Counterfeit Oil Filters

[Stichill]

It's worth looking into in more depth. It's not axiomatic that counterfeits are inferior, either. A Chinese company once copied one of my company's products. I examined a sample, and noticed it that it was an exact copy in some respects, e.g. they even copied minor defects in a mold, but it had some differences that made it - frankly spoken - better than our product. It dawned on me that these differences were features of our chief competitor's product. So they had taken the best qualities of each and made an über product. Yet it had our company's name and part number (we are the leader in this segment). In their brochure, featuring many other counterfeits, there was a boast in Mandarin: "We only copy from the world's leading companies." Apparently, in China it's not a mark of shame but of business acumen and shrewdness to copy a competitor's product.

The real killer though: it was selling for literally 15% the price of our product.