What if telling customers not to buy is the smartest growth move you can make? In this episode of Marginally Better, Joe Taylor, Jr. explores the Repair Renaissance—from Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ethos and Minnesota’s nation-leading right-to-repair law to the global rise of Repair Cafés saving millions of pounds from landfills. We unpack how durability becomes a moat (hello, Vitamix and Le Creuset), why the “IKEA effect” proves the right kind of friction builds loyalty, and how AI is reshaping the real jobs of designers and developers—from pixel pushers to problem framers. If you care about circular economy wins, customer retention, and products that outlive trends, this one’s for you.
Episode Links:
- AI is Flipping UX Upside Down
- AI is Eating Frontend Development
- Design Tools Are Holding Us Back
- Patagonia’s Worn Wear: What Fashion Brands Can Learn
- For Profit and Plant: How Recycling Has Changed This Retailer
- Minnesota Attorney General – The Right to Repair in Minnesota
- New Law Gives Minnesotans More Power to Fix Their Electronics
- Digital Fair Repair Act is Important to Farmers
- The ‘Repair Café’ Movement is Building a Fix-It Culture
- Repair Day 2024: A Birthday, a Wasted Opportunity and the Growth of Repair
- Circle Economy Foundation – Patagonia Boosts Its Incentive to Repair
- Why Vitamix? Durability
- 75 Brands With the Best Warranties
- UX Lessons from the Very Intentional Design of IKEA
- Happy or Not – A Complete Guide on How Customer Feedback Enhances UX
- Wall Street Journal – CVS Wants to Help You Spend Less Time in CVS
Transcript:
Announcer: From the global headquarters of Johns and Taylor in beautiful New Jersey, it’s Marginally Better. Here’s your host, Joe Taylor, Jr.
Joe Taylor, Jr.: On the show this week, we live in a world where more of us than ever bring our own cups to coffee shops, but somehow 85% of our old phones end up in landfills.
However, a growing collection of companies are making billions by selling you more durable versions of goods and helping you fix the stuff you already have.
We’ll explore how Patagonia built a business model on telling customers NOT to buy their products, why Minnesota just passed the nation’s broadest repair law, and how a Dutch journalist accidentally started a global movement that’s saved millions of pounds of stuff from landfills.
Plus, I’ll tell you what assembling Swedish furniture can teach us about keeping customers around.
That’s all coming up after the break on Marginally Better.
Welcome to Marginally Better, a show about business, innovation, and the American economy. I’m Joe Taylor Jr.
If you’re a designer or developer listening to this, you’re probably already sitting down – likely in front of a tool like Figma, wondering if the robots are coming for your job.
Well, they are. But not in the way you think.
And if you run the kind of team that relies designers and developers, your job descriptions for those roles are probably already evolving.
A UX designer recently published a piece on Medium that’s getting passed around within the design community. The title says it all: “AI Is Flipping UX Upside Down: How to Keep Your UX Job and Why Figma Is a Titanic.”
The author argues that designers are clinging to tools and processes that are already obsolete. “We’re arranging deck chairs while the ship is sinking,” they write. “Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD – these are becoming as relevant as knowing how to use a typewriter.”
Here’s what they uncovered: AI can now generate entire design systems in seconds. Complete user flows in minutes. What used to take a team of designers weeks now happens before your coffee gets cold.
But here’s the twist – the author isn’t saying designers are doomed. They’re saying designers who only know how to push pixels are doomed. The future belongs to what they call “AI-augmented designers” – people who understand user psychology, can manage business strategy, and can direct AI like a conductor leading an orchestra.
Over on another part of Medium, Sanjeevani Bhandari dropped another truth bomb: “AI Is Eating Frontend Development.”
Bhandari documents how tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot aren’t just autocompleting code anymore. They’re writing entire applications. One developer recently built a complete e-commerce site by describing what they wanted in plain English. No coding. Just talking to a machine.
“The days of memorizing CSS properties and JavaScript syntax are over,” Bhandari writes. “The future belongs to developers who can think in systems, not semicolons.”
The scariest part? Junior developers are getting better results with AI than seniors are getting without it. Years of experience are being compressed into prompts. A bootcamp graduate with ChatGPT can now compete with someone who’s been coding for a decade.
But the most provocative piece comes from UX Design’s anonymous contributor who argues that our design tools themselves are the problem.
“Design Tools Are Holding Us Back,” they write. And they make a compelling case. While we’ve been obsessing over perfect components and pixel-perfect designs, we’ve forgotten what design is actually for – solving problems.
The author shares a story about two designers given the same challenge. One spent three days crafting a beautiful prototype in Figma. The other spent three hours talking to users and sketching solutions on paper, then had AI generate the interface in 30 minutes.
Guess whose solution actually worked?
The paper sketcher. Because they focused on understanding the problem, not mastering the tool.
What these three perspectives reveal is that we’re not just facing a tool change – we’re facing a fundamental shift in what it means to be a designer or developer.
The winners won’t be the ones who know the most shortcuts in Figma or can write the cleanest code. They’ll be the ones who understand people, who can think strategically, who can direct AI to execute their vision.
As the first author puts it: “Stop learning tools. Start learning to think.”
Because in a world where AI can generate anything, the most valuable skill isn’t execution – it’s knowing what to generate in the first place.
After the break, you break it, you bought it… so let’s fix it.
It’s Marginally Better.
It’s Marginally Better, I’m Joe Taylor Jr.
Let me tell you about a company that did something no MBA
program would ever recommend. They took out a full-page ad in the New York Times on Black Friday – the biggest shopping day of the year – and the ad said just four words: “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”
That was Patagonia back in 2011. And instead of destroying their business, it made them stronger than ever.
Rose Marcario led Patagonia from 2014 to 2020, and she oversaw something remarkable in the wake of that campaign. Under her leadership, the company quadrupled in size while actively telling customers to buy less. How? By turning repair into a revolution.
According to reporting from Koorvi and the Repair Café International, Patagonia operates the largest garment repair facility in North America. They repair about 50,000 pieces per year. But that’s just the beginning.
Their Worn Wear program, launched as touring repair trucks in 2013 and made permanent in 2017, does something radical in retail: they buy back your used Patagonia gear, fix it up, and resell it. This program was spearheaded by Kourtney Morgan, Senior Designer for Patagonia, and Lindsey Rose Medoff, who saw opportunity where others saw waste.
Think about the business model here. It allows for Patagonia to clear previously unusable returned products from its inventory, avoiding the carrying cost in a way that creates value for both people and the planet. Used gear that would have been written off as a loss becomes a revenue stream. Customers who might never afford a new Patagonia jacket can buy a repaired one. And the environmental impact? Massive.
But Patagonia isn’t alone in this revolution. On July 1, 2024, something unprecedented happened in Minnesota. Minnesota’s New Digital Fair Repair Act Went Into Effect, and it’s the most comprehensive repair law in the nation.
Here’s what it means: manufacturers of certain electronic products must make documentation, parts, and tools for diagnosis, maintenance, or repair available to independent repair providers and to product owners on fair and reasonable terms.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the law’s champions, Representative Peter Fischer and Senator Rob Kupec, faced down massive opposition from tech giants. But they won. And the numbers tell you why this matters.
According to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesotans generate about 50,000 tons of mixed electronics waste every year, and less than 20% of it gets recycled. The rest? Landfills. Toxic waste. Environmental disaster.
But here’s the economic argument that should make every business owner pay attention: The amount of easily repairable electronics we toss out in the United States could create and sustain an estimated 345,000 jobs for skilled repair workers. These are jobs that can’t be outsourced. Jobs that revitalize main streets. Jobs that keep money in local communities.
The law isn’t perfect. Farmers got left out – lawmakers removed farm equipment, video game consoles, specialized cybersecurity tools, medical devices and vehicles from the bill before it was approved. Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, isn’t giving up. He points out the absurdity: when you buy a five hundred thousand dollar combine, you should be able to fix it yourself, not drive three hours to a dealership for a software update.
But perhaps the most inspiring part of this story started with one frustrated journalist in Amsterdam. Martine Postma was sick of throwing away broken things. So on October 18, 2009, she did something simple: she organized an event where people with repair skills could fix things for their neighbors. Free.
She had no idea if anyone would show up.
They were overwhelmed. People streamed in with broken toasters, torn clothes, wobbly chairs. And something magical happened – people didn’t just get their stuff fixed. They connected. They learned. They built community.
Fast forward 15 years. In 2023 alone, Repair Cafés around the world saved over 1.4 million pounds of broken appliances from going to a landfill. That translates to more than 33 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions prevented from entering the atmosphere.
Today, there are nearly 3,200 Repair Cafés in operation across 40 countries.
But the data also reveals the challenge: spare parts not being available is the top barrier followed by them being too expensive (18%), then not being repairable design (16%).
While many tech companies design for obsolescence, some brands are betting on the opposite. They’re making durability their differentiator.
Take Vitamix. Their blenders cost $400-600, in a world where you can buy a blender for $20. Their differentiator? They’re confident in the quality and durability of Vitamix blenders, which is why they offer some of the longest product warranties among blender manufacturers: up to 10 years. But even with a warranty that long, fewer than 2 percent of Vitamix blenders are returned for repair.
Think about that business model. They charge 20 times more than competitors, but their products last so long that customers pass them down to their children. One customer quoted on their website bought her Vitamix in 1960. It still works.
Or consider Le Creuset, the French cookware company. This iconic French brand offers a lifetime warranty on its colorful cast iron cookware. Their Dutch ovens cost $400. You can buy a similar pot at Walmart for $30. But that Le Creuset pot will outlive you. It becomes an heirloom.
These companies have discovered something profound: In a disposable world, permanence is priceless. Customers will pay premium prices for products that last. They’ll become evangelists for brands that respect their investment.
The lesson for businesses is clear: You can compete on price and race to the bottom. Or you can compete on value and build something durable. The second option is harder. But it’s also how you build a business that lasts.
After the break, another excuse to buy some meatballs.
It’s marginally better.
It’s marginally better, I’m Joe Taylor Jr.
You know that moment. You’ve just gotten home from IKEA with a box that supposedly contains a dresser. You open it up, and there’s approximately 10,000 pieces, an Allen wrench that’s too small for human hands, and instructions that appear to have been drawn by someone who’s never seen furniture before.
And yet, somehow, IKEA has built a $50 billion empire on making you build your own furniture. There’s actually a name for this phenomenon – researchers call it the “IKEA effect.” We value things more when we build them ourselves.
But here’s what IKEA understands that most businesses don’t: that frustrating assembly process isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
A piece on Medium by Design Bootcamp digs into “UX Lessons from the Very Intentional Design of IKEA”. Everything about IKEA is designed to create a specific journey. The maze-like store layout that forces you to walk through every department—and if you watch the show 30 Rock, destroy your relationship. The Swedish meatballs that keep you from leaving when you get hungry. The impossibly organized warehouse where everything has a cryptic name like FÄRGGLAD or SMÖRBOLL.
It’s all intentional friction. IKEA makes you work for it. And that work creates value.
Think about user onboarding the same way. Too many businesses try to make onboarding frictionless. Sign up with one click! Start immediately! No setup required!
But what if that’s wrong? What if a little friction actually helps?
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on something counterintuitive: CVS wants to help you spend less time in CVS. They’re redesigning stores to get customers in and out faster.
Wait, what? Don’t retailers want you to browse, to linger, to impulse buy?
Not anymore. CVS realized that their customers hate being in their stores. The locked merchandise. The pharmacy lines. The confusing layouts. So they’re redesigning everything to reduce time in store. In some cases, they’re even shrinking the footprint of the retail section of the store and turning that space over to community health services.
They’re betting customers will come back more often to deal with pain that CVS didn’t cause. Sometimes the best customer experience is the shortest one.
Back to that IKEA furniture. When you finally get that BILLY bookcase assembled, something interesting happens. You don’t see a cheap piece of particle board. You see YOUR bookcase. The one YOU built. The one you conquered.
This is how smart businesses think about onboarding. It’s not about eliminating all friction. It’s about creating the right friction. The kind that makes customers feel accomplished, not frustrated.
Duolingo gets this. They could let you start learning immediately with no setup. Instead, they make you pick a goal, take a placement test, commit to a schedule. It takes five minutes, but those five minutes create commitment.
According to research from HappyOrNot about customer feedback, the key isn’t gathering more feedback. It’s acting on the feedback you get. A complete guide on how customer feedback enhances UX shows that customers don’t want to fill out surveys. They want to see changes based on their input.
IKEA does this brilliantly. Those instruction manuals that frustrated you? They’re constantly being revised based on customer confusion. That Allen wrench that’s too small? They now sell better tools at checkout. The impossible-to-pronounce names? They added numbers so you can just say “I need bookcase 203.”
They don’t eliminate the assembly. They just make it slightly less likely to end in divorce.
Here’s what all of this teaches us about retention: Customers don’t stay because things are easy. They stay because they’re invested.
That IKEA furniture you assembled? You’ll keep it longer than something that came pre-built, even if the pre-built version is better quality. That language you’re learning on Duolingo? You’ll stick with it because you set goals and made commitments. That CVS you can get through quickly? You’ll go back because it respects your time.
The key is understanding which kind of friction creates value and which kind destroys it. Assembly creates ownership. Confusion creates abandonment. Investment creates loyalty. Frustration creates churn.
So next time you’re designing a customer experience, ask yourself: Am I eliminating friction, or am I eliminating investment? Because sometimes, the difference between those two determines whether your customers stick around.
And if you need me, I’ll be here in my office, surrounded by all my particle board and tiny wooden dowels, celebrating my own retention.
Joe Taylor Jr.: That’s our show for today. Whether you’re fixing things, building things, or just trying to keep your job while robots learn to do it better, remember: The future belongs to those who understand not just how things work, but why they matter.
Thanks for listening to Marginally Better. If you like what you heard, please help us out. Leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts. It will help us spread the word about the show to people like you who care deeply about great customer experiences.
If you want to get behind the scenes notes from me and the rest of the team, go to marginallybettershow.com or follow the link in our show notes.
Marginally Better is a Calufrax radio production. Our producer is Nicole Hubbard with research by Connie Evans.
I’m Joe Taylor, Jr.
Joe Taylor Jr.
After a decade in broadcast media, Joe developed early online platforms for NPR, PBS, and AOL. Today, he helps our clients tell compelling brand stories through audio, visuals, and software.