artek wrote:kulivontot wrote:Essentially, you have some companies that have copied the manufacturing techniques from other companies that have put the money into the engineering R&D to ensure a quality product. This is how they can sell for 1/3 the cost of other companies who are also doing their carbon manufacturing in China.
Manufacturers outside of China don't copy the products and services of their competitors?
A major reason why these frames are a fairer price is because their buyers are not being exploited by paying to be brainwashed by marketing.
I agree 100% that the practice (product copy / counterfeiting) happens in other places too, but I in fairness, would guess that if you asked 1000 people from around the world, where more knock off products are produced, you might find the far east some place near the top of that list virtually 100% of the time. Stereotypes are frequently unfair, but more frequently developed for a reason...
And while marketing is part of the cost, I think kulivontot has a point, and to add to it, when companies nock a product off instead of developing it correctly... A lot of understanding about functio and structure can get lost in translation when that happens and that can be a pretty big deal.
There's also a "bit of" a cost savings in labor and material availability and logistics and environmental requirments (or lack of) in the far east for carbon bike production... That's something to do with why loads of very good product sold from brands world wide, not just the knock off stuff, is made there.