So many aspects of products fall in the gray area.
I doubt audio cables made in China were ever assembled by child labor, doesn’t make business sense for the Chinese employer. And if we frown on forced labor, weren’t most license plates in the US made by prison labor?
as for the profit margins versus the material cost, compare to the fashion industry. A High fashion pair of shoes costs a lot because of many factors not related to the product cost. Like they purposely want to be exclusive to certain people in order to maintain a high profile so they can continue to command ridiculously high prices. It’s only when you have huge volume that mega retailers bring costs down to grab a larger market share. don’t you think a designer handbag would come down tremendously in cost if one of the Marts thould they could turn over a gazillion of them?
as for the different quality levels of knock offs, REFLEX watches can be had in China for ten bucks that will work for a month, forty bucks and it will work for six months, 120 bucks and it will actually look decent, 800 bucks and it will be indistinguishable from real to a consumer or 1600 bucks (stillonly 25% of the cost of real one) and the Zurich factory would be impressed at the quality of the knock off.
you can’t possibly know what quality level of know off you are getting without real feedback from previous purchasers, not staged fake feedback posted by the supplier.
The ethical aspect is clear, it is not ethical to use someone else’s name and associated positive reputation. Period. Can this be controlled? Yeah, to the same extent illegal drugs are , about 3-5%.
is there an ethical work around? Sure. Advertise that your cable is 99% the same as the brand’s product at 25% of the cost, or something along that line. Done that way in auto parts all the time.
I doubt audio cables made in China were ever assembled by child labor, doesn’t make business sense for the Chinese employer. And if we frown on forced labor, weren’t most license plates in the US made by prison labor?
as for the profit margins versus the material cost, compare to the fashion industry. A High fashion pair of shoes costs a lot because of many factors not related to the product cost. Like they purposely want to be exclusive to certain people in order to maintain a high profile so they can continue to command ridiculously high prices. It’s only when you have huge volume that mega retailers bring costs down to grab a larger market share. don’t you think a designer handbag would come down tremendously in cost if one of the Marts thould they could turn over a gazillion of them?
as for the different quality levels of knock offs, REFLEX watches can be had in China for ten bucks that will work for a month, forty bucks and it will work for six months, 120 bucks and it will actually look decent, 800 bucks and it will be indistinguishable from real to a consumer or 1600 bucks (stillonly 25% of the cost of real one) and the Zurich factory would be impressed at the quality of the knock off.
you can’t possibly know what quality level of know off you are getting without real feedback from previous purchasers, not staged fake feedback posted by the supplier.
The ethical aspect is clear, it is not ethical to use someone else’s name and associated positive reputation. Period. Can this be controlled? Yeah, to the same extent illegal drugs are , about 3-5%.
is there an ethical work around? Sure. Advertise that your cable is 99% the same as the brand’s product at 25% of the cost, or something along that line. Done that way in auto parts all the time.