Housewares

日期:2012/07/22

I recently visited a Bed Bath and Beyond and was amazed at the improvement in housewares over the last 20 years. Almost all have automatic features for noise abatement and better grip, and many sanitary and cooking improvements have been made. The extent to which business is constantly improving our standard of living in down home down to earth ways is enormous and under appreciated.

What improvements in packaging, cleanliness, efficiency and cost have you noticed in every day items in recent years? And what are the market implications of this. I am reminded of Roger Longman's idea that the price to weight ratio of a company's products is a good guide to its future market performance. On another note, he is very familiar with the advisory board nasdaq and thinks it fruitful for investigation.



What brought my discussion of improvements in every day things to the fore was that I chatted with Don Boudreaux today, and we discussed the improvements in weather forecasting over the last 25 years. Now, one can get an incredibly accurate forecast of the weather, temperature, and moisture for 5 days in advance with seeming 90% accuracy whereas the old articles in the monthly weather review would have a hard time distinguishing the accuracy of forecasts from random predictions of no change. Of course Galton discovered weather maps, and that improved forecasting enormously but one just wishes his own forecasts of the market were 1/5 as accurate as weather forecasts and one would be a very wealthy man.