Clone Wars

[Fickie]

The only reason clones exist is because of: (1) demand, (2) someone else can manufacture it cheaper, and (3) penny wise pound foolish consumers, but that's just my opinion.

I had a carburettor gasket fail within 20 000km twice on a German OEM part at one stage. I put it down to the rubber used reacting to the petroleum distillates in the petrol, yet it was meant to carry petroleum. I used a pirate for 236 000km without ever failing.

Years later I found out a different German manufacturer voids motor warranties on their bikes if you use a certain brand of fuel here in SA (sorted since) the South African fuel producer / refiner had an additive destroying all rubber seals on the engine.

Sometimes, the OEM doesn't get it right not even German ones

 

[John]

TL;DR

Edit; Forgot the link
http://info-electronic-cigarette.com/to-clone-or-not-to-clone/

 

[Matt]

I understand if someone has a problem with clones but if you ever bought a clone dont judge the people that still buy clones.

If vapeclub brings in a new clone for bottom feeding the same people jump on it. Even reomods is selling clones to put on the reo. But because its a atty they call nuppin like its suddenly a problem. Abit confusing.

 

[n0ugh7_zw]

Clones are A-ok with me...

Just reread what people have posted.

Let me put it like this... I will NEVER buy an authentic anything (MOD, atty, etc) that is over $50.00... Far as I'm concerned, those are the guys who want to watch the world burn. There are cheaper better ways, if they don't want to play the game, then they don't want my money. Their choice, not mine.

I think its a simple fact of the world we live in. Actually crafting something (Mod, Atomizer, etc...) yourself in a western country is not a cheap endeavour. So no matter what, the stuff is going to be expensive, frankly too expensive. For the majority of people who want the piece of hardware in question. This creates demand for cheaper alternatives.

In steps, China. They're not a bunch of evil companies trying to steal the life force of these western manufacturers. They're simply filling in a gap in the market.

If anyone is to blame its the authentic mod makers, they've grossly miss-managed the situation. They should be doing their designs in the west, but getting the manufacturing handled in China. Then their prices would be more realistic. Had this been the plan from the start, cloning would be much, much less of an issue.

Some people may think, that the quality of the pieces will suffer if they're made in China? Thats utter crap... In fact a lot of hardware that is sort after for its build quality is made in China.

Theres no honour in letting ones weaknesses cause issues with their company. China has spent the last 50 years or more making itself into the manufacturing powerhouse of this world. They are the most cost effective, its not even debatable. It's a fact. That said, their area of weakness (though rapidly they're fixing this) is design/conceptualisation... Which happens to be one of the strengths of the western world.

Am I the only one who sees that there is massive potential for both sides, if they work with each other?

The only reasonable exception, I feel. To what I've said, is limited run pieces (those will cost an organ or 2, in any case).

Strangely, I expect to get many dislikes and disagrees for this post. Thats fine, this is the internet, it really can't hurt me, nor can it tarnish the truth in what I've said.

 

[n0ugh7_zw]

Has anyone here heard of "Boiled Frog Syndrome"?
Basically you take a frog, chuck it in boiling water, the frog feels that its hot and jumps out.
But if the water starts off cool, and slowly comes to a boil, the frogs cooked before it knows whats going on.

That's just my way of saying that in order to see things clearly, being in the thick of it, doesn't always offer the most accurate representation of the situation.

 

[Andre]

Has anyone here heard of "Boiled Frog Syndrome"?
Basically you take a frog, chuck it in boiling water, the frog feels that its hot and jumps out.
But if the water starts off cool, and slowly comes to a boil, the frogs cooked before it knows whats going on.

That's just my way of saying that in order to see things clearly, being in the thick of it, doesn't always offer the most accurate representation of the situation.

Meaning you have to change your title to "Boiled Frog Syndrome Sufferer"?

 

[Rob Fisher]

I understand if someone has a problem with clones but if you ever bought a clone dont judge the people that still buy clones.

If vapeclub brings in a new clone for bottom feeding the same people jump on it. Even reomods is selling clones to put on the reo. But because its a atty they call nuppin like its suddenly a problem. Abit confusing.

I never judged anyone for buying clones... we have all done it and there is no doubt we will all continue to do so for various reasons from price to unavailability.

But if you think taking someones intellectual property and copying it for profit is OK then so be it. The issue I have is the blatant STEALING of intellectual property. My problem is not with anyone locally but simply the thieving chinese company stealing a one man bands design and even using their name.

But being as this issue is an emotive one and there are arguments for and against and none of us will ever agree on the issue this is my last post on the said issue.

 

[n0ugh7_zw]

This whole thing is actually just a symptom of a fundam

Meaning you have to change your title to "Boiled Frog Syndrome Sufferer"?

Just for you

 

[johan]

As long as we just don't start to see clone chicks in Rob's lounge!

 

[n0ugh7_zw]

Western culture does have a bit of an unnatural love affair with intellectual property and patents.

The Apple vs. Samsung soap opera is a good illustration of it.

I'm not saying it needs to be gotten rid of totally. But it definitely needs to be looked at, and amended. Because the way its currently going, its got a choke hold on any kind of innovation. Across a broad spectrum of industries.

 

[free3dom]

Western culture does have a bit of an unnatural love affair with intellectual property and patents.

The Apple vs. Samsung soap opera is a good illustration of it.

I'm not saying it needs to be gotten rid of totally. But it definitely needs to be looked at, and amended. Because the way its currently going, its got a choke hold on any kind of innovation. Across a broad spectrum of industries.

Cloning...i.e. copying something 1:1 (even using a name you don't own) is not the same as "infringing on intellectual property" - these are separate things. Infringing is bullshit as people are trying to own ideas, which IMO is crap. If everyone had to pay the inventor of the wheel, well...you get the idea

However, when you take someone else's idea, make a copy of it (including their name) and then sell it without paying them a cent...that's fed up. It's not about quality or morals or any of that...just common decency. If a "cloner" takes a design, copies it, tweaks it, etc and then puts their own name on it, I would be 100% happy, as would 90% of the people who take offense with clones

Right now they make crap clones, with no or very little QA, and they tarnish the brand of the original creator because their logo is all over the crappy device...that's really messed up, no matter how you look at it

 

[rogue zombie]

I'm in two minds about clones.

China, basically, is wanting and achieving being the 'manufacturing' capital of the world.

Do you know what Mercedes did to combat the cloning - they set up a division, even supply them so that they could create a 'budget merc' (with a seperate badge of course.)

China will do what they do, and they are providing for a price-conscious market.

AND in all honestly, I think Svoemesto actually have these clones to contribute to the success of the Kayfun.... The name has been immortalized, not by the real thing, but by clones.

I also think to myself, what has Svoemesto done to help me get a real Kayfun? Have they even approached a retailer or distro here?

I don't like buying from overseas retailers, and definitely not a R2k atty. I want to know that I could take it back to my retailer should anything go wrong.

With all this said, I would personally not clone anything. There's no need. Look at LEMO, Billows etc. Or every other car on the road - they all learn from each other.

I also would be gutted if my own masterpiece was shamelessly cloned.

When it comes to buying - help me buy your product or I will buy whatever is freely available.

 

[JakesSA]

VapeClub tried very hard to get Svomesto originals but in the end they did not like the other products we sell. Besides, I would not be able to offer a better price than the consumer can get from any other international store, not even close. The market here is just too small to warrant a 100 unit order with a 10% profit margin. The same goes for a lot of other 'famous' original equipment manufacturers. If one was to change it to 30% margin, the effort would be ridiculed, harshly.

Sorry but that is the sad reality for independent vendors. Original equipment manufacturers, in general, do not give two cents about our market size, weak exchange rates and any other constraints unique to South Africa and its consumers. Profit and what seems like 'protection of exclusivity' is the only major concern for many of them.

Just my 2 cents...

(Note that I am generalising here a bit, not referring to pdib specifically...)

 

[n0ugh7_zw]

VapeClub tried very hard to get Svomesto originals but in the end they did not like the other products we sell. Besides, I would not be able to offer a better price than the consumer can get from any other international store, not even close. The market here is just too small to warrant a 100 unit order with a 10% profit margin. The same goes for a lot of other 'famous' original equipment manufacturers. If one was to change it to 30% margin, the effort would be ridiculed, harshly.

Sorry but that is the sad reality for independent vendors. Original equipment manufacturers, in general, do not give two cents about our market size, weak exchange rates and any other constraints unique to South Africa and its consumers. Profit and what seems like 'protection of exclusivity' is the only major concern for many of them.

Just my 2 cents...

(Note that I am generalising here a bit, not referring to pdib specifically...)

Thats an excellent point.

It's a situation devoid of logic, why would anyone want to reward a manufacturer for being insensitive to the plight of vendors wanting to sell their products? To me that falls into the whole idea of "If they don't want to play the game, then they don't want my money."

That protection of exclusivity thing, to me at least. Feels like its more about herding consumers into a frenzy, to buy their stuff, so that logical thought doesn't doesn't take place.

How is it, that svoemesto can charge $180.00+ for something that Tobeco charges $15-20.00 for? Sure their R&D, and manufacturing costs more... But 9 times more? seriously? Theres something highly fishy about it.

JDtech is the same story. A Stingray X is $250.00+ the Infinite clone is $30-40.00. Worse this is the Philippines they have cheap labour, their cost of production should be lower, they should be more open minded with regards to outsourcing production to China. Maybe they are, and are just making a whole crap ton of profits?

Bottom line, if these companies aren't interested in doing what the need to do, to give us, the consumers the best deal possible. Then they have no business whining about Chinese clones. If they were doing things right, clones wouldn't be an issue.

Piracy of games, software and music, fall into this same issue. If they had less markup, they would sell vastly larger quantities, and their overall profits would be better. Most people don't want to be pirates. But in its current state, the navy sucks.

 

[JakesSA]

Just to put things in a different perspective, if I was to personally make a Reo or a Nuppin I would probably charge a lot more for it than they do and would be ecstatic to have them cloned, just for the free publicity and massively enhanced market penetration.

 

[The Wolf]

I prefer originals but I wouldn't knock anyone for buying a clone. There are clones of most products everywhere.
What I can read between the lines here it seems that some MOD Makers keep there supplies low and demand high, this the original is not always available and enter the clone. Personally I prefer to save up and wait for the euthenics and if it never comes then so be it.
I don't hate clones and guess they serve their market however they should not put the real products name on it, that's plain Fup and wrong.

 

[kimbo]

Like i said before, it all goes to what is searched the most. Names don't matter to them it all goes about having your product seen when some one does a search and believe me i have an Alibaba account Nuppin get searched a lot

 

[WHeunis]

I wasn't gonna enter this thread, but I feel like I can devil's advocate a small bit for the sake of perspective...

VapeClub tried very hard to get Svomesto originals but in the end they did not like the other products we sell. Besides, I would not be able to offer a better price than the consumer can get from any other international store, not even close. The market here is just too small to warrant a 100 unit order with a 10% profit margin. The same goes for a lot of other 'famous' original equipment manufacturers. If one was to change it to 30% margin, the effort would be ridiculed, harshly.

Sorry but that is the sad reality for independent vendors. Original equipment manufacturers, in general, do not give two cents about our market size, weak exchange rates and any other constraints unique to South Africa and its consumers. Profit and what seems like 'protection of exclusivity' is the only major concern for many of them.

Just my 2 cents...

(Note that I am generalising here a bit, not referring to pdib specifically...)

Perfect honesty, I can't say that I wouldve reacted/responded the same way Svomesto did - BUT - it's not hard to see their perspective here.
(This is NOT a slam on your business, just some honesty, so take it with a pinch of salt)

Until recently, 90% of the hardware you sold, were clones. Sure, the kanger stuff were there. Sure, other authentics were there. But let's face it, that is/was not really Svomesto's target market nor their competing products...
Their competing products were other RBA devices. At that time, in SA, its highly unlikely that any one store sold more than one or two authentic products alongside many clones.

Now, if we imagine Svomesto played ball and you stocked authentics... A customer would browse your store, and see most of your clones selling for ~R500 or less. Then they see the Svomesto for R2k.
VERY few people would actually buy the Svomesto product. I am not saying you wouldn't have sold any/many/etc.
I am saying that the image alone that a significant portion of your customers would have at that point is more likely to be "&^%$ that &^%$ those &^%$ greedy ^&%#$&^* can shove it! &^%$ Svomesto!", than the more reasonable "Clone vs Authentic, you get what you pay for" viewpoint that a (probably) smaller demographic of people would end up on.

That could detract very seriously to an OEM from allowing their products into such an environment. Would be pretty bad for them if a significant portion of the vaping public carried such a bad image of their products...

But, this does create a catch 22 situation for you vendors. I do get it!
You wanna stock authentics, but cant, because you already stock clones, but you only stock clones coz you can't (reasonably) get hold of authentics...

Sadly, having dealt with a lot of international customers myself, I have to say that you did bite down hard on one major fact. 99% of the world don't give a flaming flying rat's @$$ about SA and our unique anything, much less problems.

Thats an excellent point.

It's a situation devoid of logic, why would anyone want to reward a manufacturer for being insensitive to the plight of vendors wanting to sell their products? To me that falls into the whole idea of "If they don't want to play the game, then they don't want my money."

That protection of exclusivity thing, to me at least. Feels like its more about herding consumers into a frenzy, to buy their stuff, so that logical thought doesn't doesn't take place.

How is it, that svoemesto can charge $180.00+ for something that Tobeco charges $15-20.00 for? Sure their R&D, and manufacturing costs more... But 9 times more? seriously? Theres something highly fishy about it.

JDtech is the same story. A Stingray X is $250.00+ the Infinite clone is $30-40.00. Worse this is the Philippines they have cheap labour, their cost of production should be lower, they should be more open minded with regards to outsourcing production to China. Maybe they are, and are just making a whole crap ton of profits?

Bottom line, if these companies aren't interested in doing what the need to do, to give us, the consumers the best deal possible. Then they have no business whining about Chinese clones. If they were doing things right, clones wouldn't be an issue.

Piracy of games, software and music, fall into this same issue. If they had less markup, they would sell vastly larger quantities, and their overall profits would be better. Most people don't want to be pirates. But in its current state, the navy sucks.

And well, that is the core of the debate, all day long for many years now. Creators in general want to make money. They overprice their product in a mindset that this would mean more money faster.

Most of them however ignore that CoD sold (hypothetical numbers) 6m copies within it's first week at $60 each.
But what they ignore to see is that they could have EASILY 10x more (60m) by only charging 6x less ($10).
In the end they wouldv'e made the same amount of money...
Yeah I know there are other factors to include and all that spazz, but bottomline is still valid.

But there is this little "other side" of the spectrum.
Wild cases do exist.
Why couldn't the same thinking exist for Lamborghini or Ferarri? Heck, even the Mark Bugs Chalice?!
Well, here you start stepping on another stone of another kind.
Would Ferarri be able to handcraft each and every car they make at that price? Would they be able to trust such a large scale factory to produce the same quality as they do hand-checking every part individually?
Would a Ferarri even still be the "status symbol" that it is if everybody could own one?

Sometimes, people do want to create art. Functional art as it may be, art nonetheless...
Sometimes, they also want this art to be special. Limited. Unique. Privileged.
Is that a snotty and entitles way to think of something you made? Is that a terribly selfish and elitist way to go about things?

Yes... BUT

But remember this: (something i always lean back on when criticized for the way I play some multiplayer games)
"You did not pay for my copy of this game. You did not pay for this computer I am playing it on. You are not paying for the internet I am using to play it. And for as long as that stays true, I will do things in whatever way I see fit; Whether YOU like it or not."



Conclusion:
(my own conclusion)

And even after all that said... MAYBE when you create something, you should consider putting the customer first. MAYBE when your things get cloned, it shows that you might be doing something wrong. MAYBE your pricepoint was too high. MAYBE your "exclusivity" model for limited stock was ridiculous.
Or MAYBE you are entitled to do whatever you want in whatever way you want.
But... MAYBE you then only have yourself to blame when your BF3 profile looks like absolute rubbish... After all, you have been playing this game the way YOU wanted it!

But MAYBE, just maybe... (this applies to authentic and clone manufacturers alike) everyone is gonna do whatever the hell they want, regardless of what anyone else thinks about it. And MAYBE, unless someone is actually paying them to do something differently, they will just keep doing it their own way.

 

[JakesSA]

Umm yes ... I think.

Note that VapeClub doesn't sell items cloned from Aspire, Kanger, UD, eLeaf etc. because these products do not present unreasonable barriers to entry and the clones of these that can be found are often just factory rejects, they cannot be made and sold at a better price for the same quality. That is the principle of the Chinese free market economy.

There is the idea that the manufacturing quality of many original vaping products is extremely high and the manufacturing extremely complex as can be seen with the comparisons to exotic cars and large software products. In reality this is untrue. For the better part these are extremely simple devices which makes cloning a simple task in return. Even the very complex Kayfun 4 had clones released practically on the same day as the original ... although I do have my suspicions on how that came about. In fact I now have my suspicions on who really owns the Russian RTA production line as well...

Svomesto has issues with any clones being sold alongside their atomisers not just Kayfuns but even having met all their sales requirements the pricing still made it untenable. That is their moral high ground and I am ok with that.

My moral high ground is that unlike exotic cars, games and overpriced cellphones, vaping has and will save countless lives, and if selling a good working product contributes towards that cause, I most certainly will, cloned or otherwise.

 

[WHeunis]

Umm yes ... I think.

Note that VapeClub doesn't sell items cloned from Aspire, Kanger, UD, eLeaf etc. because these products do not present unreasonable barriers to entry and the clones of these that can be found are often just factory rejects, they cannot be made and sold at a better price for the same quality. That is the principle of the Chinese free market economy.

There is the idea that the manufacturing quality of many original vaping products is extremely high and the manufacturing extremely complex as can be seen with the comparisons to exotic cars and large software products. In reality this is untrue. For the better part these are extremely simple devices which makes cloning a simple task in return. Even the very complex Kayfun 4 had clones released practically on the same day as the original ... although I do have my suspicions on how that came about. In fact I now have my suspicions on who really owns the Russian RTA production line as well...

Svomesto has issues with any clones being sold alongside their atomisers not just Kayfuns but even having met all their sales requirements the pricing still made it untenable. That is their moral high ground and I am ok with that.

My moral high ground is that unlike exotic cars, games and overpriced cellphones, vaping has and will save countless lives, and if selling a good working product contributes towards that cause, I most certainly will, cloned or otherwise.

Yeah, the car thing doesn't fit perfectly, but i figured it's as universally relateable as possible to anyone who reads it.

But yeah, you pretty much confirmed my suspicions about Svomesto not willing to sell their stuff in the same shop as clones will be found. Reasoning is another thing...

Regarding your high ground... A lot of vape shops and even vapers revolve around that same philosophy, but I can't in all honesty say that I believe the manufacturers to share the view.
I honestly think 99% of them are in it for the money alone - a diametrical opposition to the end-users and end-sellers perhaps?

We all have to do what we have to do. I am in no way blameless, shameless, or without my own transgressions.
I have no right to judge anyone for making, selling, buying, or using anything in any way whatsoever. Clones, originals, copies, knockoffs, whatever!
I can disapprove of something all day long, for myself... but we really do need to tread carefully when we judge others; Lest we become the Westboro Baptist Church...