Counterfeit Frames

[tim-b]

Hi
I thought that this made interesting reading from Wilier
Is there an end to the things that can and will be copied?
Regards
tim-b

[easyroller]

It's pretty mind blowing to see the number of fake carbon frames available all too easily online. Just see:

http://www.aliexpress.com/category/122203/bicycle-frame.html?site=glo&shipCountry=uk&pvId=19524-8244,10-8248,14-193&isrefine=y

Pretty much any major brand's design you could think of...

[Brian73]

One of the young club riders up here sold his perfectly good Ribble Pro Carbon and bought an S-Works copy, the frame cracked in under a year.

I have a Planet-X frame, it's cheap, but the shop is just a few miles away not 8000 miles away in China.

[fastpedaller]

I hope you don't all think mine is one of these - after all I've given a clue.....

[Brian73]

Your's is more reliable !

[mercalia]

Any counterfeit Dawes Sardars or 1-Down?

[CREPELLO]

Any counterfeit Dawes Sardars or 1-Down?

Beyond this forum, I don't think they're popular enough for the crim's to bother copying.

[Shootist]

Is there an end to the things that can and will be copied?
Regards
tim-b

After spending 10 years with Trading Standards where I specialised in counterfeiting offences I can assure readers that just about anything that sells is counterfeited and sold here.

Examples:

Cigarette papers
Cigarettes
Bic disposable razors
Car brake pads
Aircraft spares
Condoms
Coca Cola
Vodka
Whisky
Dandruff shampoo
Viagra
Hair straighteners

Add to this list almost any damned thing you can think of. Look on eBay for any branded item you are interested in. Anything originating in China is a racing certainty to be counterfeit.

[edocaster]

So... basically this is Wilier's own test on what they admit to be a cheap fake?

How many genuine and fake frames do you think they tested, before they got those figures?

And I'm slightly worried that their definition of a 'dangerous frame' seems to be within at least 75% the strength of a genuine frame.

[sreten]

Hi,

Arranging tests that your frame just survives and therefore breaks
weaker frames doesn't tell you anything much. You don't expect
two carbon frames of the same weight but one about half the
price to be the same, and TBH the numbers don't look too bad.
Quality control is the main worry, not the raw numbers.

Whilst they are misbranded, there is no intent to deceive, your
clearly buying an inferior replica, much cheaper, from China.

Representing them as the real thing makes them counterfeit.

rgds, sreten.

[thirdcrank]

I fancy there are two sides to this, especially across retail more generally, rather than specific things like bike frames. How often are people paying a substantial premium to get a posh label, when the underlying quality doesn't justify the high price? How often are genuine designer label goods made in the Far East under similar conditions to the counterfeits? I believe that a lot more stuff is manufactured in the Far East than people sometimes appreciate and this is often under the camouflage of genuine designer labels. I also believe that this is particularly the case when things are apparently imported from somewhere like the US. One point is that a lot of manufacturing costs are cheaper in the Far East and those cheaper costs don't necessarily imply lower quality. I was reading a carefully worded internet ad recently which was saying in a roundabout way that the goods were German (or possibly Danish) but manufactured elsewhere to save costs. It seems that China isn't too concerned to recognise patents and the research and development costs they are meant to recover. The picture is far from clear.

[beardy]

Rather like this British bike.

http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/FRHOMIS/ho ... tral-frame

This is totally legal and not a counterfeit because they own the rights to the name Holdsworth.

It is also probably a bike well made to good standards but I assume it is only the name Holdsworth that they took, not the Holdsworth manufacturing base, experience or quality control.
We can only guess where it is made.

Now if you just look at the bike itself it looks like a nice bit of kit as I assume some of the counterfeits do!

[thirdcrank]

I'd offer the example of a replica soccer strip of a top-ranking Premier League team. The price will be megabucks and way above the intrinsic value of the togs. The justification, such as it is, for the higher price is that the success of the team has made people prepared to pay more to be associated with it. Now, a replica of the replica AKA a counterfeit may be in every way identical to the real thing, or undistinguishable without a laboratory analysis. It's not quite so easy to be adamant about who is doing the ripping off.

[fossala]

I feel frame "designers" (because they aren't manufactures anymore are they ) spread FUD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_unce ... _and_doubt. If they can get you to believe that unless you are going to buy their product anything else is going to imploded when you attach pedals they don't even need to put effort into making their product better that the competition.

[Bicycler]

Any counterfeit Dawes Sardars or 1-Down?

Beyond this forum, I don't think they're popular enough for the crim's to bother copying.

Yeah, sadly Dawes seemed to have enough trouble shifting the real ones.