When I first came to Korea way back when I remember seeing a pair of 'Revi's' for sale in a street market stall. Since then I've quite a few other badly spelled 'brand names'. Now it looks as though the tables have turned with the rise of the Chinese market. But the Korea firms are finding it to be a tough problem to deal with. While the Korean black market items are still around, there a quite a few laws on the books to try to deal with it. Not much luck with that in China however.
"According to an investigation by EIAK on damage to over 1,000 domestic electronics companies, the number of knockoff brands from China is growing"
According to Samsung: "Samsung Electronics executives are fuming because retailers are selling a copy of Samsung’s Blue Black Phone Ⅱ even before the original has been launched in the Chinese market."
Makes you wonder how that happened until you read this by LG: "It is practically impossible to track down the Chinese counterfeits, because it takes them less than a month to copy our products while it takes eight months for us on average to develop a new product", "Sometimes I wonder whether the Chinese makers are stealing our product molds, because without the same molds it’s almost impossible to copy the products in such a short period of time.’
Ah-ha! What a great idea, when someone sends you a set of drawings for a bid, or even for manufacturing, just send them to your brother in the tool shop down the street, change a letter on the logo, and now you have your own mobile phone company!
When you're outsourcing for molds or dies, probably the best policy is to use different tool shops for the different components of your projects. Make sure your shops have a contact that speaks your language fluently and has international experience, and you really shouldn't have any problems integrating everything and getting your project finished on time and on spec.
Good luck out there!
Korean Firms Battle Chinese Knockoff Brands
Samsung, LG Give Up on China’s Copycats
