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by darkwater 190 days ago
Vorwerk makes really good hardware and home appliances. Its only negative part is the almost pyramidal sales style. It's not really pyramidal as in the scam, because you actually buy something and you don't need to become a seller, but it uses "regular housewives" [1] as sellers.

[1] at least 30 years ago, now many of them do also another paid work (not Vorwerk-related) on top of unpaid house chores.
1 comments
nobodyandproud 189 days ago
Any idea why they just sat on the product? Even today, I feel the product is unmatched.

Zero creep factor (ignoring later cloud offering)..

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shellfishgene 189 days ago
They still make a robot vacuum: https://www.vorwerk.com/de/de/c/home/landingpages/kobold/sta...
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darkwater 189 days ago
Well, I don't know how much you can innovate in that space, while keeping things reliable for decades like Vorwerk does. I own a (2n hand) TM31 that's probably 15 years old now, and I have friend with the TM21 (I guess?) which is like the first version and it has over 20 years now and it's still perfectly working.

Last versions, with big LC touchscreen, recipes on a cartridge o downloaded from Internet, and now I read that latest one can reach 160C to caramelize things or can do slow cooking.

I mean, I don't feel like they sat on the product, although the other day I saw a cooking robot from some other (japanese?) manufacturer which had 2 bowls in the same machine to cook 2 things at the same time. That seems an interesting feature Thermomix is missing.

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nobodyandproud 189 days ago
Not all innovation or value offerings are technical, though admittedly it's what first drew me in.

Example: I buy an iPhone over the competition because it's a superior experience. Their walled-garden (RIP) made for a less appealing attack vector than Android, their commitment to privacy is real (a reflection of Tim Cook), and how they as a company project those values against government entities are all positives.

Before then, I never imagined buying Apple products; and always believed they were overpriced (in many respects, yes) but there are other harder-to-quantify benefits.

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