Check out "buy it for life" products. The planned obsolescence comes from scientific management of business. If you want a quality <x> in category <y> you should look at companies that are expressly doing that as part of their vision for quality. It's kind of one of those things that unless you aim for quality and guard against profits at the expense of quality, the company will tend towards planned obsolescence. But companies do exist in many of these areas (furniture, cars, etc). Harder money over time would also help, upstream