“That’s life.”

When used in succession, these are the two most infuriating words in the English language.

This phrase serves as valid legal tender for any litany of excuses, from car troubles to war crimes. “That’s life,” is a conscious decision to ignore the wide array of variables that constitute life’s grandiose equation, and spit out a lazy answer, if you could even call it that.

Well at GRIP6 Belts, that’s NOT life.

For those who do not know, GRIP6 offers a Lifetime Guarantee on all of our products. Furthermore, this guarantee isn’t just some marketing ploy, like those buried within the tiny sub-atomic text you see on new credit card offers. No, we have legitimately designed a product that was built to last for decades.

This means no more trips to Walmart every three months because your weeks-old belt disintegrates when exposed to pants.  (I’m sure they covered that in the sub-atomic print)  At GRIP6 the A3 “Guaran-damn-tee”, is part of our lifeblood. With all of the sweat and tears we’ve put into making these belts, we just wouldn’t feel good about leaving our customers high and dry after our product falls short of the challenge. The A3 Guarandamntee stands for honoring our end of the bargain “at any time, under any condition, for any reason”.   If our belt breaks, that’s on us, not on you.

When you think about it, this is the way things should be. We work hard at our jobs and we know you do too, so why don’t all of our products work hard for us? Who can take pride in a product that tears to bits as soon as stress is introduced into the equation?

Investors and shareholders, that’s who.

In the business world, this is called “Planned Obsolescence”, the intentional degradation of a product, for the purpose of getting your customers to come back to the well for another round of mediocre service every few months. Planned Obsolescence is like paying for an iPhone X, and two years later installing the update that magically turns your phone into a paperweight.

Planned Obsolescence is not American Ingenuity, it is lazy, dishonest, and manipulative. Real American ingenuity constitutes creativity and design; it stands for solving a problem. At GRIP6, we do not engineer gimmicks into our products so we can hawk the same lackluster piece of garbage over and over. We work to innovate and expand the experience of owning one of our belts. We make another strap, design another buckle, build another machine, and the process goes on. This is a long forgotten step within the echelons of American Capitalism, that businesses exists to solve problems.  When a company subscribes to the idea of planned obsolescence, they are stating plainly that their need to generate income is a greater problem than your need to have a functioning product. When this occurs, all of their time and effort is focused on solving that problem, to the extent that they begin designing their products to fail in order to increase sales.

Products are no longer designed to be good, simply good enough.  Good enough to prevent scathing reviews on Amazon or good enough to pass surface inspection as you grab it off the shelf.  But since when was “good enough” our benchmark for quality? How many movies can you recall when the man looks into the woman’s eyes and says,  “I suppose you’re good enough.”   

Well if it did happen, it didn’t end well.

People deserve more than good enough, the trick is how to go about finding it.  (There isn’t a match.com for belts, but maybe there should be.) A warranty is actually a pretty good barometer for the quality built into a product. Simple economics states that if you see a 90 day warranty on a product, then that thing is engineered to keep giving a crap all the way up to day 91. Meanwhile, if you purchased a product with no warranty to be seen, I hope for your sake that thing makes it to your house in one piece.

If you haven’t already, we invite you to make your next belt a GRIP6 belt.  We work hard to build our belts in such a way that you won’t need another belt for a very long time.

We guaran-damn-tee it.

Here are the nuts and bolts:

• Within 60 days - Good for full refund and we even pay return shipping (US Domestic orders only, International orders are responsible for return shipping)

• Within 180 days - No fees, you merely pay shipping to get the product back and you can either return for a full refund or exchange for a product of equal value

• After 180 days - No fees, you merely pay shipping to get the product back and you can exchange the product for another of equal value