Counterfeits and fakes and bears! Oh my!

I think the suggestion that this replica could be using genuine parts or that it could be as high quality as the real thing is extremely far-fetched.

If you look at any Chinese replica watch of a 10x more expensive genuine watch, or any Chinese replica bag of a 10x more expensive bag, it is apparent that nearly all the money is spent on replicating appearances of the item and (sometimes) packaging. Performance is a low priority, whereas reliability and durability are not a priority at all.

In fact, it's almost a certainty that by spending a few dollars extra to replicate appearances, they are spending less on performance that they would spend on a usual $40 headphone.

If the manufacturer could make the internals as good as a genuine IE800, they would house it in their own design and sell it for $200. Similar to what the Gustard H10 purports to be relative to the Violectric V200.

 

This I disagree on the Chinese replica part. The Chinese branded Tourbillon watch works just as well as a genuine 100k Tourbillon watch. (still the reason of people spending 5k on a rip-off watch just for the sake of getting the "Tourbillon" function is beyond me). And it is not unusual for a replica bag to have better quality/durability than a genuine one, just because the fact that those super expensive branded bag are poorly made. But these are the case of affordable replica vs servely overpriced branded genuine product, and does not apply to headphone.(well maybe not if someone make a replica of ultrasone)

Source: am chinese

 

Is it a replica watch or just the movement is copied? I have no doubt that there are high quality things produced inexpensively in China. My comments were specifically related to replicas, where so much effort and resources go into the aesthetic aspects of replication. I conceed that there may be exceptions, but I have handled enough replicas, including expensive ones, to think that such exceptions are not common.

 

I was going to post something here yesterday but figured this thread was doomed anyway and held back. Given some of the recent posts my contribution is probably more relevant today if still a bit off topic...

Anyhow, our family went on a Mediterranean cruise last summer and had a stop in Turkey, we'd heard from some experienced travelers that the "genuine fake" watches and purses available were actually very impressive. To this day I regret not having bought a "genuine fake" Carrera/Calibre 5. I don't own any Rolex, Luminor etc. (too rich for my blood) but I have a few "nice" watches in the $500 - $3000 range that I've acquired over the last 15 or so years. My wife give me a genuine Carrera/Calibre 5 for our 10th anniversary and I could not tell the difference between the brown strap "genuine fake" version I saw in Turkey and the black strap genuine watch I owned until I looked at the mechanism (wrist side of the face).

My understanding is that because Turkey is not part of the EU it's manufacturers are at less risk of prosecution/sanctions related to IP/Trademarks. But because its is still very close geographically and "western" by most standards there are sophisticated local manufacturers who hire retired expat managers / designers / engineers from the European OEM's. Generally speaking, the "genuine fakes" are about 1/10th to 1/5th the cost of the real thing and are EXACTLY the same except for the mechanisms. My wife would say that the leather goods were also of very high quality and nearly identical to the real thing.

This is an old but interesting article on the topic...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcweb...w-to-buy-a-fake-watch-in-turkey/#356155385039

At the end of the day its all about economics. I can see how fake luxury name brand "fashion" goods represent a large enough market to drive an investment in the production of "good quality" genuine fake watches and leather goods. But I'm still puzzled as to how the market for "fake" IE800s could ever be large enough for there to be sufficient $$$$ to produce a half decent product. THIS FACT ALONE causes me to believe that the original poster is a shill for the counterfeiters.

 

One interesting point I forgot to mention about the goods in Turkey.... it seemed to me that very little effort was put into replicating the OEM packaging and "genuine fake" was something you'd see prominently displayed on a permanent basis (store displays / lit up exterior signs etc.) at very refined/slick looking retail locations.

Oh, and one last thing that is off topic... My wife and I in the months leading up to our trip contemplated not leaving the ship in Turkey (Ephesus / Port of Kusadasi) given that we were traveling with our two young kids and the escalating crisis in Syria was getting a lot of press. In the end we obviously made it off the ship and I have to say it was one of the highlights of our trip, its a stunning part of the world.

On a more somber note... our cruise ship came across a migrant boat with 40+ refugees who were trying to escape to Greece. Its unfathomable to me the level of desperation you must be feeling to decide its a good idea to leave everything behind and cram onto a rubber raft with a few dozen other people to wander in open seas with the hope that it will be the path to a better life. As I type this I realize how totally off topic it is but also how lucky I am that the pursuit of better sound and other "problems" that I may have are so ridiculously insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

 

One of the reason is maybe the Chinese keep the better quality replica in the mainland. Another thing is those clearly fake goods(something bought from a mall which basically only sell replica, those exist in China) usually have better quality than "pretend to be real" goods. But still the quality of replicated stuff nowadays is worse than in the 90s.

 

My friend worked at a major Canadian airline, so he got the super cheap flights everywhere. He would go to China once a month on his days off and come back with 3-4 hockey bags stuffed with fake Nike shoes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Rolex, Breitling, etc. He had a thriving bootleg business going for years, until he finally got caught by customs several times and fired for "abusing his flight priviledges." He would literally go to a nightclub with 3 fake watches on each arm, and sell the whole lot by the time the night was over. He did say there were several grades of fakes to be purchased in China, he always bought the "A" grade, and for the casual observer, the aesthetics were very good. The fake Nike Air's did have a tendency to pop with people that weighed over 180lbs...lol

 

Just to clarify, what you have written about Chinese watches is totally, completely wrong.

Chinese tourbillons are crap and obvious crap to someone who cares to look properly. The best Swiss tourbillons are within COSC standards for accuracy, and the movement is hand finished (this is the art that leads people to feel an expensive watch is "worth" the high price). The Chinese tourbillons are crude, inaccurate, poorly made, and all-around garbage. Bring a loupe, as they say. It's very similar to purrin being able to tell a fake headphone from the sound but some idiot being unable to. Yes, there are some better made fakes, but generally speaking, fake watches are for fake people.


As for the best Chinese products being held for the Chinese, that is a fantasy. In China, you get the crap that no one else in the world would take. A case in point: Chinese herbs. Chinese herbs are tested for heavy metals, poisons, and infectious agents in China and then re-tested in the U.S.A. The best stuff ends up in my office. The herbs that are full of cadmium or mercury or pesticides, etc.? They are sold in China, to the Chinese. That is completely true.

It's nice to see Chinese higher-audio slowly moving away from just copying other companies (although there is still a lot of that). When Chinese watch companies move to genuine innovation, that will be a good thing, too. Oh, and when food, water, medicine and air in China don't have so much toxic crap mixed in.

 

The Chinese are the cheapest people ever (I can say this being Chinese). I have rarely seen a good quality fake from China. You would not believe the stuff that is faked over there, and 95% of it is bad to really crappy quality that disintegrates within 5 days. Even the good quality fakes have telltale signs, and there are obvious differences if you are familiar with the product.

Also, like Kunlun said, the best products are the ones that are sold outside of the country. There is so much crap put into the products within the country since nobody cares about anything except saving an extra buck.

One example is the fact that my father had to buy baby formula over here for his friends back in China since they did not trust the baby formula over there (which had a bunch of crap in it). Literally almost anything you can name probably has something sketchy in it. You can't even trust the food that you buy from street vendors. I've heard so much stuff about how vendors and such will serve you rat meat and lie and say that it is pork/beef/whatever else.

 

You are probably right. I am no watch guy and my only refrence being my dad's seagull tourbillon being more accurate than some of his extravagant-I-don't-even-know-the technology-watch, and one of them run like 5min faster every week, but that watch probably is not a tourbillon. And yes the point of these watches are the hand made part, and the class, to which I find people dumping over 5k on a fake one extremely stupid.

We HK even set up law to restrict baby formula buyer from the mainland lol. But the street food is really not as bad as people imagina in my opinion...Ｉt is just the huge sample size + uneducated people leading to much more food news. Go to some less developed city and you will get some cheap quality food, since they are purer and don't have the concept of more profit or something. This is from a Hong Kongese who used to be extremely bias(like every other Hong Kong people) about everything from China till actually visiting there.

 

Thing is, the Seagull tourbillion is not a replica. They aren't spending time and money to make it look like some other brand. They are branding it Seagull. With a knockoff like the one cited by the OP, they are spending time and money to make the headphone and packaging to look just like a Sennheiser. That's less resources to spend on making it sound good, have good QC, and good durability.

 

Continuing the off-topic discussion:

I've worked in China for 2 years now and my in-laws have worked here for 16. I have dozens of local Chinese friends and hundreds more of acquaintances. They all encourage me unilaterally not to trust Chinese quality on products, especially but not limited to the fake/copy-cat stuff. Yes, there are different "tiers" of fakes but that doesn't mean the highest quality fake is necessarily better than the real thing.

Unfortunately, fakes *sometimes* are just as good if only because many Chinese engineers are extremely good at what they do and they can reverse engineer certain products without having to pay for all the patents and R&D. However, I find it funny that even Korean, German and American (US) products here that are authentic are ALMOST ALWAYS the products that didn't pass the strict quality control of other countries. I have several Philips, Samsung, Cuckoo (rice cooker), LG, Sony and Panasonic products, and almost all of them are noticeably inferior to the products I bought when living in SK or US. All the household electronics have a weird "burning plastic" smell which my Chinese friends were surprised is not normal in other countries. A friend who works at a Cuckoo distributor told me that even though these are marketed as authentic SK rice cookers, as long as they have Chinese writing on them, they are made in China and have failed quality control for export into SK. My rice cooker already broke 3 times in 2 years, and he says this is normal for the Chinese versions...

There are many great things about China that I've come to realize in the 2 years I've lived here, especially after recovering from culture shock, but product and food quality control is definitely not one of them. Some electronics are genuinely imported (my Dell monitor, for example) and cost an arm and a leg. I now buy Haier products almost exclusively for household goods when I can, since they are made to HK quality control standards yet do not suffer from VAT prices. I've found other local Chinese companies that have good customer service and reliability (Midea for example). However, the companies that fake, copy, and imitate other well known brands names or aesthetics are obviously just there to make money without having to pay the time or money for any research - even when they are similar quality, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking it's anything other than stealing.

For some humorous reading: http://qz.com/467625/in-china-michael-jordan-does-not-hold-the-rights-to-his-own-name/
(even my students won't buy these shoes...)

 

This is by far a more interesting discussion now than what it started as.

 

I was enjoying watching you guys crap all over the OP and his weird "not advocating" posts

My ex is a flight attendant and used to buy "A" grade knock-off handbags in Hong Kong and sell them on eBay. Until LV and other brands started sniffing out her and others and their accounts got closed. Quality was supposed to be really good and you could only tell by looking really closely at the detailed work on the inside.

 

If you are really from Hong Kong, you would know the proper way a native refers to oneself is as a Hong Konger, not a Hong Kongese.....

 

TBH none of these two words I've heard people said it before. I just made up my own one to be specfic lol, as ese sounds more like a nationality. We don't doubt ourselves being a Chinese. We only specfy that we are from Hong Kong in situations like this:
A: Are you from China?
B: Hong Kong.
A: So...China?
B: No, HONG KONG!
There's no way a Hongkongese of Hongkongian or Hongkonger or whatever would be OK to put on the ethnicity part in an application.

btw this seems waaay off topic

 

China vs Germany, weapons grade bearings

 

I've been to China a couple times and each time had a lot of fun shopping for fakes. In Shanghai, a couple friends and I were hustled to a back room in a mall where they kept the AAA fakes. The Louis Vuitton bags they had there were better in many ways than a real one (have bought a couple for significant others). Much nicer leather. Stitching and zippers just as good. I would have been happy to get one for myself, but I have yet to see a LV bag that I wouldn't be embarrassed to carry. I got a couple watches that looked sweet as hell, but turned out to be ass. Their shake to wind tech (sorry not a high end watch guy), only worked for a few weeks. I kind of knew when I was able to get both for $50, but man they looked sweet. My knock off Rayban's were fantastic. Haven't tried any knockoff audio gear yet.

I have much more I can say about manufacturing, economies of scale, quality, and how amazing Chinese products could be if they shifted some of the pretty amazing backwards engineering talent and faced it forwards, but too lazy right now to type it all up.