I Must State This

[K_Tech]

Any knockoff sold is the loss of a sale to the guy that developed the real thing .. there is simply no other way to look at it .. thinking otherwise is humorous .. it's like saying a movie studio does not lose money to pirating in all it's forms ..

As well, you will find, if you care to actually do any research, that name brand Corporations in many, many cases, aggressively go after the knockoffs of their products .. the two you named do ..

What people fail to think about is : if you essentially went thru the process of developing a product, then the marketing of that product, then the discovery that your product was a success and that you might actually be able to make a living with it .. ask yourself, would you be happy when suddenly knockoffs started appearing at half or less what you sold for .. ?? Place shoe firmly on other foot, then, rationally answer that question ..

I have to somewhat disagree with that. If there weren't waiting lists for the higher-end mechs and attys, I'd feel differently. There are possibly thousands of Mona Lisa prints out there. I seriously doubt that should the Louvre put the original on the market that they'd have trouble finding a buyer.

There are tons of "kit" cars available and you can build your own GT40 in your garage for a fraction of the price of an original; put an original on the market, and you can almost name your own price (Steve McQueen's GT40 got $11,000,000 last year at auction).

People will still line up out the door for the latest Atmizoo, regardless of how many they pump out the door from fasttech.

Nothing says the two guys in Greece can't have it produced in China. Not a THING. Almost every single company out there has at least some items sourced from a 3rd world country.

True, but it wouldn't be the same. I think if folks found out that Mojo was just buying his mechs from Shenzhen Young June Technology, sales would plummet. They buy his mods because HE makes them.

 

[WattWick]

Cool story bro!

There goes the neighborhood....

---
Buy a clone? " Don't be a cheap ..."
Buy an original? " Don't be a sucker"

However eloquently worded, that's the essence of any clone vs original discussion.

There is no way to buy vaping gear without doing it wrong in one way or the other.

Edit: Smiley removal service. " D without spacing makes funny faces.

 

[danc13]

I have never used or held a clone and have always bought the authentic items, dont own a nemesis or anything high end though. Recently though while trying to be able to experiment and try out many different types of mods, even after lots and lots of research on each, i have decided i would like to try out a variety of different mods and am waiting for quite a few clones to arrive. People can hate on me not having a couple thousand dollars to spend and try out the real mods but while still being on a slight learning curve clones dont seem like such an illogical choice to me at this time

 

[Coastal Cowboy]

It is none of my business what others buy and use.

I might caution folks on safety issues, but if you're doing it safely and it works for you, I don't care if you own a clone or a real McCoy.

 

[Uncle Willie]

It is not a loss of a sale if the person was never going to buy the 'original' product to begin with.

Heck, some of these mod makers make such small quantities, that it would be impossible for everyone to buy one(or they purposefully hold back inventory to keep the price high). But that is not even the point. There are many many people that would not dump $200 or more on a designer mech mod. Just like there are many many people that would not dump $5000 on a rolex watch.

So there is no loss of sale.

And sure, the makers of some large corporations go after knock-offs. But someone that bought a $50 rolex in Battery Park is not going to buy a $5000 watch. It aint going to happen.

And there is no comparison to movie pirating. Because in most cases, a person WOULD see the non pirated movie.

In any case, it all boils down to competition. If the clones become soooo good that there is no reason to buy the 'real thing' then the manufacturer of the real thing needs to step up its game.

Think evolv and their kick vs the sigelei and smoktech kicks. the two 'clones' spurred the creation of the kick 2.

If someone would care to actually answer the original question, that would be great ..

What people fail to think about is : if you essentially went thru the process of developing a product, then the marketing of that product, then the discovery that your product was a success and that you might actually be able to make a living with it .. ask yourself, would you be happy when suddenly knockoffs started appearing at half or less what you sold for .. ?? Place shoe firmly on other foot, then, rationally answer that question ..

 

[Mr.Mann]

If someone would care to actually answer the original question, that would be great ..

What people fail to think about is : if you essentially went thru the process of developing a product, then the marketing of that product, then the discovery that your product was a success and that you might actually be able to make a living with it .. ask yourself, would you be happy when suddenly knockoffs started appearing at half or less what you sold for .. ?? Place shoe firmly on other foot, then, rationally answer that question ..

It wouldn't make me happy, but neither do rainy days--some things are out of our control. Ask yourself, if what they make is easily knocked-off, and they knew that going into this it likely would be (especially if it is sought after), does the cloning come with the territory? Yes, it does. Does that make it right? No, but so what?! Is it something we all have to live with? Yes, because it ain't stopping.

 

[Arnie H]

I want to interject for a moment if I may. Great discussion BTW.

Those of us in the English speaking world, as children, probably heard or learned of the story/legend of Robin Hood and his "merry men". Although one of my college degree's is in history, I never was much interested in the history of Britain and so forth. My specialty was classical studies/ancient history (Greece, Rome, Ancient Egypt, etc.) So I cannot speak authoritatively on the subject of Robin Hood (whether he was real or not, etc.). So all I know is pretty much what I learned as a child.

Robin Hood was said to steal from the rich, and give to the poor. So was he a good guy or bad guy? Rogue or benefactor? A charitable man or a criminal?

The answer is, of course, it depends on who you ask. For the wealthy (particularly those from whom he stole) their opinion of the man is not likely to be very high. Outlaw! Scoundrel! is what they will likely say. Very few will know or say or talk about his good deeds.

However, if you put the same question to the peasants and the impoverished (particularly those who received his "charity"), they are very likely to tell ya the man's a saint! God bless him!

Who has the moral high ground? Who's right and who's wrong?

The chances that a starving peasant is gonna ask Robin where he got that nice goose or loaf of bread, which they are now shoveling into their mouths and refuse his assistance on moral grounds is slim. Should we blame them if they do not ask or do not know (or do not really care, because of their hunger)?

 

[GoodNews!]

What happens more often is that vapers often unknowingly get clones or faulty products while paying the premium price, and when the device doesn't work right, all the fans of the product jump down other vapers' throats and claim that even with years of experience, the vaper must be setting their voltage too high or puffing too hard. For those who know anything about mechanics, they know just how badly most coils and things can be made even with standards of quality control. A coil that's simply too close to the outer rim of the head can cause problems. A coil that's not wrapped tight enough or too tightly can cause problems. The ohm range could be way off of the intended number. Other materials in the device can get burnt spots. The list goes on, and I rarely find that it's any fault of the user.

I'm big on the fact that literally every pre-coiled device known in the history of vaping needs much better quality control, and about the only devices that seem to have decent quality control are the ones that are stainless steel type rebuilder devices that come with nothing but a semi-tank, air holes, and screws to attach your own homemade coil - yet, when it comes to that, I don't even consider those to be true "vaping devices" - rather, I consider them to be metal objects that can be modified to produce vapor. They're not in any way for the average vaper. When it comes to the average vaper, any pre-built product intended for them, that I've reviewed so far, has just been garbage.

As of right now, I have two or three products left to review: the iClear 30S, the Smoktech Tumbler, and the Vision Aurora. If none of those devices work as intended, then I may just have to give up vaping for the time being, or get someone to rebuild coils for me. Most of the products out there for average vapers have such horrid quality control that, if you really do your research like I do, that over %75 of the customers have major issues that another %25 never, ever experience on the same device, no matter the experience level. I've seen newbies get great results out of a Protank even with slopping juice into the center chamber and cranking it up to 4.2, and I've seen experienced modders get leaking, burning, and strange occurrences with the Protank, all while keeping things at 3.2 and excecuting perfect assembly, pre-dripping, and filling (with testing the pre-built heads in their original state.)

 

[tj99959]

There are avenues for protecting themselves, their called Patton Rights, and Copy Rights. When manufacturers don't apply for them .... they don't have a complaint coming. When they do apply for them ..... they have recourse.

 

[bluecat]

I want to interject for a moment if I may. Great discussion BTW.

Those of us in the English speaking world, as children, probably heard or learned of the story/legend of Robin Hood and his "merry men". Although one of my college degree's is in history, I never was much interested in the history of Britain and so forth. My specialty was classical studies/ancient history (Greece, Rome, Ancient Egypt, etc.) So I cannot speak authoritatively on the subject of Robin Hood (whether he was real or not, etc.). So all I know is pretty much what I learned as a child.

Robin Hood was said to steal from the rich, and give to the poor. So was he a good guy or bad guy? Rogue or benefactor? A charitable man or a criminal?

The answer is, of course, it depends on who you ask. For the wealthy (particularly those from whom he stole) their opinion of the man is not likely to be very high. Outlaw! Scoundrel! is what they will likely say. Very few will know or say or talk about his good deeds.

However, if you put the same question to the peasants and the impoverished (particularly those who received his "charity"), they are very likely to tell ya the man's a saint! God bless him!

Who has the moral high ground? Who's right and who's wrong?

The chances that a starving peasant is gonna ask Robin where he got that nice goose or loaf of bread, which they are now shoveling into their mouths and refuse his assistance on moral grounds is slim. Should we blame them if they do not ask or do not know (or do not really care, because of their hunger)?

Love Robin Hood. What was he? Both. He was a criminal that thought he was doing a good thing. Like a lot of things "bad" it starts with a good thought but quickly turns. By the end of Robin Hood was he still doing good or did he let power get the best of him?

I really do not see the fascination on spending 200 bucks on a tube or box. Hey if you got the money for it, go for it. Reading these threads for the past years I see a lot of people on fixed incomes and out of work. If a person is foregoing the next grocery visit just to buy a mod then there is something wrong.

Thankfully I am not in that situation. My wife happens to be a teacher in a disadvantage school district. I hear the above all the time. The kid can't afford this or that, so it comes out of my family's budget. Then they leave my wife's class pulling out their iphone. It sad that priorities are messed up in today's society. Giving can bring more dependency on the whole.

The clones I buy if they are an exact replica.. I fix them so they aren't. Besides all the expensive "high end" mods are clones of each other.

 

[Jayvaps]

If someone would care to actually answer the original question, that would be great ..

What people fail to think about is : if you essentially went thru the process of developing a product, then the marketing of that product, then the discovery that your product was a success and that you might actually be able to make a living with it .. ask yourself, would you be happy when suddenly knockoffs started appearing at half or less what you sold for .. ?? Place shoe firmly on other foot, then, rationally answer that question ..

Oh. I didn't know I was taking a test and had to answer every part of your statements?!?

Besides, your statement is not the original one anyways, as you are not the OP.

But...if my product was still selling as fast as I could produce them at the same markup, why would I really care? People are still going to want 'the real thing'. That is, unless the knock off surpasses me in quality and price. And if it does, then I best get cracking on something better.

That is the way a free market works. But I am a libertarian, so my ideas maybe different than yours. /shrug

I don't see anyone screaming 'clone' when it comes to ego batteries or stardust clearos, or a slightly different look of 1 genesis atty to another.

Yes, to knock off the actual logo takes it from 'clone' to 'fake', but again, it is no different than designer handbags or whatever else is priced way above what it takes to manufacture, priced high based on the name and the logo.

You want genuine, cough up the dough. There are those that ALWAYS will. And there are those that NEVER will. That is why Rolex and Gucci have not folded yet. They sell at a much higher cost, because people will pay for the 'real one'. Human behavior does not change because we are discussing pieces of metal that people vape e liquid out of.

 

[Thrasher]

Most of the products out there for average vapers have such horrid quality control that, if you really do your research like I do, that over %75 of the customers have major issues.

thats becuase this junk gets dumped out so fast and people more often then not are willing to put up with the flaws instead of standing their ground and voting with their wallet.
there is a very odd phenomenon I see with vaping where consumers more often then not are willing to buy a faulty product and fix it themselves instead of demanding for this quality control you speak of and as it is quite a few of the chinese manufacturers have stated - rather openly and candidly - they dont care if we are willing to buy it as is. so it is mainly our fualt the QC sucks like it does.

yet, when it comes to that, I don't even consider those to be true "vaping devices" - rather, I consider them to be metal objects that can be modified to produce vapor.

and this is where you are 100% off base, many of these rebuildables are in fact very well tuned to produce superior flavor with outstanding vapor production that no premade device can match, even when built with a standard coil and wick. you might just be surprised how much thought actually does go into the tuning of a genesis atomizer with regards to the way vapor is produced within the cap.

many of these devices are designed by vapors who, like you, are sick of inferior products and wanted a better experience with consistent results.

much thought is given to these devices and the efficiency of the nicotine delivery to the point many people using rebuildables actual have to lower their nicotine level. and wouldnt that be considered a good thing?

dont sell yourself short or or deny yourself the real satisfaction that can be found in a rebuildable product - It will take you all of 15 minutes to learn to wrap a coil for a kayfun and once you try them (rba's) you will wonder how you put up with a 2 dollar clearo for so long.

 

[GoodNews!]

I think you may have misread what I meant about the rebuildables - I said that the full-on rebuildables are the only quality devices I've heard of (concerning the build - they're essentially just a metal casing and set of screws). But they all require building your own coils from scratch (no company makes coils for Genesis's and stuff. I'd try them in a heartbeat if some company actually would. I'd even attach the thing myself. But the fact that no one out there wants to take the time to pre-assemble wicks and coils with actual good craftmanship and superb materials is the downfall of buildables - it cuts out the average vaper.)

Now, some of the rebuildables do come with pre-made coils already installed (Phoenix does this, I believe), but I've seen reports of those coils even being crappy. Rebuildables are just a league above the average vaper, or for people with physical disabilities. There needs to be a "bridged gap" between this world and the pre-made world. I'd love for some vendor out there to sit down and try to make a ton of Ecowool or Bamboo wicked coils, with pre-inionized mesh. Sell them for $15 a pop as long as they work right. But no one seems to want to... I've always been surprised by this. You could even put them in a Protank head if you really wanted to.

Just to say, the one "pre-built" product I've yet to read even one single bad review about are Stingray Atomizers, and I've done some extensive looking around. iClear's have a very good rep as well, just with a few reports of rubbery burnt tastes. Aspires have about a %35 chance of sucking. Other than that, the bad experiences, with optimal user account, still range from %50-%75 with virtually any other device out there. Personally, I think Kanger just needs to shut down. About the only thing that's benefitted from them putting out products is that ECF suddenly got about a %50 increase in traffic with users complaining.

Anyway, back to the original topic. I bought a $7 Twist clone from Fasttech. It came with a connector pin that was popped out of place a little and won't go back in, creating a very uneven connector. Technically it works just fine, but I don't use it much out of fear. I've never heard anything much good out of clones until, again, you get into rebuildable territory, where it being a metal casing with screws inside doesn't leave much room for mistakes. I always hear good things about cloned rebuildables. In that case, I agree that there's nothing wrong with clones - about the only thing I could disagree on is the laboring situations that were probably involved to make them so cheap in China.

 

[Mr.Mann]

I think you may have misread what I meant about the rebuildables - I said that the full-on rebuildables are the only quality devices I've heard of (concerning the build - they're essentially just a metal casing and set of screws). But they all require building your own coils from scratch (no company makes coils for Genesis's and stuff. I'd try them in a heartbeat if some company actually would. I'd even attach the thing myself. But the fact that no one out there wants to take the time to pre-assemble wicks and coils with actual good craftmanship and superb materials is the downfall of buildables - it cuts out the average vaper.)

Now, some of the rebuildables do come with pre-made coils already installed (Phoenix does this, I believe), but I've seen reports of those coils even being crappy. Rebuildables are just a league above the average vaper, or for people with physical disabilities. There needs to be a "bridged gap" between this world and the pre-made world. I'd love for some vendor out there to sit down and try to make a ton of Ecowool or Bamboo wicked coils, with pre-inionized mesh. Sell them for $15 a pop as long as they work right. But no one seems to want to... I've always been surprised by this.

Just to say, the one "pre-built" product I've yet to read even one single bad review about are Stingray Atomizers, and I've done some extensive looking around.

~Zen.

You can get one pre-rolled coil and replacement wicks, but you can't buy more premade coils. You can buy replacement coils for the eBarons and ones like that, but those aren't gennys (and the replacemtn coils/cups aren't all that great).

 

[Thrasher]

this is what im saying though, except for the genesis it takes 5 minutes to wrap a piece of wire around a string and screw it in.
there are premade genesis wicks but then the problem is so many devices one size does not fit all so to speak, and the wick usually needs to be tailored to that individual device. now even genesis devices are being used with ekowool and cotton avoiding the whole mesh fiasco. this is a vibrant and growing community and for every road block someone is working out a way around it to make life easier for others. its easy to get caught up out here in general members and not realize how much is going on in some of the subforums, the tutorials and massive amounts of help teaching others.

while I agree many vapors will be put off by this, so was I at first, after a little playing you realize it isnt all that its made out to be and in many cases very easy to achieve very good results with little effort.

and now with standard drippers and even the kayfun, taifun and a few others silica(cotton whatever) works just fine. and I have a hard time believing that such a large percentage of vapors are willing to rewrap protank heads but dont want to learn how to actually use something designed to be rebuilt.

in any case I would think the only prebuilt device to deliver almost perfectly consistant result would be a carto in a tank, this isnt smoking, effort must be made or inferior products must be accepted unless we quit buying them and force better quality.

 

[JulesXsmokr]

Oh that's going to happen. Even this forum with the rules we have against selling counterfeits, people still list them. It'll happen on a forum that's not quite as vigilant.

Are you going to ban fastec?

 

[Thrasher]

Are you going to ban fastec?

heck no! where else would I get wicked lockblade knives and RC quadracopters

 

[JulesXsmokr]

I once had a clone of Racquel Welch which was built with great quality, then it got old and it got buried in the dirt. After that I had found out that all clones are not made the same..

And OP - right on !

 

[Jayvaps]

Are you going to ban fastec?

I guess we will have to lock the 150 page 'my boba's clone' thread in the DIY section as well, and anytime anyone mentions trying to replicate a store bought flavor.

*rollseyes*

 

[Caridwen]

I have seen this sentiment several times and I can't say that I understand it. A clone is a clone, birth marks included! Next time you're in a big city with street vendors, go up and tell them that selling fake jewelry, clothing and electronics is okay as long as they don't use brand names and logos. I don't see how that makes any sense. We live in a capitalist society which means--rightly or wrongly, legally or illegally--someone is going to capitalize on something or someone else. Someone say free-market? Or is it honorable-market? As long as you know when you're in a flea market!

If someone is swayed one way or another simply due to a logo or brand name, that person has bigger issues. If an object in question functions as it is supposed to, irrespective of markings, so be it; save your money and do what you do. If someone is buying a fake Louis Vuitton suitcase for $20, obviously they're buying it because they want it to LOOK like the real deal--calling it Lewis Batton with big bubble letters ain't gonna work. Now, if that same person is expecting Louis Vuitton quality, then they deserve to be ripped off. If they don't know the difference in the respective qualities, then they won't know they're being ripped off.

Maybe it's a separate issue if someone is selling a "clone" and saying it's the real deal, i.e., the original. But even still, remember, the onus is on the consumer--protect your wallet like your money depended on it.

That's not a clone in that case, that's a counterfeit. And they definitely aren't allowed to be sold on ECF.