It shows me that I’m not alone. It shows me that someone out there cares just as much if not more about a product, because they took time to make it and ask if it was made well. In that effort and attention, there is a shared connection between us through the same positive feelings from the experience of that product.
There is an honesty to a quality product. It’s not often you can make a great product on the first attempt. So it’s likely if you are experiencing a quality product, you can assume that the creators were humble enough to ask themselves if there was a way to make it better.
There is an intelligence to a quality product. The creators needed to be learned enough to know how their product lacked, or at the minimum smart enough to learn how their product could be better. It’s a demonstration of mastery – or at least a demonstration in the pursuit of mastery.
There is patience in a quality product. Not only do they take more time to make and refine, but if the creators don’t know how to make it better, that process of discovery and learning that can only be done if someone is willing to pay the price of time to do it.
There is inspiration in a quality product. Seeing these traits like patience, humility, honesty, integrity and intelligence in a product changes my idea for what should be called “good” and what should “excellent”.
A quality product answers the question: “Will this endure the test of time?”. It stands and holds its own against aging.
The simple truth that some things age well and others don’t must be the effect of some underlying difference. I believe that difference to be quality.
Most products in this world are the base level to capitalism. Yes it “serves a purpose”, but it is like the student in class that skates through: it barely makes the mark. Most products serve a purpose but don’t excite.
Quality products on the other hand, strive. They seek to go above and beyond. They want their user to think differently after using it; to be changed for the better.
Quality products capture culture. They support the human experience. They are true in “why” they exist; be it to be the most rugged durable work boot that will take hours of abuse while giving comfort to its wearer day after day, or a glass of whisky that makes one existential. There is no falsehood in a quality product. There is no attempt in serving two narratives. It’s clear-sighted, calm, and confident in their purpose and in their existence. If a product spoke, it could say without fear of dishonesty “Buy me, you won’t regret it. My creators have already made sure of that. Integrate me into your life, and I will enrich it.”