The End of the Disposable Product

Two things are happening simultaneously in consumer markets, and they are more connected than they first appear.

The first is that people are keeping products for longer. The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, up from around 22 months in 2016, and that cycle is getting longer. Second-hand device demand is outpacing demand for new devices. The r/BuyItForLife subreddit has 3.4 million members. People are actively seeking things built to last.

The second is that people want a more active relationship with what they own. 43% of people in the UK had a side hustle in 2024, most commonly in arts and crafts, and Etsy searches for handmade gifts were up 238% year-on-year in early 2024. 63% of vibe coding users are non-developers building their own tools and interfaces. The desire to make, adapt, fix, and participate is strong and growing.

These are not separate trends. They are two expressions of the same underlying shift: ownership is becoming stewardship.

Longevity as a Baseline Expectation

For a long time, longevity was a luxury. Patagonia’s IronClad guarantee, Barbour’s repair service, the premium commanded by BSI Kitemark products. Quality and aftercare were priced accordingly, and most consumers bought disposable goods because the alternative was financially out of reach.

That positioning is under pressure from two directions. From above, brands including Dr. Martens, L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer, The North Face, and Berghaus have all scrapped or scaled back lifetime guarantees, finding them commercially unsustainable. From below, legislation is catching up. France’s Repairability Index is active. The EU is preparing repairability and durability scores for adoption between 2026 and 2030. The EU Digital Product Passport rollout begins in 2026, recording material composition, repairability, carbon footprint, ownership history, and lifecycle data.

Longevity is ceasing to be a differentiator and becoming a hygiene factor. Brands that have built a premium around it will need to find new ways to articulate value. Brands that have ignored it will find regulatory and consumer pressure converging.

Products You Participate In

Fairphone 6 has made longevity visible and intuitive. Replaceable components and upgradeable modules reframe the smartphone as an evolving object rather than a device with a fixed lifespan. You can see how it works, fix what breaks, and upgrade only what you need to.

Patagonia’s Worn Wear programme extends product life through repair services, resale, and storytelling around the ownership journey. Customers participate by repairing, reselling, and sharing the history of their garments. The product becomes a vehicle for an ongoing relationship rather than a completed transaction.

Crocs’ Jibbitz inserts let wearers add, remove, and rearrange decorative elements at any time. A single pair of shoes can be repeatedly altered, updated, or repurposed without replacing the core product. Modularity is both practical and expressive.

iFixit turns repair into a participatory knowledge culture. Its community-driven manuals and tools position ownership as stewardship, aligning directly with right-to-repair legislation and a future where repair capability is expected, not exceptional.

Arcteryx’s repair programme demonstrates that this level of aftercare is filtering down the aspirational chain. Once confined to the very top of the market, repair as a brand commitment is becoming a more mainstream expectation.

The Brand Implications

When buyers participate in the product experience, the brand relationship changes in character. It becomes less transactional and more cumulative. New value emerges from that: storytelling opportunities, community, advocacy, and the kind of loyalty that is not dependent on the next product release.

The questions worth sitting with: How do you offer people the opportunity to participate in what they buy from you? Is it through personalisation, lifecycle visibility, modular utility, community connection, or some combination? What needs to be true of your product for longevity to deliver genuine value rather than just being a claim?

The disposable product is not dead. But its dominance is ending. The brands replacing it are building things worth keeping, and that shift is precisely what our Fellow Futures report ‘What Happens When People Buy Less?’ set out to understand.

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Next: Why the Next Big Trend Will Be Local looks at how subcultural identity and slower trend rhythms are replacing the global hype cycle.