A software developer made a Chrome and Firefox extension called Knockoff that automatically hides, grays out, or filters products from sketchy brands on Amazon, which highlights just how many shady brands are on the platform and how commonly they show up on searches for basic items.
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1 hourMost “name brands” have long been acquired by large umbrella corporations, and shortly after doing so, the “brand recognition” is often leveraged to market white label products; which is increasingly the only differentiator between it and off-brand products. That, and the price-difference: simply paying more for a meaningless “name brand”, on an equally inexcusably poor quality product; besides a slightly less shitty customer experience, hopefully.
I really think it’s poor design to purely filter on appearance of brands, rather than actual brand reputation. Yes, it might serve as an overgeneralized indicator for questionable reputation, but marketable brands shouldn’t be treated as reputable either.
It nicely dims out items with sketchy or no brands but you can still select them if you want.
- 4 hours
The manufacturing environment in China is different. A lot of products are made from an existing design, then anyone who wants to sell those buds then from the factory.
The weird “brand names” are basically drop shippers. People buy Thing, send them to Amazon’s warehouses, pop a storefront.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Yes, this is called “white labeling”. Brazil does it for a ton of Chinese products. The three big computer part retailers in Brazil get parts from other brands and put their own label on it and sell them as their own.
- 2 hours
The weird brand names are because Amazon requires the products you sell to have a “brand” in order to provide them plausible deniability that your product is not generic OEM stuff from China. So the sellers of generic Chinese OEM stuff have adapted by making up nonsensical brands and registering the letter jumble they come up with as a trademark. Now Amazon can claim everything on their site is a “brand name” product, see? It’s all totally above board.
- Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.caEnglish2 hours
Okay? So? Brand names exist to have a reputation. A random string of characters isn’t trying to develop and trade on a positive reputation and so is automatically suspect.
- Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
They do own the IP though and I dont know how we feel about physical product IP rights? Those are kinda useful.
- 3 hours
That’s not how it works. Factory makes Thing. Anyone who wants to resell Thing buys it from the factory and labels it BRAND Thing.
Lots of factories design things. This isn’t the 80s. The factories are often a complete firm with design, R&D teams, etc. It’s what ODMs are and they exist for all things, simple and cheap to complex and expensive.
- Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
Yes but aren’t people entitled to revenue of the brand they build? And I dont mean Nike here but something like a band selling their t shirts etc. The copying in chinese manufacturing is going too far to the point where it’s a net negative on our society and I say this as someone who’s generally anti copyright.
Making new tech innovation is such a gamble these days - you only have a few months to make back money you spent on your initial design because manufacturers just overpower you eventually unless you make it not worth it for them through explicit brand protection strategies. It’s such a waste of everyone’s resources and stiffles human effort overall.
That being said i think the most realistic answer here is in house manufacturing which is becoming more and more acessible but still a long road to go, especially in more complex niches like electronics. You either ship a competitively priced product and hope you make your effort back in a few months or build in house for 3x the market price and even then get only a bit more than those few months. It’s not a healthy, just environment no matter how you look at it.
- sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish3 hours
It could be designed by company A and made in Factory A, then designers at factory A come up with a way to cut costs and make a worse design that is similar to company A’s design but slightly worse and much cheaper, then the factory makes that, and drop shippers sell it.
- atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish2 hours
A lot of times we’re talking about something that was actually designed in the 80s or 90s, maybe not even by a company that exists anymore or in the same country where it’s currently being produced.
- Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
No I dont think that’s true statistically speaking. My cousin works in brand protection and IP theft of contemporary creators is by far the majority. I’m generally a free software and anti copyright but manufacturing theft is really pushing me in favor of copyright here. Most of it is so incredibly blatant and bad faith - it’s not a good thing unless it’s actually a practical device like medicine or something.
- 2 hours
The Chinese design-manufacturing-retail pipeline isn’t like what it is in the West. There aren’t nearly as many “bespoke” products made for a single company.
- PlasticExistence@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
The only problem is that “knock off” brands are the only ones making products in at least some instances that used to be filled by the “brand names”.
This is the result of globalizing manufacturing. Eventually the brands that could pay for advertising stopped making things, and the void was filled by these “knock offs” (I don’t care for that term as it was applied in this article. These aren’t fake designer hand bags, they’re just products that don’t have a recognized brand name).
But don’t forget you can finance it! And who doesn’t want to brag with their “Expensive Brand” labeled something, that mostly doesn’t have any inherent benefits or quality over the cheaper Chinese OEM stuff.
- Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.caEnglish4 hours
This is stupid. There are lots of great products from sellers without an established “brand”
- stealth_cookies@lemmy.caEnglish37 minutes
Unless you know what you look for, choosing the white label products from Amazon can be risky. For someone like me with extensove experience working with China I can usually tell what is crap and what is good enough, but the average person might take postings at face value or choose a category of product that is high risk of causing harm (e.g. I won’t buy any no name plastic or rubber items that come in contact with food)
it just dims the listing by default, you can also allow the particular brand for you.
- sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish3 hours
That is true, but sometimes you want the established brand because of the warranty.
- [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish4 hours
I would live if the extension just blocked Amazon and directed you to actual company websites when you go to add a product to cart.
- GalacticRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
That would be great, except it seems that most companies are actively discouraging you from using their website, as it’s easier for them to list through Amazon. Recent experience was the product on the website was higher prices, slower shipping and a restocking fee if you need to return. Amazon? Next day, ‘free shipping’ and easy returns.
Not sure unless the place exists locally and you can go in store and actually buy something (that’s becoming rare as well), that there is a better way except to not buy anything in general.
- FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
I think there are browser extensions and add-ons out there that plug in alternative storefronts you can buy from when looking up an item on Amazon, but you’d have to dig them up. I don’t recall any of the names, I just know I’ve read about them.
- FullPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
I’ve ordered products from some of the brands specifically mentioned, and the quality to price is often great.
Would I buy anything with a battery or an internet connection from them? Probably not. But are many things fine, and likely produced in the same sweat shops as household name brands.
It seems like a stretch to automatically hide every temu-esk brand… The brands themselves don’t even attempt to hide what they are.
The next level is getting it straight from AliExpress, skipping the 25% Bezos Yacht tax.
That sounds useful and is there an extension that hides duplicate results?
Amazon search is shit at best, need also an extension to improve search, if there is anything that can fix that flaming pile of garbage.
amazon’s web site as a whole has always been shitty, going all the way back to when they just sold books.
