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 Tara Button, 34, started BuyMeOnce.com (http://buymeonce.com) in
January. Within six weeks the site had more than 400,000 visitors,
there to browse umbrellas, tools, cooking pots and even tweezers -
all with quality guarantees from their manufacturers.
BuyMeOnce does not sell any products directly, but rather provides
links to purchase items from the manufacturer or retail sites like
Amazon. Button gets a fee for clicks only when she has signed a deal
with the merchant.
"No one likes to feel ripped off," says Button, who had a job in
advertising in London until last month. She got the idea for her
site because she is frustrated that manufacturers keep downgrading
the quality of their products.
"My aim is that if people start buying more durable things,
companies will start making their products last longer," she says.
Reuters reached Button in Thailand, where she was visiting family,
to talk about how she plans to stoke a durability revolution.
Q: How do you find products for your site?
A: It's really super easy to search by the cheapest thing. But
looking for the most durable thing, that’s going to take hours and
going through the fine print of the guarantee information.
I do that for people, and I put stuff on the site that is best in
show. At least it makes it a bit easier for people to think about
those choices.
Q: People normally equate quality with high prices, but some items
you feature are less than $20. How can they be good?
A: Making it durable doesn’t mean it’s expensive to make. The least
expensive thing we have now may be the Tweezerman Tweezers ($12.08
via Amazon).
Some of the toys are also quite cheap. And lovely. Some are made in
Thailand. They make a lot of rubber in Thailand, and the rubber
trees get chopped down, so they use those by-products of the latex
industry and turn them into rubber-wood toys, with non-toxic paints.
Q: Won't people be upset if they buy an $89 umbrella and then lose
it on the bus?
A: If you buy an $89 umbrella – you remember it. That’s the thing
about buying slightly more expensive: If you know something is
special, you take care of it.
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Q: Your concept seems particularly ripe for wedding gifts.
A: Often the wedding is the beginning of the process of people
setting up a home, and you want to invest in something that will
last and that you will remember. My parents remember where every pot
or bit of cutlery came from. They say, "Auntie Sue gave us this."
And it’s really nice.
I’ve had lots of requests to set up wedding registry. I hired an
intern three days ago, and one of his first tasks is to set that up.
Q: Is there any category where no products live up to your
standards?
A: Kettles is a classic example. I’m yet to find a kettle that I
find happy putting on the site. We need our tea, and it’s not good
enough.
Appliances in general are the hardest category. I think that
manufacturers are purposefully building their products not only to
be less durable but also to be unfixable. So for example, the
washing machines now are built in a certain way so that if something
breaks, an engineer cannot access the part to fix it. They claim
this is to make them more efficient. I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. I
find that really uncool.
Q: Do you have a favorite product?
A: The socks. When I found socks with a lifetime guarantee, that was
a good day.
People treat socks as a throwaway. They get a pack of five, then
they get holes. I like the idea of getting five Darn Tough socks and
wearing them forever ($12.75 and up via Amazon).
(Editing by Lauren Young and Jonathan Oatis)
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