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What Is Going On With Zippers?
Shrinkage, that’s what.
The other day, I went shopping for some new jeans and leisure pants for the oncoming winter.
In trying on various styles, I discovered that zippers have shrunk!
My old jeans have zippers that measure 6 inches in length. The zippers in my new jeans and leisure pants measure a meagre 4.5 inches. That is a 25% reduction in zipper size.
If this is pervasive throughout the clothing industry, then this is not just a huge saving for the manufacturers but another case of ripping off the consumer. A quick scan of zippers for sale on the web indicates the difference in price between a 6" zipper and a 4.5" zipper is an average of $1.50.
With over 2 billion pairs of jeans sold around the world annually, that saving for the manufacturers amounts to one heck of a lot of money.
Is this another example of customer ripoff? Like reducing the number of chips in a bag of Frito Lay and the number of peas in a bag of frozen peas. We consumers are being nibbled to death not just in consumables but now in clothing.
As a male, these smaller zippers create an issue when having to take a pee. With the 6-inch zipper in my older pants and jeans, I could zip down and…
