As the article said Duralex was the brand use by a large number of school cantinas in France. Inside of each glass there’s a small number used by the brand to identify the mold used for the creation of the glass. For kids that was a way to decide who is going to fetch the water for the table (smaller number or higher number of the table).
That’s why the CE is holding his glass like that in the guardian article.
Beside the nostalgia i think a lot of people support them because it’s a SCOP (the majority of the capital of the company is owned by the employees) [1] and it’s nice to see that another kind of company is possible.
The article mentions it, but don’t insist on it. Duralex is now quite a special company: they were a renowned and beloved brand that was heading toward bankruptcy, until last year when the company was bought by its own workers and turned into a cooperative.
Since then, they have stayed afloat, probably thanks mainly to people wanting to support a worker-owned business by buying their glasses, but still, it works.
It’s a pretty positive story so far, and I hope they’ll continue to thrive under this new structure.
There's a reason why worker owned companies (which were quite prevalent and a key factor in the 20th century's socialist movements) did not survive in our capitalist world. If we want to see these kinds of companies thrive, we need to change the entire market philosophy. Otherwise they will always be out-competed by companies that favour revenue/profit over worker benefits. In fact they will not even take off in the first place, because that needs capital and investors who own capital will want shares in return, which goes against the core principle of worker-ownership.
I am particularly interested in coops as a model for a tech startup. How would one go about structuring a new corporation to best ensure it remains a coop?
Plenty of worker owned software consultancies in germany, and specially in Hamburg for some reason.
From the site of one that I that I used to work for(they are very friendly so you can hit them up if you want some advice on setting up one)
> How exactly are you structured?
> In our search for a structure that consistently implements the principles of responsible ownership, we came across the veto-share model. First, the principles are enshrined in the company's articles of association. Then, company shares are transferred to a controlling shareholder. This controlling shareholder is granted veto rights, which must be used to prevent any future deviation from the principles. We are delighted to have the Purpose Foundation on board as our controlling shareholder!
> We want to offer every (new) team member the long-term prospect of assuming entrepreneurial responsibility as a co-owner. The criteria for this are already defined in the articles of association. To simplify joining and leaving, we have established dyve Trust eGbR, a partnership that holds 99% of the voting rights in dyve.
The main they don't survive is not due to capitalism. (Capitalism is just trade without use of force at the end of the day) but due to the lobbying power of corporations. Corporations constantly lobby the government for more regulation and rules, which they just budget for, but smaller companies don't have the funds to meet so they cannot stay in business.
Look at the first couple of years of COVID for example, Walmart, Target and the big box stores lobbied the government to stay open because they were "essential" while all the small businesses got wiped out due to their lack of lobbying power.
The solution is to stop giving corporations the ability to lobby governments, and stop using the government to control/fund markets. Not to blame it on capitalism.
That's not what capitalism is... or it's a very elementary understanding of it. Trade without force existed prior to and contemporary to capitalism. (See markets and mercantilism for more history there.) Capitalism is specifically the sort of mercantilism under which maximizing one's capital (typically the money commodity) becomes the aim.
Historically, money commodity was used to mediate exchange between two other commodities - I sell my wheat, get money, use money to buy pork. I'm buying commodities because I intend to use them or share them. Commodity -> money -> commodity. Capitalism inverts this -- the goal is to maximize money. I start with money, I convert it to a commodity that I can sell for a greater value, to get larger money. Money -> commodity -> money. You see Amazon operate this way: "if we can put one dollar in and get $1.01 out, do it".
This is a very strange take, like high school politics. Ultimately the only way to "change the entire market philosophy" for the result you suggest is called the USSR. That's how it ends and then it decays and collapses.
As long as people have individual freedom, both in what they can buy and in what they can create companies which don't have products that people want and don't make a profit to survive and thrive will go under.
It is strange amd concerning to read all this socialist ideology in 2025. I get it's not uncommon in young people as a "phase" but I think it's also because younger generations don't know what it means because they never saw it.
You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism.
This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always.
Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.
Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
I have bought a lot of glassware over a couple decades. My usual trick is to look at restaurant supply shops, since they usually have a wide variety to select trade offs in style, price, quality, etc. Somehow I’d never come across Duralex until a few months ago when I was shopping to reorganize my own cupboards. The Duralex stuff I got has been the best glassware I’ve ever had, hands down. I’ll probably order more to put in storage just in case their ongoing struggles disrupt availability in the future.
I get it—they’re expensive and so on—but they really are a superior product.
While there is no shortage of irrelevant details, the article is very light on relevant details. What prevents the factory from staying in business? Not enough orders? The French people supposedly love this glassware and orders pour in whenever the company is mentioned. They have the factory up and running, they have employees. The workers own the means of production, what could be better than that?
Why do they need to expand into new product ranges, if the existing products are in such high demand? I'm not sure if the proposed pint glasses for British pubs are a sure winner. Why not stick with what already works?
As a French, my guess is simply that the brand is not price competitive and up until now, they didn't have the right marketing to justify the higher prices.
Duralex is a beloved brand, and the French wouldn't like to see it go, but not enough to have much of an influence in the shopping aisle. The nostalgia aspect is real (ask the French about the numbers at the bottom of the glass ;) ), but it may be a negative when looking for more "adult" glassware. Maybe you don't want your guests or yourself feel like your are in a school canteen. School canteens also don't have a reputation for being luxurious to say the least, which may be a problem if you want to charge a premium. It may be that's the idea behind the pint glasses by the way. Show that Duralex can make glassware for grownups too.
A Danish supermarket had a loyalty program where you'd collect point and could get Duralex drinking glasses for the points. We got probably 25 of them, I don't think I'd consider buying anything else going forward, the quality is absolutely worth the minimal extra cost. You can get six for around €25EUR that is basically free.
I don't agree that they aren't price competitive, at least on normal drinking glasses.
It is more expensive than for example IKEA glasses, but I swear by Duralex.
Ever since an IKEA glass spontaneously exploded on my desk.
I suddenly remembered we used Duralex at school in Sweden in the 90s, so I ordered brand new Duralex glasses and no explosions yet.
I imagine if they were being used in schools, with 13-17 year olds, being washed every day for years until they were covered in scratches, they must be pretty tough.
The issue is that it is difficult to find a marketing justification for high prices in everyday glassware... nothing more like a glass than another glass and people are obviously not prepared to pay a premium.
I use only borosilicate glass vessels for cooking, for storing food, for eating and for drinking (some from France, some from Czechia).
I have replaced some of them in order to have more optimized sizes and shapes for the ways I use them (even if the replaced vessels were still perfectly good), and I have some extra vessels kept in reserve for the very unlikely case when I will break a vessel (which has not happened yet).
I do not expect that I would need to buy any more such vessels during my lifetime, unless I will become bored of those that I have and I would want a change.
So making money from selling high-quality glassware that can last forever is much more difficult than getting free money from a software subscription.
Exactly. All my glassware are Duralex including coffe cups, and I haven't broken a single glass in 25+ years. Yet, they regularly fall on the ceramic kitchen floor from a hip level.
Products which don't respect all the environment, the workers and the consumers are cheaper; much cheaper.
You can't win when other players are playing a different game.
This is another report from another French glass manufacturer. They couldn't meet their social responsibilty. Workers close the plant, and then the Mayor was pushing an unrelated company inthe viccinity, Nestle, to take over the failing glass plant
I remember looking at their website and thinking the product design was horrible. The "Picardie" design is iconic, but not really in a good way. In my mind it says "functional" and "old". That's probably unfair, but it is what it is. Everything else they have is generic in the extreme. The IKEA catalog has far more interesting glassware.
Funny that you mention IKEA.
I have 4 very old IKEA glasses that were made by Duralex. I just love the fact that they're about as old as I am (40 next year) and we're able to survive that long. I consider them to be the peak of IKEA glassware. Today IKEA glasses are known to be breaking easy - sometimes simply by getting hot in the dishwasher.
The design might look fresher, but they won't last.
The rest of my glasses (most) are Duralex as well. They're just very ... durable. I was kind of getting annoyed that the brand became so popular that I see them everywhere now (every other cafe serves water in them). I'm not French btw, my love for the glasses simply comes from seeing them outlast time and many pretty dramatic falls (a few times on hard ceramic tiles from a meter up and bouncing up almost as high again - leaving a few nearby mouths agape in the process).
But reading that they're a worker owned cooperative makes me want to buy many more from them. That's what I want: Stuff that's build to last a long time by people who can live from their work. Who cares if they look dated? For something that's used daily being old is a testament to their quality. I use my IKEA-Duralex glasses almost daily. They look much cooler than any new shit with their battle-scars ight scratches :-D).
IKEA is literally the opposite.
I know Duralex because they're the de facto coffee cup for a latte in the world's best cafes. I dunno how or why it happened, but since about 2008 if you go to a cafe in Melbourne and your latte comes in anything BUT one of those Duralex glasses, you should run for the hills.
A few years ago, a journalist went to Duralex, after they restructured (to be own by the employees), and show off the glasses's solidity, live. Every single one of them broke:
> the soaring cost of gas and electricity were the firm’s largest and most worrying expense
Difficult to have factories when basic utilities are expensive. China has a big advantage there as well, not just in labour costs. They invested heavily in energy infrastructure over the past few decades.
If they experience a flood of orders every time they are mentioned in the media and people flock to throw them money when they are in trouble, it seems like they should raise prices commensurate with their costs increasing and should probably invest in a little advertising. The brand seems strong and undamaged but they continue to struggle? That seems like a pretty easy fix.
The brand suffered from energy price hikes, felt particularly sharply after 2022, and its marketing could clearly be improved. Only now, after more than two or three decades, are new designs finally appearing on the roadmap.
These glasses were once ubiquitous in public middle-school cafeterias, so the emotional attachment runs deep across generations.
During a trip to Venice I had the good fortune of touring http://www.giuman.it/ and it was highly educational. Bringing the furnaces up to temperature takes time and turning them off each day isn't a good option. Gas comes primarily from Russia and price spikes have really hurt the business.
Glass furnaces operate somewhere around 1500 C. Electrical heating would work, but that's also quite expensive, usually even more so.
What they'd want to do is try to recover and reuse heat. In principle, there's no reason "new" heat has to be added each time they heat a batch of glass, if heat can be transferred from cooling glass back to the input materials.
> What they'd want to do is try to recover and reuse heat. In principle, there's no reason "new" heat has to be added each time they heat a batch of glass, if heat can be transferred from cooling glass back to the input materials.
Have you worked in any industrial or craft setting involving molten glass or metal? Walked around a workshop? There's no way the heat is going back into the process.
I know there are industrial processes where heat is efficiently recycled, but I agree there are serious practical problems, particularly if the molten glass must be cooled quickly. Still, even somewhat lower grade heat can be upgraded back to high grade heat with high temperature heat pumps.
The article doesn't even mention that this company already went bankrupt once this century, in 2008. Like some of the other posters, I furnished my cupboards with Duralex decades ago and never needed any more. In the same way, I filled my flatware drawers with Oneida decades before Oneida disappeared, and my plates are all from some long-forgotten Swedish stoneware maker, and I bought all my furniture from a dead Italian brand at a showroom that no longer exists in San Francisco. I have a personal pet theory on this, which is that the astronomical cost of housing has squeezed out all other aspects of home furnishing from people's budgets, in a race to the bottom where the last brand standing is Ikea.
Selling products based on nostalgia does not work. Europe needs to do far more keep it's industry afloat and to make locally produced products competitive.
Duralex is currently selling products at 10x the costs of what a similar product, made in China, costs on Amazon. This is not sustainable. These enormous differences in prices mean that only very people can afford their products. It is a brand which sells an everyday item at prices, which are legitimately hard to afford for most of the population.
Obviously a company like this can not succeed long term. It is totally uncompetitive, except for some brand recognition and positive brand perception. These obviously help, but will do nothing for the long term success.
Duralex were used and loved in Spain, too. Most houses still have some of them, although nowadays there's lot more competition. I would pay twice for their glassware, quality-wise is good stuff.
As the article said Duralex was the brand use by a large number of school cantinas in France. Inside of each glass there’s a small number used by the brand to identify the mold used for the creation of the glass. For kids that was a way to decide who is going to fetch the water for the table (smaller number or higher number of the table). That’s why the CE is holding his glass like that in the guardian article. Beside the nostalgia i think a lot of people support them because it’s a SCOP (the majority of the capital of the company is owned by the employees) [1] and it’s nice to see that another kind of company is possible.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_coop%C3%A9ra...
> it’s a SCOP (the majority of the capital of the company is owned by the employees)
On the other hand, I suspect that this also makes it more difficult for them to change and adapt.
Durable is really the French household name "par excellence".
I too would like to believe that "another kind of company is possible", but this isn't a ringing endorsement...
The article mentions it, but don’t insist on it. Duralex is now quite a special company: they were a renowned and beloved brand that was heading toward bankruptcy, until last year when the company was bought by its own workers and turned into a cooperative.
Since then, they have stayed afloat, probably thanks mainly to people wanting to support a worker-owned business by buying their glasses, but still, it works.
It’s a pretty positive story so far, and I hope they’ll continue to thrive under this new structure.
It's also because almost every french home has one of their glasses and they are good quality.
So it's a mix of history, tradition, enjoying good products, the pride you get from your country producing good products.
And not only homes. I moved to France several months ago, and I keep seeing the Duralex mark in cafes, at my workplace, basically everywhere.
There's a reason why worker owned companies (which were quite prevalent and a key factor in the 20th century's socialist movements) did not survive in our capitalist world. If we want to see these kinds of companies thrive, we need to change the entire market philosophy. Otherwise they will always be out-competed by companies that favour revenue/profit over worker benefits. In fact they will not even take off in the first place, because that needs capital and investors who own capital will want shares in return, which goes against the core principle of worker-ownership.
They did survive. There are thousands in Spain and Italy especially.
One of the most well-known is the Mondragon Corporation from the Basque country, one of Spain's largest comanies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
I am particularly interested in coops as a model for a tech startup. How would one go about structuring a new corporation to best ensure it remains a coop?
Plenty of worker owned software consultancies in germany, and specially in Hamburg for some reason.
From the site of one that I that I used to work for(they are very friendly so you can hit them up if you want some advice on setting up one)
> How exactly are you structured?
> In our search for a structure that consistently implements the principles of responsible ownership, we came across the veto-share model. First, the principles are enshrined in the company's articles of association. Then, company shares are transferred to a controlling shareholder. This controlling shareholder is granted veto rights, which must be used to prevent any future deviation from the principles. We are delighted to have the Purpose Foundation on board as our controlling shareholder!
> We want to offer every (new) team member the long-term prospect of assuming entrepreneurial responsibility as a co-owner. The criteria for this are already defined in the articles of association. To simplify joining and leaving, we have established dyve Trust eGbR, a partnership that holds 99% of the voting rights in dyve.
https://dyve.agency/warum-wir-es-tun
Thanks!
Look for successful models I guess
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tech-startup+cooperatives&ia=web
Mondragon is a federation of worker cooperatives.
You sound like you might be interested in distributism [0][1][2][3][4]. The author, John Médaille, also spoke at Google [5].
[0] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-...
[1] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-...
[2] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-...
[3] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-...
[4] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-...
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc
Thank you for the links!
The main they don't survive is not due to capitalism. (Capitalism is just trade without use of force at the end of the day) but due to the lobbying power of corporations. Corporations constantly lobby the government for more regulation and rules, which they just budget for, but smaller companies don't have the funds to meet so they cannot stay in business. Look at the first couple of years of COVID for example, Walmart, Target and the big box stores lobbied the government to stay open because they were "essential" while all the small businesses got wiped out due to their lack of lobbying power.
The solution is to stop giving corporations the ability to lobby governments, and stop using the government to control/fund markets. Not to blame it on capitalism.
That's not what capitalism is... or it's a very elementary understanding of it. Trade without force existed prior to and contemporary to capitalism. (See markets and mercantilism for more history there.) Capitalism is specifically the sort of mercantilism under which maximizing one's capital (typically the money commodity) becomes the aim.
Historically, money commodity was used to mediate exchange between two other commodities - I sell my wheat, get money, use money to buy pork. I'm buying commodities because I intend to use them or share them. Commodity -> money -> commodity. Capitalism inverts this -- the goal is to maximize money. I start with money, I convert it to a commodity that I can sell for a greater value, to get larger money. Money -> commodity -> money. You see Amazon operate this way: "if we can put one dollar in and get $1.01 out, do it".
Highly recommend this book on the transition in England and France from agrarian and feudal mercantilism into capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism
Not sure about the currency vs commodity argument, but I agree with this argument linked article:
> Thus it argues that the origin of capitalism lies fundamentally in social property relations rather than in trade and commerce.
Capitalism is fundamentally a framework for ownership and property.
Such companies are more common than you think.
This is a very strange take, like high school politics. Ultimately the only way to "change the entire market philosophy" for the result you suggest is called the USSR. That's how it ends and then it decays and collapses.
As long as people have individual freedom, both in what they can buy and in what they can create companies which don't have products that people want and don't make a profit to survive and thrive will go under.
It is strange amd concerning to read all this socialist ideology in 2025. I get it's not uncommon in young people as a "phase" but I think it's also because younger generations don't know what it means because they never saw it.
You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism.
This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always.
Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.
Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
I have bought a lot of glassware over a couple decades. My usual trick is to look at restaurant supply shops, since they usually have a wide variety to select trade offs in style, price, quality, etc. Somehow I’d never come across Duralex until a few months ago when I was shopping to reorganize my own cupboards. The Duralex stuff I got has been the best glassware I’ve ever had, hands down. I’ll probably order more to put in storage just in case their ongoing struggles disrupt availability in the future.
I get it—they’re expensive and so on—but they really are a superior product.
I've never bought a glass in my life. We just use old Vegemite jars here in Australia.
While there is no shortage of irrelevant details, the article is very light on relevant details. What prevents the factory from staying in business? Not enough orders? The French people supposedly love this glassware and orders pour in whenever the company is mentioned. They have the factory up and running, they have employees. The workers own the means of production, what could be better than that?
Why do they need to expand into new product ranges, if the existing products are in such high demand? I'm not sure if the proposed pint glasses for British pubs are a sure winner. Why not stick with what already works?
None of this is explained in the article.
As a French, my guess is simply that the brand is not price competitive and up until now, they didn't have the right marketing to justify the higher prices.
Duralex is a beloved brand, and the French wouldn't like to see it go, but not enough to have much of an influence in the shopping aisle. The nostalgia aspect is real (ask the French about the numbers at the bottom of the glass ;) ), but it may be a negative when looking for more "adult" glassware. Maybe you don't want your guests or yourself feel like your are in a school canteen. School canteens also don't have a reputation for being luxurious to say the least, which may be a problem if you want to charge a premium. It may be that's the idea behind the pint glasses by the way. Show that Duralex can make glassware for grownups too.
A Danish supermarket had a loyalty program where you'd collect point and could get Duralex drinking glasses for the points. We got probably 25 of them, I don't think I'd consider buying anything else going forward, the quality is absolutely worth the minimal extra cost. You can get six for around €25EUR that is basically free.
I don't agree that they aren't price competitive, at least on normal drinking glasses.
Here you can buy 250 ml glasses for 1.39 Euro a piece. Even cheaper for sets. I’m not sure how cheap we need glasses to be?
Create a separate high-end brand, Duralux.
It is more expensive than for example IKEA glasses, but I swear by Duralex.
Ever since an IKEA glass spontaneously exploded on my desk.
I suddenly remembered we used Duralex at school in Sweden in the 90s, so I ordered brand new Duralex glasses and no explosions yet.
I imagine if they were being used in schools, with 13-17 year olds, being washed every day for years until they were covered in scratches, they must be pretty tough.
Buy Duralex — the glassware that won't explode soon.
Buy Duralex — the glassware that soon won't explode.
The issue is that it is difficult to find a marketing justification for high prices in everyday glassware... nothing more like a glass than another glass and people are obviously not prepared to pay a premium.
Yes, we had them in school in the UK too. Just had a flashback to the number at the bottom of the glass
> Why not stick with what already works?
Well, apparently it doesn't work. Personally I think almost all their glassware is either ugly or generic.
I guess they have the same problem that Superfest glass from the GDR had, the glasses just don't break often enough.
Indeed.
I use only borosilicate glass vessels for cooking, for storing food, for eating and for drinking (some from France, some from Czechia).
I have replaced some of them in order to have more optimized sizes and shapes for the ways I use them (even if the replaced vessels were still perfectly good), and I have some extra vessels kept in reserve for the very unlikely case when I will break a vessel (which has not happened yet).
I do not expect that I would need to buy any more such vessels during my lifetime, unless I will become bored of those that I have and I would want a change.
So making money from selling high-quality glassware that can last forever is much more difficult than getting free money from a software subscription.
Exactly. All my glassware are Duralex including coffe cups, and I haven't broken a single glass in 25+ years. Yet, they regularly fall on the ceramic kitchen floor from a hip level.
Products which don't respect all the environment, the workers and the consumers are cheaper; much cheaper.
You can't win when other players are playing a different game.
This is another report from another French glass manufacturer. They couldn't meet their social responsibilty. Workers close the plant, and then the Mayor was pushing an unrelated company inthe viccinity, Nestle, to take over the failing glass plant
https://www.glass-international.com/news/o-i-halts-french-gl...
That’s all true, but to be clear, the Mayor supported the workers and wanted Nestle to take over the failing plant.
I remember looking at their website and thinking the product design was horrible. The "Picardie" design is iconic, but not really in a good way. In my mind it says "functional" and "old". That's probably unfair, but it is what it is. Everything else they have is generic in the extreme. The IKEA catalog has far more interesting glassware.
Funny that you mention IKEA. I have 4 very old IKEA glasses that were made by Duralex. I just love the fact that they're about as old as I am (40 next year) and we're able to survive that long. I consider them to be the peak of IKEA glassware. Today IKEA glasses are known to be breaking easy - sometimes simply by getting hot in the dishwasher. The design might look fresher, but they won't last.
The rest of my glasses (most) are Duralex as well. They're just very ... durable. I was kind of getting annoyed that the brand became so popular that I see them everywhere now (every other cafe serves water in them). I'm not French btw, my love for the glasses simply comes from seeing them outlast time and many pretty dramatic falls (a few times on hard ceramic tiles from a meter up and bouncing up almost as high again - leaving a few nearby mouths agape in the process). But reading that they're a worker owned cooperative makes me want to buy many more from them. That's what I want: Stuff that's build to last a long time by people who can live from their work. Who cares if they look dated? For something that's used daily being old is a testament to their quality. I use my IKEA-Duralex glasses almost daily. They look much cooler than any new shit with their battle-scars ight scratches :-D). IKEA is literally the opposite.
To each their own. What you call old I call classic. I have bought a few of these pieces and they look great.
Definitely looks like something you’d see in a 1970s movie or your grandma’s old cupboard.
Yeah. They're grandma glasses at this point.
I know Duralex because they're the de facto coffee cup for a latte in the world's best cafes. I dunno how or why it happened, but since about 2008 if you go to a cafe in Melbourne and your latte comes in anything BUT one of those Duralex glasses, you should run for the hills.
A few years ago, a journalist went to Duralex, after they restructured (to be own by the employees), and show off the glasses's solidity, live. Every single one of them broke:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x957g7q
> the soaring cost of gas and electricity were the firm’s largest and most worrying expense
Difficult to have factories when basic utilities are expensive. China has a big advantage there as well, not just in labour costs. They invested heavily in energy infrastructure over the past few decades.
If they experience a flood of orders every time they are mentioned in the media and people flock to throw them money when they are in trouble, it seems like they should raise prices commensurate with their costs increasing and should probably invest in a little advertising. The brand seems strong and undamaged but they continue to struggle? That seems like a pretty easy fix.
The brand suffered from energy price hikes, felt particularly sharply after 2022, and its marketing could clearly be improved. Only now, after more than two or three decades, are new designs finally appearing on the roadmap.
These glasses were once ubiquitous in public middle-school cafeterias, so the emotional attachment runs deep across generations.
During a trip to Venice I had the good fortune of touring http://www.giuman.it/ and it was highly educational. Bringing the furnaces up to temperature takes time and turning them off each day isn't a good option. Gas comes primarily from Russia and price spikes have really hurt the business.
New products and new markets clearly help finances. Burning that much gas has got to be their major expense. Are there other way to heat the furnaces?
Sometimes, but not often. These furnaces burn for like 20 years at a time, so gas is pretty common.
Glass furnaces operate somewhere around 1500 C. Electrical heating would work, but that's also quite expensive, usually even more so.
What they'd want to do is try to recover and reuse heat. In principle, there's no reason "new" heat has to be added each time they heat a batch of glass, if heat can be transferred from cooling glass back to the input materials.
> What they'd want to do is try to recover and reuse heat. In principle, there's no reason "new" heat has to be added each time they heat a batch of glass, if heat can be transferred from cooling glass back to the input materials.
Have you worked in any industrial or craft setting involving molten glass or metal? Walked around a workshop? There's no way the heat is going back into the process.
I know there are industrial processes where heat is efficiently recycled, but I agree there are serious practical problems, particularly if the molten glass must be cooled quickly. Still, even somewhat lower grade heat can be upgraded back to high grade heat with high temperature heat pumps.
The article doesn't even mention that this company already went bankrupt once this century, in 2008. Like some of the other posters, I furnished my cupboards with Duralex decades ago and never needed any more. In the same way, I filled my flatware drawers with Oneida decades before Oneida disappeared, and my plates are all from some long-forgotten Swedish stoneware maker, and I bought all my furniture from a dead Italian brand at a showroom that no longer exists in San Francisco. I have a personal pet theory on this, which is that the astronomical cost of housing has squeezed out all other aspects of home furnishing from people's budgets, in a race to the bottom where the last brand standing is Ikea.
The housing theory of everything, indeed.
Also, smaller family sizes means people are inheriting such things rather than buying them. If anything, there's antique overload.
Duralex is good quality anyway, very strong against breaking but they do scratch pretty badly
They make great glassware, very scratch and chip resistant.
That's probably their problem, cheap and long lasting isn't good for business.
Their products are extremely expensive.
Selling products based on nostalgia does not work. Europe needs to do far more keep it's industry afloat and to make locally produced products competitive.
Duralex is currently selling products at 10x the costs of what a similar product, made in China, costs on Amazon. This is not sustainable. These enormous differences in prices mean that only very people can afford their products. It is a brand which sells an everyday item at prices, which are legitimately hard to afford for most of the population.
Obviously a company like this can not succeed long term. It is totally uncompetitive, except for some brand recognition and positive brand perception. These obviously help, but will do nothing for the long term success.
Duralex were used and loved in Spain, too. Most houses still have some of them, although nowadays there's lot more competition. I would pay twice for their glassware, quality-wise is good stuff.