Must-Have Gifts

Today I’m half-heartedly paging through some of the pile of catalogs that appear in our mail around this time of year. One that always catches my eye is the one from Sharper Image. This is an interesting company, and I must admit that I’m attracted to their beautiful catalogs and their overall sense of good design aesthetics.

However, several years ago I started a practice of trying to come up with a one-sentence description of what a company is all about, like Disney’s “for the best in family entertainment.” On this day I had just gone through the Sharper Image catalog and came to the conclusion that their catalog cover should have the Sharper Image name in bold text at the top followed by the phrase: “The Quintessential Source for Over-priced Stuff You Don’t Need.”

Now maybe this is a little harsh, since they do have stuff in their catalog that is not over-priced that some people might need (I’m trying to be fair here). But, being an engineer with some experience in what a product should cost to produce in Asia, and admittedly, a personal bias against spending $100 for a motorized version of something that you can get without the motor for $5, well, some of the gadgets in their catalog just leap off the page. Here are a few examples:

• Panasonic electric shaver for men - $300. Looks nice, probably works well. Has a pop-up head for sideburns. But when you get to the women’s personal products section of the catalog, you find the women’s version which looks basically identical with the same pop-up feature, different colored housing, same wet/dry, sold for $60 (that's 80% less!). One can’t be sure if this is Panasonic inflating the price of the men’s version, or SI – probably a combination of the two.
  
  
• Turbo Clipper - $50. This is basically a plain old manual toe-nail clipper that is built-around a 5” long plastic housing, and includes a small battery powered grinder at the other end. If you end up using a regular nail file, which I probably would do to get rid of the sharp edges rather than grind my skin off, you are paying $49 over the cost of a normal nail clipper for the convenience of collecting the clippings in a special compartment. This item is proudly noted as “invented here.” by the SI design team.
  
  
• Turbo-Groomer 5.0 - $60. This item, also “invented here,” is the dreaded nose-hair trimmer that seems to re-appear in all the Christmas ads. But differentiated from the garden variety trimmer, this one has “titanium nitride cutting edges that whirl at high-torque 6,000 rpm...” Everyone knows that you need a really high speed device with lots of torque to hack through all that nose hair, right? Here’s my suggestion if you are one of the few that actually need a nose-hair trimmer: Take the same simple cutter head and mount it on a stainless steel sleeve with a knob at the end to manually turn the inside cutter. It would work just as well, would be safer, and could be sold for about $8. Maybe these already exist, I really don't know.
  
  
• Ionic Breeze Quadra Air Purifier - $400. I hesitate to even mention this item since it is probably Sharper Image’s biggest source of revenue in the entire catalog, but there are a couple things that bother me. First the price seems to be extremely high given that there are no moving parts and the electronics are relatively simple. You can compare this unit with their Spire Fan: 3 speed motor, 15” taller, sleep timer, same Negative Ion feature plus a remote control for only $80. The other clue that you are probably paying way too much is that they offer to sell you a second Quadra for only $200. My guess is that the cost to produce the Quadra is around $35. Of course, when you factor in all the advertising that SI does on this unit, maybe they have to charge as much as they do.
  
  
• And lastly, my favorite: “You Can See Clearly Now!” eyeglass cleaner - $60. This “invented here” device is about the size of a large ultrasonic jewelry cleaner. You clip your glasses to the hinged lid then close it, which dunks the glasses into a solution of water and soap. After 40 seconds, the lid pops up and “shakes off any excess liquid for 20 seconds.” That’s it! No ultrasonics, no heat, just dipping your glasses in soapy water. I had to read this one several times thinking that there must be more to it. Truly amazing!

Don’t get the wrong idea. I love technology and gadgets and going through catalogs of stuff looking for cool new inventions. I’m all about tools in the general sense - things that empower and enable me to do things I couldn’t do before. But here's the thing: I’m really sensitive to hype, which is why I’m singling out Sharper Image here. As I page through their catalog, I get a very strong impression that I’m being condescended to - that SI knows full well that most people will be too embarassed to return the silly eyeglass cleaner when they discover that they paid way too much for it.

I prefer dealing with companies that are all about value - companies that are secure in the knowledge that when I bring their product home, it will work as advertised, won’t break prematurely, and most importantly, I will be satisfied that I got my money’s worth. Simple, direct, no hype. Am I being naive again?