A place holder on branding and signaling.

If you looking in our kitchen you’ll see that the refrigerator, cooktop, toaster oven, and slow-cooker (all stainless steel, natch) are branded; but the dishwasher, microwave, and oven are unbranded. My wife tells me that the reason the dishwasher, microwave, and oven (also stainless steel) are unbranded is because people were damaging the finish of their IKEA-purchased appliances trying to remove the IKEA logo. This is doubly funny because IKEA doesn’t make these appliances; they’re made by Whirpool.

I thought my newly purchased Sperry Topsiders were branded 5 times on each shoe. Since I want to save my Topsiders for the boat I went to K-Mart to buy a pair of knock-around shoes, and ended up with (wait for it) a pair of Tom Mcan boatshoes. At first it seemed like the Tom Mcan’s were branded once, on the sole, no where else. Then I notices that every single eyelet on the Sperry’s was also branded, for a total of 18 brand-marks per shoe! Then I noticed every single eyelet on the Tom Mcan’s was also branded, bring the Tom Mcan’s up to 15 brand marks per shoe. Of course non of the Tom Mcan marks are visible, while the Sperry marks can be seen from every angle.

We donated a private two hour Mon Tiki to a local charity auction that took place this weekend passed. The winning bid for the trip was $6,000.

These, and other Thermomixy things have been floating around in my head, but I’m jotting them down today because of this tweet by Alan Jacobs about how mentorship is ruined by regulation.