The New York Times has this fluff piece about women’s handbags. Apparently industrious Chinese factories are turning out letter-perfect knockoffs for a couple of hundred dollars, when the actual designer stuff goes for 10 or 20 thousand. The superfakes can’t be distinguished from the true thing by measurement (of dimensions, stitches per inch, etc.) any more.
Remind you of anything?
Darn it, no options to buy and I’m looking for a new handbag 
I heard the big Italian manufactures bought up the fake makers staff and put them in their own factories in Italy …. Not sure if that’s actually true but this has been a thing for a while with Chinese fakes.
There is a similar issue in the wristwatch industry. Where any product is not difficult to make but has the shop price vastly inflated due to marketing and deliberate rarity by the manufacturer, this issue will occur .
Some wristwatches have a waiting list, which is quite ridiculous and an accompanying grey market.
So if you are making comparisons with electronics and Chinese copying, this isn’t really the same. The reason being knock off fashion is imported wholesale mostly. Electronics are not. It is ordered individually by us from Chinese on line market places where copyright laws are much more relaxed. The fashion model is supply creates demand but the electronics model is the opposite. We demand, they supply (to the West).
Ooh! Now I’m curious!
I’m not sure I understood the point @Henry_McLeod was making. Perhaps he could clarify?
Clearly expensive (and not necessarily high-fidelity) stereo equipment is sold as luxury goods, fashionable audiophile jewelry. There’s no functional reason to buy McIntosh or Pass Labs, it’s fashion. And the inexpensive Chi-Fi that’s available, often measuring just as well, if not better, reinforces that point, just as these superfake bags do.
Zippers and poppers will sound better on the expensive bags.
With McIntosh at least you’re getting iconic looks, built like a tank quality, and the company will likely stand behind it for a long time. And they measure well for what they do.
With a lot of audiophile brands you don’t even get that.
Copyright = Right to make copy. Chinese translate
I am generally considered not to be “pro-Chinese” and know that in some areas of technology China has ripped off western intellectual property. However, I am not sure how much this applies in the HiFi area.
Chinese companies have certainly developed some good quality but relatively cheap HiFi products. The ones I am familiar with are DAPs and the Wiim pro. The Wiim pro seems to me to fill a real market niche for a high quality, cheap streamer - something I have been looking for a while as a backup to my Roon setup on the odd occasion that my network, my core or Roon or everything together seem to want have a little rest. Other options seemed to be on the expensive side for my use case. (And I would still love to have the Wiim pro Roon Ready).
I do not believe that any of these Chinese HiFi products could be considered a rip off of western products or technologies.
Paul, that’s a good point. These superfake handbags are ripping off the brand of the established luxuy vendors; the excellent Chi-Fi audio gear is not. Significant difference.
I was talking specifically about Chinese brands who do steal other people’s designs. They do so by collaborating with the factories that subcontract PCB manufacturing, assembly and facia machining. A company who’s products I have owned is called Accurate Audio and they have cloned Lake People/Violectric and there is even a review of a Rockna Wavedream clone on ASR.
Interestingly they are not claiming to be Rockna or Violectric. There is no mistaking them for the originals but their heritage is obvious to most.
