted.” Via @kwiens and @stewartbrand
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As we resist rentiers, we might recall that it was on this date in 1893 that the U.S. Supreme court unanimously ruled that a tomato is a vegetable. In reaching their decision in Nix v. Hedden, a dispute over the appropriate duties to be levied pursuant to the Tarriff Act of 1883, the justices found that the “ordinary” understanding of a tomato as a vegetable should take precedence over the scientific fact that it is a fruit.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”*…
If New York, as E.B. White said, is a city that “never quite catches up with itself,” no one may be more aware of it than [Paul] Schweitzer. He is believed to be among the nation’s last typewriter repairmen, and he largely rejects computers, iPhones, laptops, and even credit cards in his workplace. Like a speaker of a vanishing language, he laments the loss of his tribe.
“There are fewer and fewer of us that do this,” he said. “Years ago, if you looked at the yellow pages, there were six pages of typewriter companies in Manhattan. Now, there’s us.”…
The poignant– and powerful– story of “The Last of the Typewriter Men.”
* Ernest Hemingway
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As we tap away, we might send darkly humorous birthday greetings to Samuel Barclay Beckett; he was born on this date in 1906. A novelist, poet, and theatrical director, Beckett is best remembered as the playwright who created (with Eugéne Ionesco) what Martin Esslin dubbed “The Theater of the Absurd.” His Modernist masterpieces– Krapp’s Last Tape and Waiting for Godot, for instance— had a profound influence on writers like Václav Havel, John Banville, Tom Stoppard, and Harold Pinter. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
No mean typist, Beckett turned out typescript for James Joyce (to whom he was an assistant in the 1920s), for the French Resistance during World War II, and of course, for himself.
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