SerpApi.Org
Worse on Purpose is a website about the decline in product quality and the forces driving it, ranging from mundane cost-cutting to enshittification. Private equity is a regular theme, but corporations of every kind are at it, and the site offers "autopsies" of notable offenders and categories. One of the latest items is why Your Cookware Got Worse, a process that saw 81 brands consolidate into just 6 corporate owners. A single equity firm owns Pyrex, Corelle, Instant Pot, Oneida and various other famed marques. All-Clad, a once-illustrious kitchenware brand, is now animated by the same brand necromancer that owns the corpses of Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta and T-fal. And they're not what they used to be.
In the dishwasher, the bonded rims corroded until the exposed edge got sharp enough to easily slice through skin. The company settled in 2023, capped at $4 million for a class covering seven and a half years of national sales, a rounding error for its French owner.
Anyone who bought a D3, D5, or LTD pan between January 2015 and July 2022 was in the class. If your pan was damaged, the deal was actually fine: a replacement plus $75, or, my favorite option on the menu, a trade of your damaged American-made pan for a set of nonstick ones made in China.
What never got fixed was the pan.
"When a brand changes hands this many times, the name becomes the product," writes Keyana Sapp, "and the pan becomes a cost to be managed."
The Brand Ledger is a database there tracking 330 brands, with notes on who owns them, what they were, and whether they're worth buying. There are currently 77 brands to avoid (some truly depressing reading in there!) and 135 that are still great. From that list, corresponding with my own successful purchases of late, are Le Creuset, Scanpan, Nordicware, Zojirushi, Barbour, Nudie Jeans and Carhartt.
Previously: Judge censured for ordering class-action lawyer to take pay in $125,000 worth of gift-cards
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