An Inconvenient Truth… About JDM - aka "The Death of Innovation"
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Joined: Dec 2003
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From: New York City
well said
I completely agree with a lot of the points the OP makes and it really does suck for a company like voltex to make such a high quality hood.
However, the only thing that i'd like to point out is that it is no way a moral obligation of the consumer to uphold any sense of moral code in their purchases.
Take this hood for example. Some guy in Virginia sees it and loves it, but realizes that he can't shell out the 1300 dollars for it even if it is worth every penny.
He then sees the seibon hood, much ****tier in weaver with a ****ty *** clearcoat to boot. However, its only 500 bucks from a local vendor. Is it wrong for the guy to buy a part he wants? Its not part of his duty to ensure that voltex sees the financial return that he deserves. I understand that this is one lone scenario, but it is a collage of these separate scenarios that fuel the knockoff market.
Now lets look at the whole rexpeed thing where the quality is actually up to par with the original jdm parts. Yes it sux that alot of there stuff are blatant copies of other items. However, the quality is second to none. Now the lone customer is faced with either paying 200 for a rexpeed part and 450 for the "authentic" part that is of the same quality. Again its not wrong to choose the cheaper option. As a customer and an individual, our priority goes something like this. Supporting those we love, supporting ourselves, using our spare money to finance a hobby... etc etc. And trust me when I say that spending an extra 250 so that a highly prestigious company gets the proper return for r&d is the least of our worries.
Furthermore, it also has to be stated that although the evo is a performance car, it is not a pure RACE car. 90 percent of us use it as a dd rather than a weekend race car. That being said, most of the guys on this forum couldn't care less if voltex stops innovating with wind tunneled parts. Because most of us buy a hood for looks. (don't argue with me on this, if it was any other way, then why do so many evo owners replace the light *** aluminum hood for the just as heavy ****ty made seibon ones). Therefore we don't care about the half second the hood might shave off our trip to ralphs.
I'm just giving you my point of view from a customers perspective. I completely agree with you on how much it sucks for certain companies. However, thats an issue that should be taken care of internally or legally. Customers don't have any said moral obligation to ensure that companies get proper returns. Only thing that governs our purchases in a free market is supply and demand.
However, the only thing that i'd like to point out is that it is no way a moral obligation of the consumer to uphold any sense of moral code in their purchases.
Take this hood for example. Some guy in Virginia sees it and loves it, but realizes that he can't shell out the 1300 dollars for it even if it is worth every penny.
He then sees the seibon hood, much ****tier in weaver with a ****ty *** clearcoat to boot. However, its only 500 bucks from a local vendor. Is it wrong for the guy to buy a part he wants? Its not part of his duty to ensure that voltex sees the financial return that he deserves. I understand that this is one lone scenario, but it is a collage of these separate scenarios that fuel the knockoff market.
Now lets look at the whole rexpeed thing where the quality is actually up to par with the original jdm parts. Yes it sux that alot of there stuff are blatant copies of other items. However, the quality is second to none. Now the lone customer is faced with either paying 200 for a rexpeed part and 450 for the "authentic" part that is of the same quality. Again its not wrong to choose the cheaper option. As a customer and an individual, our priority goes something like this. Supporting those we love, supporting ourselves, using our spare money to finance a hobby... etc etc. And trust me when I say that spending an extra 250 so that a highly prestigious company gets the proper return for r&d is the least of our worries.
Furthermore, it also has to be stated that although the evo is a performance car, it is not a pure RACE car. 90 percent of us use it as a dd rather than a weekend race car. That being said, most of the guys on this forum couldn't care less if voltex stops innovating with wind tunneled parts. Because most of us buy a hood for looks. (don't argue with me on this, if it was any other way, then why do so many evo owners replace the light *** aluminum hood for the just as heavy ****ty made seibon ones). Therefore we don't care about the half second the hood might shave off our trip to ralphs.
I'm just giving you my point of view from a customers perspective. I completely agree with you on how much it sucks for certain companies. However, thats an issue that should be taken care of internally or legally. Customers don't have any said moral obligation to ensure that companies get proper returns. Only thing that governs our purchases in a free market is supply and demand.
thats fine and well, i know you arent going to get great things for crack head prices, BUT i cant recall if it was a vendor or it was just another member. anyways for someone to go and say rotas are crap i've had some on my car for god almost a year now with absolutely no problems. and in all reality only damn reason anyone of these members buy VOLKS is because the bling bling factor it has nothing to do with fuctionality. AND IN ALL REALITY I THINK THE ONLY REASON YOU VENDORS ARE COMPLAINING FOR THEM IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE A LARGE AMOUNT OF THESE PRODUCTS GETTING DUSTY IN YOUR WAREHOUSES AND THEY ARENT SELLING THATS WHY THESE COMPLAINTS ARE COMING OUT. too bad so sad. as i said they want us to buy their stuff instead of the usdm clones lower the prices thats it, everyone wants their moneys worth nowadays i mean unless your one of these big balling guys who have the money to **** away for a 1000 dollar hood then go for it but other then that i dont think too many are like that nowadays.
I have yet to see any dusty Volk or Advan boxes... I barely see Volk or Advan boxes because they don't sit around long enough to take a gander. You're right, the choice is up to the end consumer how the money is spent. It's just my personal stance to not take a gamble with an integral part of a vehicle like wheels, seats, harnesses, etc.maybe its the month(s) wait times, sometimes shady importers and dist., extreme shipping costs, etc.
I myself wont buy knock offs. I also wont buy something that is not in this country.
That is cheap insurance to myself after the times I have had to pick up the pieces as thieves have ran off with hundreds of my hard earned dollars.
While Voltex is someone I respect a huge amount, there are many "JDM" companies that are worse than American companies making knock offs IMO.
I wont say names, but do you know that almost half if not more of the JDM coilovers are made in the same factory? And no, its not that companies factory.
Some of these coilovers are the same yet when painted differently and adorned with that companies logo they command a healthy premium over the same item by another importer.
People still buy it because it is "blah blah"
We have come a ways but there is no finish line in sight.
I myself wont buy knock offs. I also wont buy something that is not in this country.
That is cheap insurance to myself after the times I have had to pick up the pieces as thieves have ran off with hundreds of my hard earned dollars.
While Voltex is someone I respect a huge amount, there are many "JDM" companies that are worse than American companies making knock offs IMO.
I wont say names, but do you know that almost half if not more of the JDM coilovers are made in the same factory? And no, its not that companies factory.
Some of these coilovers are the same yet when painted differently and adorned with that companies logo they command a healthy premium over the same item by another importer.
People still buy it because it is "blah blah"
We have come a ways but there is no finish line in sight.
jmartinez, you are neglecting importation fees, exchange rates, delivery time, and overlooking the fact that not every company has access to $200,000 worth of capital for just ONE product on their product line.
Again, a patent is worthless unless you have the money to spend on a legal team to enforce the patent. Even with this the time in court and the money spent will not be worth it for a company of this nature. In the technology world, yes, this is a viable method... not in the import industry unfortunately. Even with such a disclaimer on the part warning about copies, I doubt that the companies that are interested in replicating the part will heed it. If they do, the factories in Singapore and Taiwan certainly will disregard it.
Again, a patent is worthless unless you have the money to spend on a legal team to enforce the patent. Even with this the time in court and the money spent will not be worth it for a company of this nature. In the technology world, yes, this is a viable method... not in the import industry unfortunately. Even with such a disclaimer on the part warning about copies, I doubt that the companies that are interested in replicating the part will heed it. If they do, the factories in Singapore and Taiwan certainly will disregard it.
Well then stop crying about the topic then.
If they where to patent things and write up a disclaimer/ legal notice and a company in taiwan & singapore went ahead and made a copy the lawsuit that would follow would shut that plant down.
I work for title insurance company and the owners are all lawyers one of them deals with theses kind of cases every time he goes to court he shows the judge the legal notice and shows the judge the exceptions in the companys patent agreement dated from the day they been founded the case gets closed right then and there the people who made the copy ends up haveing to pay over huge amounts of money and in some cases the company keys and transfer deeds get sent to the owners of the company ( that patent the item) Its well worth it. People have to trust our legal system. It turned one $500,000 shop a year to a powerhouse shop of $300+ mil a year.
For those of you who suggest outsourcing mass produced batches to lower costs there are a few more things to keep in mind.
1. There is very little space to hold goods in Japan. What once were warehouses are now manufacturing facilities. Warehousing costs by the square foot are astronomical compared to what we're used to here in the US. Only the most succesful of tuning companies can afford to warehouse any inventory, and when they do its warehoused here in the US.
2. Many tuning companies already outsource a lot of the production of things like Aero pieces and exhausts. But what people seem to be missing is the cost to design a mold rather than making one by copying a pre-existing design. Think about it. Which is more time consuming and labor intensive, designing from scratch (from paper, to CAD, to test mold, to test fitting, to aero testing, make revisions in CAD, re-mold, re-test, and then finally finalize the production run), or copying all of the design work by stealing measurements or buying the orignal and making a mold off of it. There's a lot more to production than just the variable overhead for costs of goods sold.
3. Patents are a good thing when they can: a) be afforded and b) be enforced. Remember that these are Japanese tuning companies, not US ones. Their trademark laws are very different than ours and very few of these tuners can even speak english let alone go and crack open a 4,000 page international business law book. International legal consultation and challenging a US company on their own soil is one PRICEY order to be made for such small shop as many of these tuners are.
4. If you really think that mass production can offer better quality, then why do you all praise JDM as being so high quality and complain about US mass produced offerings. I think there may be some confusion of what is considered a mass produced quality US sourced product and Seibon, just to name one. For almost all JDM tuners, quality is the goal at the end of the day, not making exorbitant amounts of money off of an otherwise uneducated/mis-informed consumer audience
All of these factors are even more complicated by the facts that with rising costs to own a vehicle in Japan and an easily accessible global market, that international sales have become essential to their business. So lucky we are that our business has been so fondly embraced by these tuning companies that less than 10 years ago would have cut off one of their dealers for sending goods to the US. I consider our access to these companies a great privilege that could disappear if we don't pledge our allegiance to quality design and ethical business. You know, everyone would be a lot more successful and equally priced if Seibon could actually design their own stuff and compete for your business where it really should matter... in quality.
1. There is very little space to hold goods in Japan. What once were warehouses are now manufacturing facilities. Warehousing costs by the square foot are astronomical compared to what we're used to here in the US. Only the most succesful of tuning companies can afford to warehouse any inventory, and when they do its warehoused here in the US.
2. Many tuning companies already outsource a lot of the production of things like Aero pieces and exhausts. But what people seem to be missing is the cost to design a mold rather than making one by copying a pre-existing design. Think about it. Which is more time consuming and labor intensive, designing from scratch (from paper, to CAD, to test mold, to test fitting, to aero testing, make revisions in CAD, re-mold, re-test, and then finally finalize the production run), or copying all of the design work by stealing measurements or buying the orignal and making a mold off of it. There's a lot more to production than just the variable overhead for costs of goods sold.
3. Patents are a good thing when they can: a) be afforded and b) be enforced. Remember that these are Japanese tuning companies, not US ones. Their trademark laws are very different than ours and very few of these tuners can even speak english let alone go and crack open a 4,000 page international business law book. International legal consultation and challenging a US company on their own soil is one PRICEY order to be made for such small shop as many of these tuners are.
4. If you really think that mass production can offer better quality, then why do you all praise JDM as being so high quality and complain about US mass produced offerings. I think there may be some confusion of what is considered a mass produced quality US sourced product and Seibon, just to name one. For almost all JDM tuners, quality is the goal at the end of the day, not making exorbitant amounts of money off of an otherwise uneducated/mis-informed consumer audience
All of these factors are even more complicated by the facts that with rising costs to own a vehicle in Japan and an easily accessible global market, that international sales have become essential to their business. So lucky we are that our business has been so fondly embraced by these tuning companies that less than 10 years ago would have cut off one of their dealers for sending goods to the US. I consider our access to these companies a great privilege that could disappear if we don't pledge our allegiance to quality design and ethical business. You know, everyone would be a lot more successful and equally priced if Seibon could actually design their own stuff and compete for your business where it really should matter... in quality.
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www.bulletproofautomotive.com
The Real JDM - Interactive (blog)
Email: sales@bulletproofautomotive.com
Direct North American Dealers for Voltex, Mines, Varis, First Molding, HKS Kansai, Cusco, HKS, Advan, Volk, Ings+1, C-West, Work, and so much more...
Last edited by BPAuto; Jul 31, 2008 at 02:16 PM.
Is that even true? If so, that means the factory hood weighs a lot more than I thought, or the FRP hood weighs less than I've heard even their CF hood weighs.
I like how everybody is applauding Ben for that post. He's just parroting something I read in Sport Compact Magazine years ago about Chinese knockoffs. I RSS feed his blog too, because I'm a car junkie and sometimes (~30%) he has good content.
I don't see what the big surprise is. A company (Seibon) realized that there was a market for a product that they could produce and sell cheaper than a competitor. Sure, they seem to have 'stolen' the design and perhaps the quality is inferior (I can't say for certain as I have no experience with either item). This type of thing has been happening pretty much forever, so I'm having a hard time finding what the big deal is all of the sudden.
All the JDM fans can keep up the whining and all people who want cheap parts can do what they want to do.
If I had to speculate, I'd say that perhaps the Voltex decision to withdraw the part was more a case of a business decision to stop producing that part due to other concerns (high price of CF, low buyer interest) and they decided to get political and say that it was because of a knockoff. I have zero evidence to support this claim, but it seems more reasonable to me than thinking that some head honcho at Voltex decided to throw a hissy fit when he saw that Seibon was cribbing his stuff and decided to withdraw Voltex's contribution to the market.
Driveline, isn't Ben a member of this community? I'm sure he is since I've seen him post here. Why do you think he didn't post the information up himself if he wanted the discussion here?
I'm going to post virtually the same information on Ben's blog since I think that's where he wanted the core of the discussion to take place.
I like how everybody is applauding Ben for that post. He's just parroting something I read in Sport Compact Magazine years ago about Chinese knockoffs. I RSS feed his blog too, because I'm a car junkie and sometimes (~30%) he has good content.
I don't see what the big surprise is. A company (Seibon) realized that there was a market for a product that they could produce and sell cheaper than a competitor. Sure, they seem to have 'stolen' the design and perhaps the quality is inferior (I can't say for certain as I have no experience with either item). This type of thing has been happening pretty much forever, so I'm having a hard time finding what the big deal is all of the sudden.
All the JDM fans can keep up the whining and all people who want cheap parts can do what they want to do.
If I had to speculate, I'd say that perhaps the Voltex decision to withdraw the part was more a case of a business decision to stop producing that part due to other concerns (high price of CF, low buyer interest) and they decided to get political and say that it was because of a knockoff. I have zero evidence to support this claim, but it seems more reasonable to me than thinking that some head honcho at Voltex decided to throw a hissy fit when he saw that Seibon was cribbing his stuff and decided to withdraw Voltex's contribution to the market.
Driveline, isn't Ben a member of this community? I'm sure he is since I've seen him post here. Why do you think he didn't post the information up himself if he wanted the discussion here?
I'm going to post virtually the same information on Ben's blog since I think that's where he wanted the core of the discussion to take place.
@Ben
If it's so expensive to store and produce parts in Japan, they should consider alternatives. It's silly to expect people to prop up their businesses because they can't get aboard the globalization train and adopt the same kind of reasoning that is making companies like GM produce cars in Mexico, or Japan companies like Honda to produce cars in the US.
Are you saying that Voltex takes all the measurements for its molds from the car or from the stock hood. If it's the latter, they're just cribbing the manufacturer, just like you seem to be bashing Seibon for doing. If it's the former, then they're wasting money because there is a better, cheaper alternative.
Isn't the real differentiator between Seibon quality and Voltex quality the difference between the tolerance of their molds and the consistency of the parts. It seems that if Voltex fit and finish is as good as people are saying, then they must have a production process that allows them to claim higher standards than their competition. What happens if Seibon improves and matches Voltex in this aspect? When the only argument is that Seibon isn't as creative or dedicated to producing new, innovative designs using expensive wind tunnel testing? Voltex is basically being given advance warning that it needs to improve it's production side, something that a lot of businesses ignore. We've seen the Voltex response, which is to drop the part. Is it going to drop its entire catalog? Will all the other manufacturers do the same? That seems pretty silly.
If it's so expensive to store and produce parts in Japan, they should consider alternatives. It's silly to expect people to prop up their businesses because they can't get aboard the globalization train and adopt the same kind of reasoning that is making companies like GM produce cars in Mexico, or Japan companies like Honda to produce cars in the US.
Are you saying that Voltex takes all the measurements for its molds from the car or from the stock hood. If it's the latter, they're just cribbing the manufacturer, just like you seem to be bashing Seibon for doing. If it's the former, then they're wasting money because there is a better, cheaper alternative.
Isn't the real differentiator between Seibon quality and Voltex quality the difference between the tolerance of their molds and the consistency of the parts. It seems that if Voltex fit and finish is as good as people are saying, then they must have a production process that allows them to claim higher standards than their competition. What happens if Seibon improves and matches Voltex in this aspect? When the only argument is that Seibon isn't as creative or dedicated to producing new, innovative designs using expensive wind tunnel testing? Voltex is basically being given advance warning that it needs to improve it's production side, something that a lot of businesses ignore. We've seen the Voltex response, which is to drop the part. Is it going to drop its entire catalog? Will all the other manufacturers do the same? That seems pretty silly.
This is no different than peer to peer (p2p) file sharing programs on the internet and the music industry.
Those of you on here who are in agreeance but have downloaded .mp3's illegally are hypocrits. (if there are any - you know who you are!)
Those of you on here who are in agreeance but have downloaded .mp3's illegally are hypocrits. (if there are any - you know who you are!)
I have lived in Japan for a couple of years and I can definitely voucher for there high quality products. I myself will always buy authentic parts, JDM or not. Like they say, you get what you pay for.
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We got both the stock, and FRP Voltex hood here. We will show the weight differences shortly. For reference, it weighs 23.5lbs with the box, and packaging material when shipped.
Eric: that was an interesting read!
However, I'll throw in some wood to fuel the fire...Not all name brand JDM parts are "high quality". There are times when fitment isn't even close to 100% OEM spec. Also, there are other times where parts need to be tweaked/corrected prior to even painting.
I'm not talking about voltex, as I have no beef with them. But there are a handful of other JDM parts manufacturers that don't necessarily give you a 100% fitting part, as I've personally experienced. My friend who's runs a prof. body shop, who does show cars also tells me of some horror stories and such...
However, he did mention how craptastic seibon products can be lol!
However, I'll throw in some wood to fuel the fire...Not all name brand JDM parts are "high quality". There are times when fitment isn't even close to 100% OEM spec. Also, there are other times where parts need to be tweaked/corrected prior to even painting.
I'm not talking about voltex, as I have no beef with them. But there are a handful of other JDM parts manufacturers that don't necessarily give you a 100% fitting part, as I've personally experienced. My friend who's runs a prof. body shop, who does show cars also tells me of some horror stories and such...
However, he did mention how craptastic seibon products can be lol!