“China, You Drive-a Me Crazy” or “Getting Knocked-Off Is Not As Much Fun As It Sounds”

As a product designer, I’m reminded too many times that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. And, after 30 years of hearing that, it still never fails to tick me off. It happens every time some jerk in our industry can’t come up with his own product innovations so he just can’t help himself from copying what we’ve designed here at Consort. Flatter me some other way (like: “nice double bogie, dude”…).
And, what makes it worse, these counterfeiters don’t even ask if it’s OK! (Well, of course they don’t ask. Jerks are jerks for a reason…)

Just today I received a package that contained a Chinese copy of one of our (formerly) unique Messenger®-X banner stand products. From a few feet away, one might be surprised to know that it isn’t our product – a pretty good knock-off, you might say (a “knock-off”, in case you aren’t familiar with the term, is defined as an unauthorized copy of something). However, once you really compare the two stands in operation, sophistication, weight (ours is precise aluminum tubing, theirs is heavy steel) and overall strength and stability, you know why it’s cheaper. But, of course, uninformed buyers tend to opt for the less expensive products, don’t they?

How many emails have you received lately for Rolex watches? I’ll bet there are plenty of those knock-offs being sold every day in the US.

The good news is that we design and manufacture things that people like. The not as good news is that some people like them enough to copy them (some are protected by US property rights laws – an expensive proposition - and some are not). Our challenge always has been to trust that higher quality and excellent customer service will drive the best and most discerning customers to us. Fortunately, it has usually worked that way for us.

As for China, the masters of counterfeiting and knock-offs, we do purchase our RTR Retractor Banner Stands from China because they are the only folks making those and they do a pretty good job. But, I hope to limit our Chinese purchases to only what they do well and to avoid buying Chinese knock-offs of other US manufacturers' products.


Roger Lepley