Basically, anyone wanting to make anything has two options for manufacturing; in house, and in china. In house is way more expensive, and much less likely to result in profits. In china is incredibly easy and much cheaper, but as soon as you ask for them to pause making your product, they turn around and rebrand it and sell it for much cheaper everywhere they can (Temu, amazon, etc).
Another part is that a lot of manufacturing companies don’t speak English, so there is a whole industry of people who know Chinese manufacturers who will sell their translation and industry contact services. Super helpful when you have a good relationship with them, but the instant that turns even slightly sour, you discover the major downside of having a middleman between you and your product tooling: you have absolutely no power to stop anyone in china from using your tooling to make cheap knockoffs of your product, legal or otherwise.
But also the ODM industry is massive too in China - manufacturers who design and make products, but don’t sell directly, rather they contract it out to an “empty brand” (i.e. a company that’s brand only, no real assets or manufacturing capacity), stamp the brand logo on the product and sell it to them en masse.
This is usually why you’d see the exact same cheap thing under many brands.
Counterfeiting is also a thing but those companies usually have good(ish) engineering, and aim to properly replicate expensive products, such as Apple AirPods (the AirReps community is pretty big, and you can buy AirPods Pro 2 clones that are 90-95% of the official one, for around £40-50).
The difference between a white label (drop shipped) product and a counterfeit made at the same factory on a different work shift is impossible to discern.
You literally can’t know if what you’re buying is original or not anymore.
White label isn’t the same as drop shipped. Sometimes white label products are drop shipped, but not always. And not everything that’s drop shipped is white label.
You literally can’t know if what you’re buying is original or not anymore.
You literally can. Lots of white label products either aren’t covered by a patent/copyright, or were designed/licensed by a Chinese company. Chinese companies do design their own products.
I get the white-label / drop shipping distinction. It’s why I mentioned them both. I also get that chinese manufacturers can make new stuff too. It’s why I didn’t say shit like “china never innovates or makes new products, they only steal”.
China has a huge counterfeit industry, and amazon is complicit in helping them out with it. https://daxueconsulting.com/counterfeit-products-in-china/ https://www.marketingscoop.com/consumer/amazon-fake-products-policy/
Basically, anyone wanting to make anything has two options for manufacturing; in house, and in china. In house is way more expensive, and much less likely to result in profits. In china is incredibly easy and much cheaper, but as soon as you ask for them to pause making your product, they turn around and rebrand it and sell it for much cheaper everywhere they can (Temu, amazon, etc).
Another part is that a lot of manufacturing companies don’t speak English, so there is a whole industry of people who know Chinese manufacturers who will sell their translation and industry contact services. Super helpful when you have a good relationship with them, but the instant that turns even slightly sour, you discover the major downside of having a middleman between you and your product tooling: you have absolutely no power to stop anyone in china from using your tooling to make cheap knockoffs of your product, legal or otherwise.
But also the ODM industry is massive too in China - manufacturers who design and make products, but don’t sell directly, rather they contract it out to an “empty brand” (i.e. a company that’s brand only, no real assets or manufacturing capacity), stamp the brand logo on the product and sell it to them en masse.
This is usually why you’d see the exact same cheap thing under many brands.
Counterfeiting is also a thing but those companies usually have good(ish) engineering, and aim to properly replicate expensive products, such as Apple AirPods (the AirReps community is pretty big, and you can buy AirPods Pro 2 clones that are 90-95% of the official one, for around £40-50).
I’m pretty sure most of the stuff on Amazon is from white-label manufactures, not counterfeit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-label_product
The difference between a white label (drop shipped) product and a counterfeit made at the same factory on a different work shift is impossible to discern.
You literally can’t know if what you’re buying is original or not anymore.
White label isn’t the same as drop shipped. Sometimes white label products are drop shipped, but not always. And not everything that’s drop shipped is white label.
You literally can. Lots of white label products either aren’t covered by a patent/copyright, or were designed/licensed by a Chinese company. Chinese companies do design their own products.
It’s very much a thing. The smaller the company you’re purchasing from, the more likely you’ll find a counterfeit product of theirs available for cheaper. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/06/how-us-small-businesses-are-fighting-counterfeiting-in-china.html
I get the white-label / drop shipping distinction. It’s why I mentioned them both. I also get that chinese manufacturers can make new stuff too. It’s why I didn’t say shit like “china never innovates or makes new products, they only steal”.