As a brand designer, strongly disagree. Every business should strive for good branding, regardless of the quality of the business. Your personal taste may result in being distrustful of a small business with fantastic branding, which may be fair in some cases, but a branding has no direct correlation with the quality of the business, only the visibility of the business. You’re just as likely to find a small business with good quality and strong branding as one with poor quality and good branding, if not more. businesses that don’t really put much effort into the quality of their product likely aren’t gonna have super good taste or value designer input, and designers are likely not gonna be super jazzed about working with a crappy company unless the pay is fantastic, which a small business might not be able to fulfill. Either way, I think this is a case of a few bad apples poisoning an otherwise perfectly fine well of high-quality small businesses with good branding and good products.