The Online Photographer

As you can read and hear all over the Internet (for instance at The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, and NBC), Instant Brands, the maker of the Instant Pot, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Or, as the CEO put it, they are "positioning the company for its next phase of success."

The guy must be kind of embarrassed. It's been an unusually successful product. Sales were only $344 million last year, however (according to The Verge, via USA Today), and who can make a go of it on that? The article in The Atlantic is even entitled "The Instant Pot Failed Because It Was a Good Product."

I like and depend on mine, and I reacted to this news with a moment of panic: what if mine breaks? My first impulse was to buy a second one as a spare. The impulse passed; the one I have still works fine. The Times references Smrity P. Randhawa, a clinical accounting professor at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, who notes (this is a quote from the Times, not a direct quote from Dr. Randhawa) that "part of the problem for companies like Instant Brands...is that they produce durable products that do not need to be replaced regularly." (Would that include cameras?) Not sure you need a professor of clinical accounting to tell you that, but then, I don't know much about business. The Instant Pot was launched in 2010 and the company was purchased in 2017 by a New York-based private equity firm called Cornell Capital LLC. Doesn't "private equity firm" pretty much mean that you're a company that's only good at business? They did manage to keep a company with an unusually successful product going for a whole five years before going bankrupt. Strike up the band.

I know, I'm being snarky. I understand the business problems. Too much debt, not enough cash, falling demand, supply chain, those damned fickle consumers, yatta yatta. The holistic underlying problem, though, seems to be that business is very good at growing but really sucks at weathering downturns and slowdowns. Pretty much everything in the world has its ups and downs, as anyone who's been here knows, but apparently they only teach the "ups" in business schools and haven't wrapped their minds around the "downs" part yet. Maybe they should study that a little. Downturns seem to persistently flummox businesses, like none of them could ever imagine it happening. Shouldn't every business have a plan for what they're going to do when sales halve? The way I look at it, actually, humanity as a whole had better get a whole lot better at dealing with the downs part of ups and downs, and quick. Constant, mindless, unending growth is not the way things are going to work forever on a finite planet. Whoops, just slipped into cranky mode.

Instant Brands also includes Pyrex, Corelle, Snapware, CorningWare, Chicago Cutlery, and Visions cookware.

But back down to Earth. I wonder how similar Instant Brands' predicament is to what the camera industry is going through. A mere ten years ago, things were so exciting in the camera business that I literally bought three cameras I didn't need all at once just because I thought each of them were too cool to not own. Had to have 'em. Waste of money, but I was happy. Now, I feel like I have what I need and can use it till it breaks, and I'm pretty jaded and blasé about the new things coming along, which are too expensive to be fun anyway. I would really love to read a well-researched analysis in a business publication about the current state of the camera industry as a whole. That's something that's not all over the Internet. Or maybe I just haven't found it yet.

Soup rules
Here's a tip for making bean soups in the Instant Pot. Put in the unsoaked beans, water, and the celery (if you don't want it to be crunchy) for 35 minutes on high, let the pressure go down for 10 minutes naturally, then add the other chopped vegetables and spices and cook for another three minutes, releasing pressure the same way. I use the soup as a basis for one-pot meals, adding boiled sweet potatoes, or brown rice, or steamed vegetables, or whatever I have on hand that day, and additives such as different spices, wilted arugula, a clove of minced garlic, whatever. I've experimented with all kinds of methods for making homemade soup, in slow cookers and dutch ovens as well, and this one's easy and foolproof.

The Instant Pot is (was?) a great product. The company says it's going to keep selling them. Don't know how much I would trust those guys, though. If you've been thinking about getting one but haven't, better do it now, just in case.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Albert Smith: "Re: '...moment of panic: what if mine breaks? My first impulse was to buy a second one as a spare....' Don't dismiss this thought. It has been my methodology for years for many products. I have been bitten many times when some item has died only to find that its replacement has been out of production for years. This could be as lowly as tennis shoes up to cameras. When I find a perfect shoe, I buy three more pairs and keep them in the box, sequentially bringing the next pair out when the current pair wear out. I have a new-in-the-box X-T3 waiting in the event that my current one fails, after seeing that 26mp is not going to be offered in the future. And don't even ask about my duplicate watches...just in case.

"If you like something, really like something with a life span that is finite, then have a spare in reserve. History shows that it may be impossible to find the exact product in the future."

Mike replies: I do the same thing! Just with a few things. Found a favorite shirt, and bought seven of them. They're all wearing out now. Comfortable shoes I've also done it with.

I also do it with things I like that were hard to find: my ex-girlfriend had a chef's knife that I really liked, and when I went to buy one it was discontinued everywhere. Finally found it, after much searching, and I bought two, just in case. I suppose my son will inherit the unused one!

James: "Private equity firms are not good at running businesses. They don't care about running businesses. They only care about making money. To quote Cory Doctorow: 'PE shows that it can turn profitable businesses into gigantic windfalls, sticking the rest of us with the job of sorting out the smoking craters they leave behind.' I highly recommend reading the whole post."

Dillan: "I am more concerned with Corelle, CorningWare and Pyrex. I am a fan of all three brands. My kitchen is full of these products. My mom's kitchen is full of these products. I hope they can continue to produce them."

John: "Private equity brings us back to the '80s when investors bought and killed companies. But you can’t compare this company to most camera and lens manufacturers. Instant Brands failed to branch out fast enough, so it only had a role in a narrow segment. Most camera makers, even Nikon, are active in multiple industry segments that hopefully provide some kind of hedge against each other."