Cuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier.
The real knockoff problem I see is that you buy what you think is BigBrand and get shipped Knockoff because someone is mingling inventory.
> We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier
We don't know that. Look at Project Farm's review videos, he tests a lot of knock off and brand name products and it's almost always a get what you pay for situation. Knockoffs look similar, but use cheaper materials almost always.
The question is almost always, do you need the quality that you get from name brand. Not "why can I get name brand quality of half price"
Are we talking knockoffs like actively pretending to be the brand, or knockoffs like an off-brand copy of the exact same product? It's rare to find quality that can only be found with one brand—and then, it's mostly extremely expensive consumer electronics.
I love that guy's reviews for the thought and detail he puts in them. But his voice is like nails on a chalkboard. I'm looking forward to AI letting me swap it with James Earl Jones.
- Coming from the same factory line with the same quality control, just rebranded (Costco famously does this a lot)
- Factory seconds, goods with very minor defects (sometimes not even in the product itself but in the box etc)
- Manufacturers copying specs and running illicit production lines without the company’s authorization
- Complete knockoffs, where the external design was copied but the product is totally different
Ultimately for most of these Amazon brands you have no idea which of these you are getting. Just because a product looks the same doesn’t mean it is the same. And in a lot of cases, e.g. with battery operated electronics the knockoff manufacturers skip a lot of safeguards and it ends up burning your house down.
> Coming from the same factory line with the same quality control, just rebranded (Costco famously does this a lot)
Costco famously shops around aggressively for quality products -- not premium, but not crap -- and usually from big manufacturers who are already making excess supply.
Is common for supermarkets, too. Kraft can only get sub-par cheese one quarter so they make the same product but sell it as a white label option for lower margin. The factory line keeps running, product gets moved, inventory gets cleared, and margin is slightly lower but acceptable.
Also one very common subtype of the first option nowadays is that some company is just buying the exact same product from alibaba that you could buy from a random company on amazon or aliexpress, marking it up, and spending a few bucks on an internet presence and advertising to try to seem like a more legit company but doesn't really offer any more support or warranty than the brands that seem like a random combination of letters.
Whereas if it's costco it will at least be easy to get your money back if it dies in six months.
I get so many ads on Instagram for things that are available alibaba but with fancy packaging and a huge markup. This seems like an evolution of the drop shipping hustle.
It's more than likely you're getting the first since Chinese factories simply make more of what the big brand has ordered and sell the rest to drop shippers
I don't think that's necessarily true as a general statement. There are also lots of knockoffs where they clearly aren't actually the exact same product because they're obviously slightly different in a way that shows it wasn't produced with the same dies/molds. I own several knockoffs like that (which I bought intentionally knowing they were a knockoff but the knockoff had good reviews and it wasn't worth spending extra for the original).
Occasionally there are even knockoffs that improve on the original product in some way, although usually they are just nearly as good at a much lower price.
Whenever I see keyboard-mashed company names I know I can go to Temu/AliExpress and get it directly there. You can tell when they are all sourcing from the same batch and instead of paying $40 the same thing is often $3.28 if you don't mind waiting a week.
I used to do this more often, but I find the gap is narrowing a lot. Most of the time I find I don't save enough to justify getting it in two weeks over 1 day.
The Aliexpress of 10 years ago was just ridiculous. One time I ordered something (a USB adapter) for literally a total price of 40¢, and it was delivered. It cost about 35¢ to send a regular US postcard domestically at the time, not counting the price of the postcard.
Now all the 40 cent items cost $2, and have $3 shipping. Or you can buy the same thing on Amazon for $6. Their search also used to be a lot better, today it's worse than Youtube search.
We have a very large Amazon warehouse/center in town, and during my last prime trial I received maybe 5/25 items listed under “2 day shipping” in actually 2 days. Nearly all took 4 or more.
Depends on your own taste for risk, should the knock off brand have worse QC: what big brand gets you is the ability to sue them should their products fail catastrophically or cause you harm:
> Cuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier.
in many cases may even be from the same factory made by the same hands with a slightly different supplier or quality of fabric, or lower QA.
Why not go down to your local independent pet store, keep your money local and support your neighbours instead of giving it to directors and shareholders sitting on beaches in French Polynesia?
How do you know the local independent pet store is not buying their inventory from a business with directors and shareholders sitting on beaches in French Polynesia?
But they are not offering anything worth patronizing. There's no value proposition. The prices are higher, getting the book takes longer, they don't ship it to me, and they never have a good book in stock. Independent book stores exist entirely as a charity-empathy business. They only exist because people feel bad about not shopping there.
i'm not a robot or venture capitalist, so i'm not sure why i need to exclude empathy from my decision-making process.
but, from a purely selfish standpoint: i get way better customer service, i can do trades, i can barter, i get to meet and talk with people, i can see the product before i buy it (no surprise knock-offs, etc.), my money mostly stays local, i find interesting work opportunities and sometimes referrals
You don't have to exclude empathy, but I said it is "a charity-empathy business" and you called that "a sad comment to read" and added that you get a lot of value. That would strongly imply that you disagree with my characterization and/or you get a lot of non-charity-empathy value. That then leads to me asking what that value is.
Personally none of those things you listed are what I want when buying a book, except knockoff protection, but thank you for answering.
i will express my opinion when i want to, thanks though.
if you have a particular issue, email dang and he can swing by and reprimand me. although i would find that weird, considering me and the other participant continued our conversation on just fine.
And I will continue to voice community standards on the community forum. I don't have the power to [dead] your post, but I do have the power to express my disapproval of your violations of the community guidelines.
You made it personal ("I'm not your dad") and you were condescending ("a sad comment"). That behavior is ugly and it doesn't belong on HN.
I have an interest in maintaining HN as a place where intellectually curious people of good faith engage in conversation, including with people they disagree with. I will continue to advocate for HN to remain such a space, and that includes objecting to
behavior that tends to undermine that goal.
Then, how do you know the local business owner isn't, in turn, using that profit to buy stuff from companies with directors and shareholders sitting on beaches in French Polynesia?
If you track the individual dollars, most flows of value eventually, after some number of loops, end up with the French Polynesia sitting people.
That local business owner pays taxes and presumably eats food and uses services from his or her own town. They also pay local people to work in their shop who also presumably spends some of their wages locally.
I don't think commerce (especially at Amazon) works the way you think it does.
There is a very good chance that when you buy something at Amazon that says it's BigBrand ... it's just a knockoff. Or a fake that has infiltrated another part of Amazon's supply chain. There is big money in lying to customers through Amazon.
Depends what it is. I would trust Nike products from Dick's Sporting Goods physical store and from the Nike store online but not Amazon or any other online retailer. I'd be suspicious of perfume from (say) Giorgi Armani because rip-off artists have heard of it but who would rip off an boutique bland like Phlur?
It probably goes deeper than you expect. A friend of mine unknowingly bought counterfeit Darn Tough socks from Amazon, and only found out when he sent them in for warranty repair. Clough42 has a video on YouTube about identifying counterfeit Mitutoyo calipers (though I believe they came from Ebay rather than Amazon).
Well back in the 1980s my mom was a clerk at a Jordan Marsh story that turned into Macy's selling men's clothing.
She would rail against fakes and would show you how the seams and other details were different and how, looking close, the difference was obvious.
My Uncle Dick, the oldest of the brothers, bought three fake Rolexes from the back of a truck on a trip to see my Great Aunt Simone in NYC. He thought he got a steal. Two months later he reported that they didn't run anymore!
The real knockoff problem I see is that you buy what you think is BigBrand and get shipped Knockoff because someone is mingling inventory.