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Chinese companies copy Kickstarter ideas before they are even funded

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Naw, the idea was 90% here. It was seriously genius. The execution was trivial.

Execution is always more important than ideas. It's amazing how much this mentality persists in the West to the point where it holds us back...I feel like it's borderline elitist when people think ideas supercede everything else.
 
It's a common practice over there. You run the legit product, then after hours you make some adjustments (change what logo is printed, etc) and then run a production and sell it elsewhere.

http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factori...ime-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/

This part is the saddest truth

“There are probably hundreds of small factories who might see a product on the internet and think ‘Hey I can do this,” said Zhu. “How are you going to shut down all of them? How can you even find out where they are? And the money you spend suing them is more than you can get out of the lawsuit.”

There is no way of beating copycats in China. All you can do is putting as much refinement in your product as possible and hope customers will be able to tell the difference and willing to pay premium for the real deal.
 
Man this thread got me back on AliExpress, I had no idea they had Lego sets or a Big Green Egg ceramic grill.

About to bombard this Christmas with Lego sets on the cheap.

Haha me too. I haven't actually bought anything from them before and i was thinking of padding up my Lego army. Need more minifigs.
 
I'm not even outraged, more amazed at their manufacturing speed to create the clone or ripoff. New spin on the AliExpress $20 game: find your long awaited kickstarter projects.
 
China don't care is real but for some cultural reasons.

If you are interested and have the time, Wired has a documentary on Shenzhen, a city that was built on tech industry that evolved into copying things and is now trying to change again to be something more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY

It's actually really interesting, specially with the interviews it does with westerners that have gone to live and start companies in Shenzhen as well as what they say about how people view technology and ownership there compared to the west.

That was great. Thanks for sharing
 
I was wondering why the Fidget Cube is already being sold, given how soon the kickstarter was created and how slow kickstarter products are usually released.
I got my answer from this thread.
 
Haha me too. I haven't actually bought anything from them before and i was thinking of padding up my Lego army. Need more minifigs.
Are those quality sets, with precision manufactured pieces, made out of the same quality plastic?

Because if it is... man, Ghostbusters firehouse for $96... original is something like $300.

But I think it's more likely this is some megabloks class drek.
 
Execution is always more important than ideas. It's amazing how much this mentality persists in the West to the point where it holds us back...I feel like it's borderline elitist when people think ideas supercede everything else.
Hey the idea is hard american work. Execution? pff, just send it to China for manufacturing. Easy
 
If there's one thing I want Trump to attempt to put a clamp on is the blatant IP theft in China.

I don't see it happening but part of the reason why China censors US and other web services is so they can build their own twitter or any service.

It isn't just about censor ship its also about them being extremely protective about their jobs.
 
That's horrible. His product was expensive as hell but it really sucks having lost your invention to chinese manufacturing days after revealing it..
 
Execution is always more important than ideas. It's amazing how much this mentality persists in the West to the point where it holds us back...I feel like it's borderline elitist when people think ideas supercede everything else.

We're talking about moulding pieces of plastic here, the "execution" here is nothing. Unless the innovation is in the manufacturing process then the concept and design are everything.
 
Sounds fishy. I work full time near Shenzhen making products and opening injection moulds on a monthly basis for my US/EU importers. Pretty much impossible to get that out in a week unless its crappy sample mold, mass production injection molds take a month plus finishing touches to be ready.

We're talking about moulding pieces of plastic here, the "execution" here is nothing. Unless the innovation is in the manufacturing process then the concept and design are everything.

LOL, injection moulding is harder than you think brah.
 
I am not going to comment on this particular tthing (and fidget cube) as it is so shameless.

I work in Shanghai in a company that values IP so much we have all sorts of measures and trainings in IP security, awareness and such.

#NotAllChinese is this a thing?

Sometimes it is an inferiority complex. "We have to catch up with the West and this is what we can do the fastest way. The West exploited the world for so long, why we are still the bad guys wtf" is not an uncommon sentiment.

I think Chinese in general (just based on the Chinese board I hang out in) are pretty pound of the Chinese's sanzhai-ability and find these kind of things funny.

I mean even half of the posters here find this funny anyway.
 
This thread reminds me how baffling China can be about this.

Like that Chinese fighting game that has a Kung fu panda shameless rip off, but somehow was able to get legit rights from SNK to use Terry Bogard and Benimaru Nikaido.
 
Amazon needs to be better at shutting this shit down.

The amount of knockoff products from overseas, or bootleg ass stuff is incredible. Understand they need to compete with Alibaba, but it's insane and does nothing but piss off customers when they get suckered.
 
I'm still waiting for the Snapchat Spectacles knock-offs. I'm incredibly surprised they're not out yet...

It's not the hardware that's driving Spectacles, it's the hardware-software-network integration and you can't rip that off. If you just want head perspective video, get a GoPro.
 
I am not going to comment on this particular tthing (and fidget cube) as it is so shameless.

I work in Shanghai in a company that values IP so much we have all sorts of measures and trainings in IP security, awareness and such.

#NotAllChinese is this a thing?

Sometimes it is an inferiority complex. "We have to catch up with the West and this is what we can do the fastest way. The West exploited the world for so long, why we are still the bad guys wtf" is not an uncommon sentiment.

No because

#justourgovernment is more popular.
 

I'm tempted. Ebay is a lot easier than fiddling with AliExpress.

Hell, i'm going to give it a shot. I'll gladly compare the bootleg fidget cube with the real deal if anyone is interested. Shame it'll take three weeks for it to arrive though.
 

$1 vs $19-25

Yikes.

It's 8 dollars. For 1 dollar you get a Pokemon sticker lol.

I too got baited and would've ordered for $1
 
I'm still waiting for the Snapchat Spectacles knock-offs. I'm incredibly surprised they're not out yet...


It's not the hardware that's driving Spectacles, it's the hardware-software-network integration and you can't rip that off. If you just want head perspective video, get a GoPro.

I have been looking at these. I think the Chinese one are much better looking.



This is $200. You can also get a pair of really cheap one for pennies.
 
This thread reminds me how baffling China can be about this.

Like that Chinese fighting game that has a Kung fu panda shameless rip off, but somehow was able to get legit rights from SNK to use Terry Bogard and Benimaru Nikaido.

IIRC SNK is now own by a Chinese company which is probably how they were able to get those character rights so easily.
 
So, this thing was being manufactured, distributed and sold in China within a week of it appearing on Kickstarter? Wat

The Chinese may be wizards but that timeframe seems way too damn small to pull that off. Are we sure that we're getting the full story here?
 
as long as people keep buying these clones, china will keep doing it.

China used to be a much more self contained market in comparison to the rest of the world (outside of say, North Korea). Many outside corporations couldn't sell their products in China due to Chinese regulations, so the Chinese manufacturers would just make their own clones using the same molds and manufacturing facilities. The Chinese market was kind of a separate thing that didn't really cross paths with the global market. Yeah, China sold a lot of knock offs and bootlegs, but they were still contained within the Chinese marketplace.

But these days with the growth of the Internet, Chinese companies have been finding loopholes around Chinese regulations. Ebay, Amazon and now AliExpress have been helping a lot of upstart factories in china gain a lot of momentum. Most of these smaller Chinese factories have their own production methods and can even build their own plastics and rubber materials. These 'clones' have been spilling out of the Chinese market into the western world much faster than they used to. It will cause more of a mess on a global front. But personally, I don't find that to be a bad thing.

But my original point was that these clones came into being because China had the factories to make this stuff set in place and their market was locked down by declining global products on Chinese soil.
 
IM actually glad he got his idea stolen, I hate bullshit pricing that is marked up for no reason other than greed. That thing is not worth more than 12$.
 
IM actually glad he got his idea stolen, I hate bullshit pricing that is marked up for no reason other than greed. That thing is not worth more than 12$.

umm, i mean thats hard to say. we have no idea how much his R&D cost, or what his supply line cost is looking like.
 
This is why I've always thought it's baffling that kickstarter even exists.

Its like here's my great idea but I don't have any money.

Companies: great thanks for the idea we have money and can just do this ourselves and it will be essentially impossible for you to litigate against us.

A lot of these ideas people haven't filed patents for and then you're basically sol.

Copyright is very difficult to prove who came up with a concept first especially since either party could could just forge evidence to prove your side.

Even if they did have a patent or copyright, these Chinese companies wouldn't care.
 
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