Why YKK? The Japanese company behind the world’s best zippers

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/branded/2012/04/ykk_zippers_why_so_many_designers_use_them_.html

by curtis • 12 years ago

137 57 12 years ago

rdl• 12 years ago

I've bought plenty of bags, outdoor clothing, etc. which specifically advertise "YKK zippers" as a feature, similar to Gore-Tex, Vibram, or Thinsulate, so I suspect at least among "technical" consumers, YKK does have enough brand recognition and following.

mcenedella• 12 years ago

Here's the link to the 1998 LA Times article mentioned in the story:

http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/05/news/mn-19744/2

andy_ppp2• 12 years ago

The article is okay, however it says the no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft, I thought the phrase was IBM?

dalke• 12 years ago

Yes. http://books.google.com/books?id=ephPAAAAYAAJ&q=%22no+one+ev... shows an IBM example from 1978.

And so the conventional wisdom became "No one every got fired for buying IBM equipment."

tacostakohashi• 12 years ago

I guess someone did eventually get fired for buying IBM.

andy_ppp2• 12 years ago

Haha! Finally!

dec0dedab0de• 12 years ago

I've heard it many times for IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco. Once or twice for Redhat. It generally works for any large incumbent vendor.

bshimmin• 12 years ago

I suspect many people who've ever idly looked at a zip will have noticed the letters "YKK" on them, and at least a few of those people will have made it to YKK's Wikipedia page, which is at least equally as informative as this article.

I was a bit confounded by this sentence: "The precision necessary to craft a working bicycle chain or a smoothly meshing zipper was simply beyond us for all those prior millennia." Surely the author means to write "The precision necessary to craft ... on a massive scale"; of course we've been able to build things requiring comparable or greater precision for centuries, but to build the machines necessary to mass-produce them is a relatively recent innovation. Or perhaps he was just joking.

VLM2• 12 years ago

Roller bearings are old, but no one ever made a ball bearing until the bicycle era. They grew up together, and the first ball bearing equipped bicycles dominated competition about a century ago. Ball bearings were the carbon fiber of their era.

I don't think ball mfgr technology of a level of roundness and surface quality suitable for ball bearings was compatible with ancient technology. The metalurgy would be highly questionable but that aspect would be possible.

You are partially correct that roller chain could have been built by ancient craftsmen if they had the idea, but the invention credit is about a century ago. The metalurgy would have been questionable, the ancients would have ended up with chain links the size of your fist, which would have screwed up weight and power transmission making a v-belt a lot more likely. I'm surprised bicycles don't try v-belts.

yeureka• 12 years ago

Here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt-driven_bicycle

cbr• 12 years ago

    I'm surprised bicycles don't try v-belts.

With a standard frame the chain goes through the rear triangle. To install and replace the chain you need to be able to open it at a master link to get it around that piece of the frame. Both the v-belt and frame do best if you don't open them.

dkrich• 12 years ago

I think that this is only part of the story. It isn't only that we didn't possess the technology to mass-produce these things, we also lacked the need to produce these things at all, let alone in mass-quantities.

The need for a chain that is used to transfer energy between two gears, like a bicycle chain, would only be apparent to you if you had a regular source of energy, like say an electric motor or internal combustion engine. After realizing that these things could be used to turn motors at unprecedented speeds, you would naturally look for ways to more efficiently transfer energy between the motor and a receiving point to harness the energy for something useful. Then you would design a system of gears and chains.

srean• 12 years ago

  Yoshida also preached a management principle he termed “The
  Cycle of Goodness.” It holds that “no one prospers unless
  he renders benefit to others.”

I particularly liked that line. That is how things ought to be but not sure that is how it plays out. For example I am quite skeptical whether removing arbitrage opportunities over a timescale of milisecond really benefits anybody.

calinet6• 12 years ago

There are other practices that surely come into play as well—you don't achieve quality simply by this "cycle of goodness."

The Japanese after WWII took Deming's quality concepts—specifically that quality is the product of management, knowledge, statistics, and systems—and ran with them, embracing them more than any other society. This turned Japan from a cheap-goods manufacturer, into a country nearly fully respected for quality production, in a matter of a decade.

Want to produce quality like YKK does? It's no big mystery, it's not special, and it's not a miracle. Learn about Deming, follow his systems of management and teaching, and it will start to become clear. This applies to any company producing anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

tudorw• 12 years ago

"The EU’s General Court backed the European Commission’s fines of 150 million euros ($187 million) for YKK, based in Tokyo, and 110 million euros for Coats in 2007 over cartels involving fasteners and related machinery, one of which ran for more than 21 years. The EU said at the time that the zipper market was worth about 400 million euros a year and the market for other metal fasteners was worth 200 million euros."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-27/coats-and-ykk-lose-...

msandford• 12 years ago

So these companies led the cartels? I get that there was a judgement, but it's REALLY light on details.

debacle• 12 years ago

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/09/19/idUSL1926941520070...

The Commission has found four separate infringements in which these companies agreed on coordinated price increases, fixed minimum prices, allocated customers, shared markets and exchanged other commercially important and confidential information

shawabawa3• 12 years ago

This just seems like a blatant submarine article [1] - anyone who upvoted want to share what they found interesting about it?

  [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Xylakant2• 12 years ago

I haven't upvoted but found it mildly interesting. Point that I found interesting were mostly:

* one company dominates the market for zippers by essentially capturing the middle ground of "good product with a wide range of options, reasonably priced and flawless execution"

* the example of a company dominating the market with what seems to counter the trend of outsourcing, producing everything in house, which means keeping the knowledge in and full control over the quality. A bit like Apple in that regard.

It's more like a lightweight snack for my brain than a full meal, useless but interesting knowlege, but I also read Now I Know. May or may not be a submarine, but made me check the zippers on my hoodie (YKK :)

coldpie• 12 years ago

Yeah. I found it neat that this company dominates the industry by making a quality product, not by acquiring and enforcing a centuries-long monopoly on an idea.

tim333• 12 years ago

I upvoted. I didn't know that stuff and found it interesting. There's something inspiring about a company dominating for years by dedicating to quality engineering rather than marketing bs. It didn't seem that 'submarine', given they "declined to speak to [the author] for this story". Though you never know.

Xylakant2• 12 years ago

Well, that might be a new twist: We fake being independent :)

NateDad• 12 years ago

I find it fascinating. I had wondered about the YKK on zippers but never bothered to look it up.

jon-wood• 12 years ago

I've always been curious about why almost everything seems to have a YKK zipper on it. Now, after decades of idly wondering about it, I know.

ozh• 12 years ago

submarine article yet satisfyingly informative: now that's a win-win :)

checker• 12 years ago

I began reading the article and looked down at the zipper on my hoodie. I've never looked at my zipper brand before. Lo and behold, YKK. The article pointed out something that I've taken for granted pretty much my entire life.

dreamweapon• 12 years ago

It's actually a pretty well-written article. And in a way, it reveals to us "the hidden order of things", or at least a nano-scale slice of it.

Semiapies• 12 years ago

There's reasonable skepticism, and there's paranoia. YKK owns half the market and doesn't market to end-users. It doesn't engage in that whole sphere of PR, much less this form. If this were a PR piece, the reporter might have actually managed to talk to someone from the company. (Submarining doesn't usually involve outright journalistic fraud.)

It's just an interesting puff-piece. I was curious and voted it up because I've always seen "YKK zippers" mentioned on any vaguely rugged piece of luggage.

magoon• 12 years ago

I won't buy a backpack that doesn't have YKK zippers.

ndespres• 12 years ago

"YKK isn’t the kind of brand that markets to consumers. (Or seeks any kind of publicity: They declined to speak to me for this story.) You don’t buy your jeans and jackets by looking for their letters on that pull. Likewise, you almost certainly wouldn’t nix a garment purchase because the zipper isn’t YKK."

I guess I'm an exception here. If I want to wear a garment more than a few times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK. If they skimped on the zippers, who knows what else they skimped on.

exhilaration• 12 years ago

Unfortunately the skimpers are one step ahead of you: "Counterfeit YKK zippers are flooding the world market and undermining consumer confidence in your products." [1]

[1] http://www.ykk-usa.com/menu/faq/counterfeit1.html

seanp2k2• 12 years ago

Yeah, but you can pretty much always tell by actually trying it a few times. It's easy to stamp those letters in, but very hard to nail the quality.

kazinator• 12 years ago

It's their own fault. According to Wikipedia, "YKK has manufacturing facilities in 71 countries". If you spread you know-how all over the world in search of better margins, of course that creates copycat spin offs based on the same people and equipment.

Anyway, it could be just a lie. Any time a genuine overseas YKK factory puts out crap, they could just dump it on the market with the YKK boss' approval. Then spin a story about how it is counterfeit so as to try to protect the brand.

Maybe the only good YKK zipper is one that is actually made in Japan using the mythical 100 year old zipper-making machines.

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

>>> If I want to wear a garment more than a few times I always check to make sure the zippers are YKK.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who does this. Can't tell you how many times I try on a hoodie or a pair of pants and the zipper is completely dodgy.

I come to the same conclusion. If you just skimped on the most important of my trousers, I'm assuming you believe the material is going to last very long either.

cfontes• 12 years ago

I always joke that I would love to own this brand. They are the only brand I ever saw (I know there are probably others...). I never got a Jeans without one of those.

It's like a world monopoly.

Very interesting to a bit learn more about it.

nacnud• 12 years ago

Does anyone else think of the 'millenium bug' when they see these zippers?

psykovsky• 12 years ago

I didn't, until you brought it up...

izolate• 12 years ago

I've started buying zipper-less equipment. It's less prone to error, and feels a bit more rustic. Definitely more fun to use.

Examples: I only buy jeans with buttons. My Fjallraven backpack has metal hooks instead of a zipper.

jeangenie• 12 years ago

Anecdotally, switching to a button-fly rather than zipper led to a dramatic decrease in me walking about with my fly open.

markrages• 12 years ago

"feels a bit more rustic."

apricot• 12 years ago

I lived in China for a while and had the occasion to experience the constant frustration that accompanies Chinese zippers. Zipping down your fly and not knowing whether you will be able to zip up. Taking 5 minutes every morning to zip up your kid's raincoat. And my favorite, having a "Golden Harvest" backpack zipper fail while on the bus and spilling its contents on the floor. Ever since then, I always make sure the zippers on my clothes are YKK.

nativexer• 12 years ago

Uniqlo uses YKK zippers and I can honestly say that they are the best zippers ever.

frandroid• 12 years ago

My cousin is a fashion designer and her company have had to deal with Chinese garment manufacturers who are paid to use YKK zippers and instead use counterfeit YKK. That was a few years ago though, now with fast fashion trends and cut-rate prices everywhere, they have had to give up on YKK zippers altogether.

mkoryak• 12 years ago

When I was 7 or 8 and lived in the Soviet Union, I remember my cousin telling me that his jacket was better than mine because it had YKK zippers.

lordbusiness• 12 years ago

I really wish I understood all the fuss about YKK zippers. I first heard the word on the street about YKK being amazing many years ago, perhaps 20 years ago, in a similar article.

Then I see plenty of support for this, but my own personal experiences are that YKK are average to middling at best.

YKK may have once been the best, but this is certainly no longer true.

All I can assume is that this is the most successful astroturfing marketing I've ever witnessed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

freehunter• 12 years ago

So what's a better zipper and on what clothing brands can I find them on?

brohee• 12 years ago

Riri, Swiss brand. E.g Aquazips on some Patagonia shells.

serve_yay• 12 years ago

Very cool that they've brought so much in-house. I'm not quite sure why I like companies that do that, but I do. I guess it speaks to a certain seriousness about the product beyond just making money off of it, or something. And there is something oddly satisfying about a good zipper.

driverdan• 12 years ago

So who makes zippers that are better than YKK? There must be smaller manufacturers with higher prices and higher quality.

fractallyte• 12 years ago

riri - an Italian firm - makes very high quality zippers. I prefer them to YKK.

Aside: if you're looking for really good buttons, try this company: http://www.corozobuttons.com/ (Made exclusively with tagua nut, also known as 'vegetable ivory'. Very tough, plastic-like, and you get to support the Ecuadorian economy!)

wmil2• 12 years ago

Because they aren't molded, Ralph Lauren laser engraves their corozo buttons.

http://imgur.com/gallery/1oeAPXb

CapitalistCartr• 12 years ago

"The zipper is one of those inventions—along with the bicycle—that seems as though it should have occurred much earlier in history. How complicated could it be to assemble two wheels, two pedals, and a chain? Or to align two jagged strips of metal teeth and shuffle them together?"

Only to someone ignorant of history. They both required cheap, mass-produced steel and machines to mass produce identical products out of that steel. The advantages of the industrial revolution. To make them earlier would have been ridiculously expensive.

Animats• 12 years ago

YKK tries to have a public image. They have their own anime, "Fastening Days".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UhQ0QK8bGY

meej• 12 years ago

After witnessing a half-dozen zippers fail on my partner's hoodie collection, none of which were YKK, it is gratifying to see this article.

The Chinese garment industry has gotten really good over the past decade, but fasteners is still where they fall down, in my experience. If I buy a jacket made in China I can expect the tailoring to be perfect, right down to lining up patterns at the seams, but the zippers are crap and buttons inevitably fall off. It is very frustrating.

wmil2• 12 years ago

Here's a thought, I don't think YKK would have lasted as a publicly traded company in the US.

Pressure for profit growth from Wall St would have forced them to make cheaper buttons, until their brand name was destroyed and the company had no value.

warrenmar• 12 years ago

YKK gets a shoutout on So Fresh, So Clean by Outkast.

Why YKK? The Japanese company behind the world’s best zippers

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