Clones... Why?

[Completely Average]

I've often wondered this....


How many people would pay the $150+ for their original mech mods if they were devoid of any markings at all? Same devices, but absolutely no engraving or etchings, no serial numbers, nothing at all done to them cosmetically. Just plain metal tubes.

Would you still think that $150+ was a good price, or would the exact same mod suddenly not be worth as much to you?

 

[lasttango]

I'm quite torn on the whole thing really... I hate seeing someone design something unique...possibly even revolutionary and someone clones it and makes money off their idea... and then there's the safety issue... Can we trust all clones?

...but price... mmm those originals are a bit pricey.

 

[blueGrassTubb]

1. Because many can't afford original inflated prices

2. Because pricing is manipulated by originals by deliberately shorting the market.

3. Price fixing is maintained by originals by limiting distribution to one or a select few sites that have agreed to no discounting.

4. Using the above to create a "Hype" of being hard to get.

Rubbish.

1. Because some can't afford a high quality, original design that took lots of time and money to develop and manufacture.

2. Because originals cost more because most mod makers are NOT huge companies that can afford large manufacturing runs. They make what they can afford to make, then do it again as those sell out.

3. Mod makers want reputable sellers who will represent their products in a way mod makers approve.

4. Supply can't meet the demand of a good product and the original poster has no idea how the market works.




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[WattWick]

I've often wondered this....


How many people would pay the $150+ for their original mech mods if they were devoid of any markings at all? Same devices, but absolutely no engraving or etchings, no serial numbers, nothing at all done to them cosmetically. Just plain metal tubes.

Would you still think that $150+ was a good price, or would the exact same mod suddenly not be worth as much to you?

I would pay $160 for a $150 mod to have it completely free of any logo or serial number
I don't mind small logos like on the GP Paps. I could well live without serial numbers. Just looking at my (both clones) Nemesis with a 3D atty; crowded busy design. Logo + logo, serial number + logo + logo and another serial number. Looks silly to me.

For the Rolex analogy earlier on: It doesn't work for me. Simply because (as I stated earlier) not all $200 mods can justify their price, no matter what they cost to design, prototype, re-design and manufacture. A lot of new mod designers want in on the "high end" market with their very first, sometimes flawed designs and not-exactly-top-notch manufacturing.

 

[Nightshard]

Rubbish.

1. Because some can't afford a high quality, original design that took lots of time and money to develop and manufacture.

2. Because originals cost more because most mod makers are NOT huge companies that can afford large manufacturing runs. They make what they can afford to make, then do it again as those sell out.

3. Mod makers want reputable sellers who will represent their products in a way mod makers approve.

4. Supply can't meet the demand of a good product and the original poster has no idea how the market works.




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Rubbish

1. Because many can effort to buy a 200$ original but think its stupid to spend 200$ on a steel tube.
2. Because they make such small quantities, they feel they need to make a HUGE profit on each unit.
3. I actually agree with 3
4. Supply can't meet the demand so other manufacturers meet the demand in other ways.

 

[xpl0it]

@OP

Clones are great for those who otherwise would never be able to afford the actual product.

You can liken it to those who purchase 'knockoff' purses, watches, etc.

 

[dylanlg2]

I don't see how that makes sense because the originals I see are like max $70 and I've never seen a clone for $7... Besides the MCV Panzer I've never seen a vape over a hunnit dolla dolla bill y'all ($100) haha

You've never seen a mod over 100$ ? WELCOME. The vast majority of authentic mods are over 100.

I feel china has proven they often supply what people want/need, not solely based off the number of clones sold (even though that would be an indicator)

 

[stevegmu]

Don't people buy knockoff purses and watches to fool other people into thinking they are real? Short of certain $1000+ Hublot counterfeits, the fakes are no where near the quality as the original. I can't imagine fake vape gear is any better, unless the originals are also made in PRC...

 

[Maurice Pudlo]

I would pay $160 for a $150 mod to have it completely free of any logo or serial number
I don't mind small logos like on the GP Paps. I could well live without serial numbers. Just looking at my (both clones) Nemesis with a 3D atty; crowded busy design. Logo + logo, serial number + logo + logo and another serial number. Looks silly to me.

For the Rolex analogy earlier on: It doesn't work for me. Simply because (as I stated earlier) not all $200 mods can justify their price, no matter what they cost to design, prototype, re-design and manufacture. A lot of new mod designers want in on the "high end" market with their very first, sometimes flawed designs and not-exactly-top-notch manufacturing.

Priced precision lathes lately, lathes that can do threading as fine as your $45 clone? Cough up the money for one and the electrical work to power it, then tool up to produce a simple tube mod, pray you know what you are doing, and figure out just how long it takes to carve a tube mod, or simple atty.

Price components like glass, O rings, SS bar stock, what ever your device might need, world wide shipping, your electric costs.

Now figure out just how much money your making off of these simple tube mods.

Your likely in the red for years at $150 a pop.

These guys do it because they like to make stuff, some of us like to support folks who like to make stuff.

Paintings are just paint and canvas right? I'd spend a metric boat load of cash on a bit of Salvador Dali's paint and canvas, unfortunately I'm not quite that flush at the moment.

Maurice

 

[icemanistheking]

{MODERATED}

To me, it's even worse if you can afford it...part of the reason I'm so opposed, is that yes, they are expensive, but at the same time, someone with a modest income could put back a little for one, at most a couple months to get one if they so choose.

I would never openly criticize someone that works a minimum/low wage job who loves mech mods and buys clones, no matter what I think of the clones and their sellers. I think most of us have been in low-income situations before, and to expect someone to resist temptation in that circumstance is probably a little unreasonable. And if the sellers and cloners weren't there to begin with, said people wouldn't even be able to buy clones.

Having said that, it's a shady business practice, fraud, and in some cases trademark infringement - people get ripped off (like you saw might have happened in the Private V2 thread), and original mod makers become resentful and stop modding or only become willing to sell their merchandise to a select few who they know will appreciate it. What about the person that saves for the $200-$300 mod and makes the purchase only to find they've been ripped off? Or the modder who unleashes a new creation on the vaping community, only to find a month later that FastTech is selling a likeness of it for $30?

 

[ddloco]

I think clones are a good way for people who ain't rich to experience so of the better vaping products available without breaking themselves I have clones and I plan on saving for something original but I got kids I can't just up and start buying things at 2 and 3 hundred bucks a pop it wouldn't be fair to my wife and kids
PS guys we all grown men here who cares if you got an original or a clone that's high school acting people need to stop acting like for some odd reason because you got an original you better then every one with the clone that's children's thinking not grown men or women
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[Dr Shakamoto]

Got a Hammer from FT a while back. Make sure you read about the voltage drop issues though. Bought an adaptor from Vern's Vapes to make it look more pipe like. Best £5 I've spent in a while!

 

[roflwaffles]

I'd like to know this magical place where authentics are at max $100.

 

[Bad Ninja]

To me, it's even worse if you can afford it...part of the reason I'm so opposed, is that yes, they are expensive, but at the same time, someone with a modest income could put back a little for one, at most a couple months to get one if they so choose.

I would never openly criticize someone that works a minimum/low wage job who loves mech mods and buys clones, no matter what I think of the clones and their sellers. I think most of us have been in low-income situations before, and to expect someone to resist temptation in that circumstance is probably a little unreasonable. And if the sellers and cloners weren't there to begin with, said people wouldn't even be able to buy clones.

Having said that, it's a shady business practice, fraud, and in some cases trademark infringement - people get ripped off (like you saw might have happened in the Private V2 thread), and original mod makers become resentful and stop modding or only become willing to sell their merchandise to a select few who they know will appreciate it. What about the person that saves for the $200-$300 mod and makes the purchase only to find they've been ripped off? Or the modder who unleashes a new creation on the vaping community, only to find a month later that FastTech is selling a likeness of it for $30?

If you pay $300 for a mech mod, IMHO you are getting ripped off no matter if its a clone or a Legit product.
No one has a design or "utility patent " on a mod because none of them actually own the design.

Looking for legit mods on eBay isn't being responsible as a shopper and "buyer beware".
Want legit? Buy from authorized retailer and don't try to get the best deal on an auction site.
Just expect to pay for the name.

If the price gap was smaller, and supply equaled hype, clones would not exist.

Extreme retail prices and limited inventories practically formed the clone industry.
Don't blame the cloners, look at the root of the situation.
It's a free market system. Supply and demand.

 

[Completely Average]

Priced precision lathes lately, lathes that can do threading as fine as your $45 clone? Cough up the money for one and the electrical work to power it, then tool up to produce a simple tube mod, pray you know what you are doing, and figure out just how long it takes to carve a tube mod, or simple atty.

Price components like glass, O rings, SS bar stock, what ever your device might need, world wide shipping, your electric costs.

Now figure out just how much money your making off of these simple tube mods.

Your likely in the red for years at $150 a pop.

Do you REALLY think it's that difficult? Honestly?

I can assure you it's not.

Take a good look at that gun. The ONLY pieces that were prefabricated were the barrel, internal trigger mechanism, and the screws. Every single bit of the rest of it is hand carved, hand cut, hand engraved, hand inlaid, hand formed, hand polished, and hand finished.

My father was the gunsmith who produced this weapon, and I know several other master gunsmiths as well.


I can assure you that the average competent gunsmith could fabricate the average mech mod in about 15 minutes by hand if you don't include engravings or etchings. And those threads you think are oh-so difficult to produces and require big expensive lathes, I've got a newsflash for you, they had be done by hand with a gunsmiths thread tap in a matter of minutes, and will be gunsmith quality, not the shabby work done by the typical mech mod producer.

And unlike your typical mech mod I can assure you that a mech mod made by the gunsmith will have buttons that work flawlessly, batteries that never rattle, and it will work every time you press the button without fail.

It's not hard. It shouldn't take a long time. Making them by hand in a decent workshop, a single person could easily produce a hundred per day. At $200 per unit that's $20,000 per day income on a material investment of less than $50 and a time investment of only 8 hours. At that profit rate they could easily pay for their entire workshop in the first week and pocket more than $95,000 in pure profits per week after that.


You're paying premium prices for high school level design and machine work. One needs look no further than the common button problems, connector pin problems, voltage drop issues, and fitment issues to know that most producers of original mech mods are simply vapers who happened to have access to a machine shop and figured it was an easy way to make a fast buck. The quality of the vast majority of mechs would be considered rejects by industries that rely on precision design and machine work and yet sell their products for less.

 

[blueGrassTubb]

I don't see how that makes sense because the originals I see are like max $70 and I've never seen a clone for $7... Besides the MCV Panzer I've never seen a vape over a hunnit dolla dolla bill y'all ($100) haha

Then you haven't looked very extensively. You will be VERY hard pressed to find ANY original (with a few exceptions) for under $100. Most will run $150 or higher.

Perhaps the 10x the price is hyperbole, but one can certainly get a Nemesis clone (the Nemesis is a very popular MOD) for $30 while an original is more than $200.

Do your research. There are many good clones on the market, and there are some duds. SOme clones, because of one small change or another, are actually better than the originals.

Start with Hcigar clones. They tend to have much better quality than many other brands.

 

[neutrontech]

Clones are completely different than counterfeits. People who buy clones know they aren't buying an original. People who buy counterfeits think they are buying original. I'm fine with clones as long as they aren't being sold as originals. Counterfeiting is wrong and I would never support it.

I don't buy for one minute that clones hurt original creators. For one they couldn't meet the demand and are selling the quantity they intended to sell. If they were capable of producing more, they would. That might mean increasing the price to slow down demand as well.

Also in many cases, clone buyers are in a different market. A lot of people who buy clones still would not purchase an original, if the clone market wasn't around. They would vape using other methods.

Myself, I bought a fasttech Nemesis clone and a couple atomizers to give the world of rebuildables a try. Now that I have, and found out I like them, I will likely purchase an original mod at some point. In my instance, the clone market actually helped the original market. Which probably happens a lot. Many aren't willing to dump that much money up front. After trying out a cheaper route, will go out and spend the money. If I wasn't able to try a clone, I would never consider buying an original.

And once again, cloning is not counterfeiting.

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[blueGrassTubb]

I do feel guilty for buying clones and thus causing the original developers to lose money[.]

Original MOD makers aren't losing anything. Originals are perpetually out of stock. As long as they are selling what they make, they aren't losing a dime. When you can go to Vaperev and find every MOD they carry in stock for long periods of time is when one can state that MOD makers MIGHT be losing money.

You also hace to account for those who would NEVER spend $200+ on a MOD to begin with. Is Atmomixani losing money by my buying a 69 clone when I was never going to spend the money on an original? They were NEVER going to get my money anyways, my buying a clone doesn't hurt them at all.

 

[BaDaBooM]

Clones are completely different than counterfeits. People who buy clones know they aren't buying an original. People who buy counterfeits think they are buying original. I'm fine with clones as long as they aren't being sold as originals. Counterfeiting is wrong and I would never support it.

Wrong. To counterfeit means to imitate something. Counterfeit products are fake replicas of the real product.

You can stop it too. You are getting too carried away and making statements that are false. You, Completely Average and bad ninja need to stop making up stuff.

 

[BaDaBooM]

Original MOD makers aren't losing anything. Originals are perpetually out of stock. As long as they are selling what they make, they aren't losing a dime. When you can go to Vaperev and find every MOD they carry in stock for long periods of time is when one can state that MOD makers MIGHT be losing money.

You also hace to account for those who would NEVER spend $200+ on a MOD to begin with. Is Atmomixani losing money by my buying a 69 clone when I was never going to spend the money on an original? They were NEVER going to get my money anyways, my buying a clone doesn't hurt them at all.

I agree. Good modders can't keep up they are always sold out. Don't feel guilty about buying clones the good modders are getting paid.