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Archive | March, 2019

Rethinking colored Bakelite parts

Colored Revere Ware Bakelite parts come up for sale on eBay occasionally, and often sell for ridiculous prices (like this).

But a slew of colored knob listings recently, has me wondering if all the colored Bakelite parts are just painted.  All these recent listings appear to be.

 

Bakelite can be made to be just about any color, and perhaps these knobs are simply ones that were painted by the owner and not the company.

We’ve been asked from time to time if we would produce a series of colored Bakelite parts, but that is a difficult proposition, as there is typically a minimum order quantity of any color we would have to run that is in the thousands; there isn’t likely to be _that_ much demand for colored parts.

Given what we are seeing above, your best bet might be to just get a can of high temperature paint and paint them yourself.

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eBay drop-ship retail arbitrage

We wrote a post on eBay retail arbitrage, termed by them as drop-ship listings, in 2017.  Since then, the problem has only gotten worse, with something around 150 currently listed items on eBay that are merely fronts for our parts sold on Amazon.com.

To refresh your memory on how this works, someone lists something currently sold on Amazon.com on eBay, with a markup.  When the order is placed on eBay, they have software that automatically places the order on Amazon.com with the eBay purchaser as the recipient.

We don’t like it as we prefer our customers get the items at a more reasonable price, and it can result in some odd activity on the other end when such drop-shipping sellers leave us negative feedback on Amazon.com; negative feedback on Amazon.com is a huge problem as compared to eBay.  on eBay, most buyers are motivated to leave feedback, whether they had a good or bad experience.  An Amazon.com, feedback is not at all integrated into the ethos of the site; there are disproportionately more negative feedback reviews per sales volume than on eBay because most of the people with a positive experience don’t bother to leave feedback.

eBay has a policy against drop-shippers that don’t actually hold inventory.  However it appears they don’t actually enforce this policy (see the chat with eBay support in that article).

In any event, what we worry most about is the damage to our brand that a poor buying experience can have.  What I mean by that is, our primary purpose in selling these parts is to make people happy and to provide them with a satisfactory buying experience.  Given the pain that Revere Ware owners went through for decades before we came on the scene 10 years ago.  Most people are thrilled that our parts are available, and we don’t want to temper that with a bad experience.

So, please buy our parts from our own website or Amazon.com, not from eBay, as we don’t list any parts there.

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The demise of the Revere Ware brand – the insult continues

In the ongoing saga of the thoughtless silent termination of the official Revere Ware brand, I have come across yet another prescient indicator of how little thought actually went into the decision and its aftermath.

If you search for Revere Ware on Google, here is the first result:

This takes you to this page on the Corelle website:

How fitting … it simply no longer exists.  But you can still sign up for Revere news and promotions.  And, rather than revising this page further than the no longer exists message, they left the prior categories of products (Stainless Steel, Hard Anodized, Open Stock, and Sets) and simply replaced the images with stock photos of other Corelle products that don’t at all related to the titles.

And to top it all off, they proudly announce at the top, Revere, since 1801.

Despite the fact that the most iconic Revere Ware products, the copper bottom cookware, was a complete dud as a quality product for the last decade few decades, it is sad that Revere Ware met such a demise, rather than passing the brand on to someone else that might make a better go of it.

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Corelle buys Instant Pot

In what is being called a merger, Corelle Brands, which owns the Revere Ware brand, but quietly buried it last year, is acquiring Instant Pot maker Instant Brands.

There are a couple of reasons this is considered news with respect to Revere Ware.  The first is that, in the news releases and other coverage about the merger, there is no mention of the Revere Ware brand.  To date, we haven’t seen any coverage of the quiet demise of Revere Ware, and this is no different.

The second, is that, as we pointed out, the Revere Ware Meal-n-Minutes is somewhat the spiritual precursor of the Instant Pot.  The Meal-n-Minutes, which came out in the 80’s, is almost exactly an Instant Pot.  This is sort of a full circle for the owners of the Revere Ware brand.

Similar?  You be the judge.  Instant Pot on top, Meal-n-Minutes on the bottom.

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