Approximately a decade ago, I picked up some commodity folding chairs. The very pedestrian ones, black metal tubing with thinly padded seat and back. I thought that these would always be obtainable at marginal cost. They w ere basically magic -- super light, easy to reposition, and when folded awa y, they take no space at all.
Over the past 10 years, I've found that all such chairs are being designed with a noticable upward tilt, with the front elevated. This is terrible if you have back issues. For the black tubular ones, I have not found any ex ceptions, and I've spent weekends looking.
This modification is baffling in a number of ways. First, it doesn't seem to save any production costs. Second, the design oddity seems to have comp letely taken over all the entire market for such chairs. How is it possibl e that *every* *single* instance of such a product from every retailer in t he past ten years has adopted this design and abandoned "normal" design (no tilt)? This suggests that there must be some driving motivation for the d esign, which leads to the third bafflement. It doesn't seem to contribute anything functionally, and in fact, it aggravates back problems.
I'm a believer that there is always a rational explanation for how markets behave, but this lasting whole-sale change seems to defy that. Wondering i f there's something blindingly obvious that I'm missing, or whether there s ome dynamic to this market that is little known to outsiders.