[longtermmemmory]

it is not always slave wages.

if a company subcontracts to china or ANYWHERE in asia, quite often the factory produces the order by day and produces a knockoff by night. Sometimes it is a family affair with one brother producing the genuine article at factory a with the other brother producing the knockoff at factory b.

Calloway clubs are so well knocked off that the only way to tell the copycat is to havt the club tested at the factory.

There are no courts in china, no lawyers to sue, and no means of enforcement.

consider mexico and louis vitton factories, the workers would actually steal the genuine parts and assemble the bags at home. so you had a knock off made of genuine materials by the actual workers.

[arfan]

True story: the company I work for orders a set of tooling from a Chinese vendor for one of our widgets being produced at the Chinese factory. We need exactly one set of tooling to meet production deadlines.

Delivery day rolls around and two sets of pallets are dropped off at the company loading dock. Identical sets of tooling. Two complete sets. Down to the matching identification stamping on the tooling.

The vendor is called up, and my company says "What gives, we only ordered one set of tooling. We aren't going to pay for the second set."

The vendor says "Oh, that was our mistake, you can just keep the second set of tooling. Goodbye. Click"

hmmmmmmmmmmmm............