Is it possible to avoid the continuing decline in quality of consumer products brought on by corporate greed?

When Keyana Sapp, 31, went shopping for a new backpack, the brands he remembered as a kid were just not the same.

He researched the companies, from North Face to JanSport and Eastpak, and soon realized they were all owned by the VF Corporation after a wave of acquisitions in the 2000s. After a Reddit post he made about his discovery picked up traction, he started looking at other types of consumer goods – cookware, shoes, tools, clothing.