Crystal Lee (she/她)

The enshittification of things (and a list of private equity-owned companies)

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I recently discovered the delightful website Worse on Purpose, which is a database of brands and investigations about the enshittification of things, which generally boils down to this: make a great product, get customers to use the great product, then make things worse on purpose to extract every last dime from them. "Worse on purpose" has many faces: planned obsolescence, absurd subscriptions on auto-renew (e.g., paying $17+/month to use your $3,000 mattress), and skimp/shrinkflation. It's always disappointing to buy something you used to like a lot only to realize that the bottle looks the same...but now there's a huge indent at the bottom so you get half as much product for the same price. (Alternatively, there might be a product like Aldi mayonnaise that goes from 9% egg yolk to 6% egg and 1.5% yolk.)

It's tempting to just chalk it all up to capitalism and call it a day, but that lets one of the main proponents of enshittification disappear into the ether: private equity, which is essentially ownership of a company that is not publicly traded on the stock market. Usually, PE firms buy up stakes in these companies—from huge retail brands to your neighborhood vet—which they then "restructure" to make the most of their investment, often to sell it to a new buyer.

I won't go into it too much here, but Vivian Tu has a great explainer on the mechanics of PE that is way more comprehensive than the extremely reductive version I've given here. In short:

Think of private equity firms as really sophisticated house flippers, but instead of renovating kitchens and bathrooms, they're renovating entire businesses. [...]

[A] bakery isn't a publicly traded company, and you as an individual can't invest in it. However, a PE firm might swoop in and purchase the bakery, fire half the employees, build an automated factory, and strike up a nationwide distribution partnership with a food delivery service. After all the changes, they'd sell the whole business for a lot more than when they bought the single bakery shop.

Anyways, stumbling upon Worse on Purpose reminded me of a list I made feverishly during a particularly sleepless night: a list of brands that have, as of February 2026-ish, been bought out by private equity. RIP JanSport. (Honestly, my ca. 2000s backpack has held up better than the one I bought in 2022.)

To be clear, I'm not endorsing any of these brands (if anything, this is an anti-endorsement), and I'm sure there is one case somewhere in the world where the PE-owned company made a better product because they were rescued from bankruptcy. Largely, though, PE "optimizes" by ruthlessly cutting costs with devastating effects, particularly in health care. Patients in PE-owned hospitals, for example, experienced a 25% increase in hospital-acquired complications compared to pre-acquisition patients. We could go on and on about nursing homes and vet clinics.

For a DINK with disposable income, I could definitely stand to buy less stuff. I use this list of companies as a reminder that I'm probably not getting the best value or quality from these companies anymore, however rosy my perceptions of them used to be. Will I still get a pretzel from Auntie Anne's on the off chance that I'm at the mall? Maybe out of nostalgia, but at least I know why it's now $8 or something and tastes horrible. I hate to be that guy who says "they just don't make them like that anymore," but...they really don't make them like that anymore. Sigh.

These categories are totally made up by my insomniac self, by the way, so please don't email me about why I put "Fandom" under "Online Services" and not "Entertainment and Media." (What even is media? I kid.)

Skip ahead to: apparel, healthcare, home goods, food, restaurants, education, real estate, entertainment and media, hospitality, drugstores, grocery stores, technology, and I don't know where to put these. There are also the weird surprises, which includes airports.

List of companies

Apparel

Clothing / fashion

  • J. Crew
  • Talbots
  • Club Monaco
  • Lucky Jeans
  • Oshkosh
  • Brooks Brothers
  • Gymboree
  • Children’s Place
  • Gap
  • Old Navy
  • Banana Republic
  • Athleta
  • Reiss
  • Vineyard Vines
  • Burlington
  • Spanx
  • Hugo Boss
  • Valentino
  • David’s Bridal
  • The Limited

Shoes

  • Doc Martens
  • Sorel boots
  • Birkenstocks
  • Hunter boots
  • Chacos
  • Merrell
  • Allen Edmonds
  • Converse
  • Dansko
  • Ariat boots
  • TOMS

Activewear

  • Arcteryx
  • Champion
  • Vuori

Accessories

  • Sunglasses: Oakley, Raybans
  • Watches: Breitling, Timex
  • Bags: Topo Designs, JanSport, Targus
  • Jewelry: Claire’s, Blue Nile
  • Beauty: Philosophy, Revlon

Outdoorsy / work style

  • Eddie Bauer
  • Filson
  • Duluth Trading Co.
  • L. L. Bean
  • Lands End

Winter clothes

  • Marmot
  • Smartwool
  • Canada Goose
  • Helly Hansen
  • Woolrich
  • The North Face

Healthcare

  • Long Term Health
  • One Medical (pre Amazon acquisition)
  • GoodRx
  • Athena health

Home goods

  • Schwinn
  • Rowenta Irons
  • Tumi
  • WaterPik
  • Yankee Candle
  • Brookstone
  • Bob’s Discount Furniture
  • The Container Store

Power tools

  • DeWalt
  • Black & Decker

Audio equipment

  • Beats
  • Sennheiser
  • Marshall amps
  • Sonos

Kitchen

  • Stanley
  • Pyrex
  • Weber grills
  • Blendtec
  • Aeropress
  • Henckels
  • Instant Pot

Appliances

  • Hoover
  • Oreck
  • Dirt Devil
  • Maytag

Food

  • Manischewitz (kosher products)
  • Famous Amos
  • Dr. Pepper / SevenUp
  • Bertolli
  • Country Crock
  • I can’t believe it’s not butter!
  • Del Monte
  • Mrs. Fields
  • Lipton (PG Tips, TAZO)
  • Tropicana
  • Orangina
  • Naked Juice

Restaurants

Dessert

  • Auntie Anne's
  • Cinnabon
  • Baskin-Robbins

Casual dining

  • LongHorn Steakhouse
  • The Capital Grille
  • Olive Garden
  • Yard House
  • TGI Friday’s
  • PF Chang
  • Fogo de Chão
  • Benihana
  • California Pizza Kitchen
  • Souplantation

Fast food

  • Taco Bell
  • Carl’s Junior
  • Hardee’s
  • Popeyes
  • Wingstop
  • Sonic
  • Arby’s
  • Subway
  • Dunkin’
  • Wagamama
  • Burger King
  • Domino’s
  • KFC
  • Church’s Texas Chicken

Fast casual

  • Rubio’s
  • Qdoba
  • Panera
  • Jimmy John’s
  • Jersey Mike’s
  • Corner Bakery Cafe
  • Mendocino Farms
  • Au Bon Pain
  • Fazoli’s

Education

  • Cengage
  • Gale
  • McGraw Hill
  • Aspen Education Group
  • Bright Horizons
  • Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • Anthology (formerly Blackboard)
  • Renaissance Learning (not the Alphasmart!!)
  • Rosetta Stone
  • European University
  • Jostens
  • Clarivate (EndNote, Web of Science, ProQuest)

Real estate

Compass, which also owns Better Homes and Gardens, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s, and Christie’s.

Entertainment and media

  • Sony Pictures
  • Paramount
  • Redbox
  • IHeartMedia
  • Warner Music Group
  • Le Figaro
  • UFC
  • Kanopy
  • Univision
  • Gizmodo

Gaming

  • Electronic Arts
  • Zwift
  • Unity
  • Epic Games

Movie theaters

  • Loews Cineplex Entertainment
  • Regal Cinema
  • AMC

Publishing

  • Simon & Schuster (also owns Nancy Drew)
  • Barnes & Noble
  • Waterstones
  • Computerworld, Macworld, PC World

Hospitality

Hotels

  • Hilton Hotels
  • Rosewood
  • Hard Rock Hotel
  • Doubletree
  • Embassy Suites
  • Waldorf Astoria
  • Travelodge
  • Conrad Hotels
  • Harrah’s Entertainment (casinos that also own the World Series in Poker)
  • La Quinta Inn
  • Extended Stay America
  • Four Seasons
  • Le Meridien
  • Norwegian Cruise Lines

Theme parks

  • Seaworld
  • Legoland
  • Sesame Place
  • Madame Tussaud’s
  • Chuck E. Cheese

Drugstores

  • Duane Reade
  • Shoppers Drugmart
  • Boots
  • Walgreens

Grocery stores

  • Albertsons
  • Ralphs
  • Star Market
  • Mi Pueblo Food Center
  • Safeway
  • Smart & Final

Technology

  • Securus Technologies
  • Dell
  • Seagate
  • Boston Dynamics
  • Siemens
  • Leica
  • ADT (home security)

Online services

  • Ancestry.com
  • MyHeritage
  • Zoom Info
  • Bumble
  • Rover
  • Wag
  • Rocket Lawyer
  • Legal Zoom
  • Box
  • GoDaddy
  • WebMD
  • McAfee
  • Squarespace
  • LastPass
  • Zendesk
  • Credit Karma
  • Expedia
  • Skype (between eBay and Microsoft acquisitions)
  • SoFi
  • Fandom
  • SurveyMonkey
  • Shutterfly
  • The Weather Company (Weather Channel and Weather Underground)

Telecommunications

  • TransUnion
  • RCN
  • Hawaii Telcom
  • T Mobile
  • Vodafone
  • Motorola
  • Direct TV

Weird surprises

  • Deutsches Bahn
  • Boeing
  • Heathrow Airport
  • Queensland Airports
  • Port of Brisbane
  • Alibaba

I don’t know where to put these

  • Discount stores: 99 cents only, Dollarama, Dollar General
  • Department stores: Neiman Marcus, Barneys, Macy’s
  • Pet stores: Petco, PetSmart
  • Arts and crafts: Michaels, Joann
  • Gyms: LA Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness
  • Music equipment: Guitar Center, Gibson guitars, Fender guitars
  • Cars: Hertz cars, National car rental, Chrysler
  • Staples
  • Igloo
  • Yellow Pages
  • Oriental Trading Company
  • Coinstar
  • Nielsen research
  • Toys R Us
  • Washington Mutual
  • Paper Source