The Beauty of Brand-less Simplicity Part 1

Why Brand-less generic designs captivate us.

It is not uncommon to see many stores now carry more and more brand-less everyday goods. They have this generic watered down design aesthetic that some will mistaken as the work of a high school grader. This is in contrast to the color intensive conventional designs of most packaging of our contemporary time. It reflects the pervasive consumer attitude toward excessive packaging and marketing materials. We think it signals a shift of consumer mentalities towards what consumption means to them.

Generic designs have an advantage of being cheap because it saves on packaging material and design costs. It makes the end product price more close to what it is actually worth. Unfortunately it means there is less profit to be made for the vendor. But for the savvy consumer, being able to save a buck or two is likely more important. Although we agree that not everyone likes this. Over the last few decades we have been conditioned to perceive bright and colorful and captivating designs to equate to better quality of goods. People fall for this all the time(literally an entire field dedicated to the study of consumer psychology and manipulation exists). Of course this is not always necessarily true. Why?

Global supply chains have more or less coalesced into one single source, that is the global Chinese factory and its vast network of subsidiaries scattered throughout Asia. Behind every retail brand consumers will always find shadows of Chinese manufacturing if they look closely enough. And even if it doesn’t say “made in China”, if one were to do their sleuthing, it will still lead back to China. Why? Because for manufacturers of the majority of our everyday use goods, “made in China” makes sense in every aspect of business. Today’s Amazon and Walmart and the like would have empty shelves if “made in China” suddenly became illegal. JJRS is not making a political statement in this regard however, because this is neither a revelation nor anything new. It is only that consumers of every flavor should simply take this in as a matter of fact. Although we understand people make too much of a deal out of this somehow.

When we realize where our goods come from, we can now know that dollar store goods are likely not much different than name brand goods. And when people complain about the “quality” of dollar store products, we can also say how name brands divide people based on affordability indices(eg. iphone android users), while “garbage” dollar store goods become the backbone of a “lower” class consumer society. Alas, in Asian philosophy, good and bad are never totally black and white. For example the author of this article suffered from chronic sinusitis from the amount of green globs stuck inside the nose. He found a way to rinse the inside the nose by buying a $2 spray bottle from dollar store and using it to spray adjustable water jets into each nostril(saline solution of course). Similar devices on the market costs many many times this price and isn’t as versatile as this. “Garbage” product? Name brand? It’s all based on one’s value system.

What is the REAL difference in value between a name brand product and a brand-less piece of good? That is the real question of our every purchase and the true purpose of what consumption SHOULD mean to us.

Thanks for reading!