Seems like these guys: https://nubo.coop/en/
They provide email, calendar, contacts, and cloud storage.
On their mission statement page they explicitly have:
not seeking to enrich shareholders
Arizona Iced Tea
Dudes a multi-billionaire and doesn’t understand how someone could want more.
That’s why he puts the MSRP on the cans even tho he can’t control store prices. Most stores still sell it at 99c, because they’re still making profit on it.
He could sell them for 2x and barely lose any sales, but why?
I heard this story before and it is truly amazing how the CEO still stands behinds his principles and values.
It would be a lot more common if we had anti-monopoly laws still.
There used to be a shit ton of regional stuff like this where one family owned everything, and 10 million a year was good enough instead of needing x% growth forever.
If you’re not cutting every corner to make the quarterly % increase constantly go up, workers aren’t getting fucked over as much, at least not every time. So everyone losses when we have mega corps. And that’s the natural result of unregulated capitalism
LEGO comes to mind. Not cheap, but definitely knows how to keep a healthy and active relationship with their customers.
I second this one. LEGO is really well made, the sets are well designed, and the instructions are some of the best you’ll ever see in any build-it-yourself product of any kind.
@[email protected] can confirm. My son bought a set that was missing on of the bags. Filled out a form and uploaded a picture of the box + what he had built so far and the remaining bags. 48 hours later, we had the missing bag and he was back to building.
So many other brands wouldn’t even respond to something like that. You’d have to take it back to where you bought it for a refund, buy another set and start the build again.
Lego customer service understands that their product is more than colored plastic.
I’m a big Lego fan and I agree that they are one of the best in this regard. However, they’ve taken up some relatively new practices such as compromising mold and instruction quality in favor of faster production, conditioning kids to gamble with minifigure loot boxes, commandeering a cornerstone of the secondhand market (BrickLink), and gatekeeping certain themes or genres behind massive price tags, which are not in the favor of customers in general.
I hate the loot boxes and I hate the priced out gatekeeping
Patagonia is solid. Osprey (packs) recently sold to a conglomerate but I have an old pack I can send in soon to test their “we will repair it no matter what” guarantee.
That Osprey news is new to me. That’s a shame. Hopefully they don’t go to shit fast.
I love Patagonia. They’ll repair anything even if you’re not the original owner., they use sustainable and recycled materials and they’ve used their profits to protect huge areas of land.
-> more than profit
Literally none. Where they vary is in how maliciously they’ll engage with consumers for a quick buck, and within that spectrum some are definitely better than others, but every single one of them draws the line at profit.
I would say any company that offers (and honors) a lifelong warranty defies this.
The wording can be improved, I think “maximising profit” would fix it. Which is obviously what OP meant as we all understand it.
Well yeah, without it there would be no business …
That’s the point. OP is chasing a unicorn.
I agree but to me some brands cross a line making then especially horrible. I don’t generally boycott products because I would never be able to buy anything if I tried to stick with GOOD companies. But some are so bad I do avoid them.
Tesla Walmart Monsanto ( they were bought by Bayer) Just to name a few of the top of my head. Obviously there is no shortage of truly terrible companies.
@Professorozone I would add Amazon to that list.
Probably a very niche answer, but Korbel winery in California has gone above and beyond to help me out on several occasions, and real people actually answer the phone when you call customer service. I don’t know anything about their owner or politics, but I’ve had nothing but outstanding experiences with them.
Chewy dog food will send you flowers and a refund if you pet died.
I called their customer support, and a person answered. Like, right away. I was caught completely off guard. They resolved my issue in under a minute.
My sleepy brain was reading this as if your pet dies from eating their pet food.
Los Pollos Hermanos where customer satisfaction is guaranteed
There is a local employee owned hardware store near me that will go out of their way to make you a deal. No idea how they do it, plenty of employees around to ask questions and some of the best prices around.
Steam.
You mean the company that makes money from getting children addicted to gambling?
Yup, Valve is still in it for the money of course, but the customer really does come first. I’ve used their support a few times and they’ve always been stellar. I will always buy Valve products.
Yeah, shoulda said Valve, rather than Steam.
I do like Valve and their products, but I can’t ignore that they know they have an underage gambling issue and have done nothing to fix it.
Here’s a coffeezilla video about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y
Meh, having experienced their deny and defend customer service, I’m not impressed. If there is no way to escalate an issue beyond someone who refuses to pull their head out of their own ass long enough to see an issue objectively, you’re stuck and there’s no recourse.
Mailbox.org They could go all the way and become “cool and cloud” but decided not to.
Haix While their customer service is not what it used to be they are still more than decent to a point it hurts their sales.
With my last one I am not 100% convinced: Mikrotik. While their stuff I great and cheap for what it does, I also had one really lacking support experience with them (they forgot to pack the rack ears for a switch and neither the vendor nor they could somehow get me ones. Another premium partner of them helped me for free and since then will always get my business). But in total they are still the good guys I think.
I’m not sure if this is any longer the case but I’ve heard that Leatherman, despite “only” having a 25 year guranee will pretty much repair/replace any of their multitools you send them no matter how old.
I bought the last one at my Costco for $30-$50. My wife kept asking me why would I need it when I already have all of the other tools it has. She didn’t get it. Still doesn’t. I’m so happy to have this thing at work. Comes in really handy. It’s good to hear about Leatherman being a good company. What’s that? Have I ever used it? Well… Not yet, but I know a situation will eventually arise and I will be glad to have it readily available.
When a friend broke the saw blade on my Leatherman (which was ~15 years old), I sent it back to them for repair. A short while later I received a brand new Leatherman with a letter saying they were so sorry, but they didn’t have parts for my old model anymore, so they sent me a brand new, better model. The letter also said they understood people had emotional connections to their tools, so if I decided I wanted the old broken tool back instead, they would hold onto it for me for a few months, and all I’d need to do was email them asking to swap.
10/10 the best customer service I’ve ever received.
Spoiler: Their newer models aren’t better.
Build quality has taken a nose-dive.
All business have to care about profit or they won’t be in business for long. Also if you want employees to get good pay/benefits and such they have to charge more and in turn you can’t shop for the cheapest.
That said I think the concern comes when they start trying to squeeze every last cent out regardless of the customer relationship and long term image. As soon as a company goes public you now have a board that will get rid of you if you don’t push stock values up another percent. Even if you want to have long term growth and goodwill the board is pushing for profit growth targets this quarter and they pay mostly in shares too. I find the best corporate customer/profit balance comes from private firms.
All business have to care about profit or they won’t be in business for long
Businesses have always cared about profit; just reasonable profit. They would make a product, determine the cost of manufacture, apply a modest profit margin to it (usually about 30%) and factor in things like employee raises and benefits, expanding the business, and building up a financial safety net.
Businesses were run by humans, for humans.
Hedge fund managers and venture capitalists in the 80s changed that. Rather than assigning a fixed profit margin each year to try to maintain, the rule became “how much profit can we squeeze out by sales and (most damning) by systematically dismantling anything that we pay for that benefits our employees”.
This is the end result of having taking human stakeholders out of the business decisions and replacing them with shareholders that are mostly other businesses, hedge funds, and venture capitalists. Profit becomes the ONLY motive, rather than one of many.
Yup. If you are bought by anything with “capital” or “equity” in its name you are fucked.
Inherently all brands care about profit as they need money to function but I get what you mean.
I’m generally not one for brand loyalty but if you need a motorcycle you really can’t go wrong with any Yamaha and if you need a knife Benchmade has been unbelievably good to me even when I send it ones with snapped off tips years after purchase to get repaired/replaced.
Inherently all brands
All publicly traded brands…
Believe it or not even private ones still need to to make money to keep working. Granted they aren’t trying to also make extra money to keep investors happy.
All brands and businesses are trying to make money. The question is are they also trying to buy a third yatch or are they just happy with being able to give all their employees a good raise and Christmas bonus every year.
All brands and businesses are trying to make money
But only publicly traded ones will trade the brand recognition they’ve built for short term profits…
Investors care about quarterly growth, which literally cannot keep constantly increasing.
A private company could have a flat dollar goal for yearly profit. And not give a shit if that number goes up 100k a year at the detriment to long term profits
I thought that didn’t need explaining, but I can admit when I’m wrong.
Needing money to function isn’t profit, those are operating costs… Profit is the money leftover after all costs to make and manufacture something has been paid.
Chapman’s ice cream! They have continuously been in the best interest of their employees and local communities. During COVID, they made sure that all their employees kept their jobs and even raised their wages. The company even went as far as to buy several deep freezers to store to COVID vaccines, because the town where their factory is located has a lot of elderly people and wanted to ensure their protection from the virus.
They will always be one of the few brands that I am completely loyal to.
They have also announced that if they have to reduce or stop production because of the current tariffs, they will continue to pay all of their employees.
All of their ice cream is also made in nut free factories, so that people with nut allergies can safely eat it. I’m not sure, but that may be the only ice cream that makes such a guarantee.
