Topic: Surprises in TK Maxx today - Chinese Caithness & Scavo

[glassobsessed]

Branded as Caithness but with a made in China label. 

The Scavo vase was quite nice, not the best photos though.

John

[ahremck]

The Caithness making company I found on Alibaba.com a few nights ago.  I was astounded.

Ross

[chopin-liszt]

 
I've found true Caithness weights in TKMaxx before.
It's more a matter of; buyer - have panic attacks, become stultified by the array of wrong stuff and triple check everything, rather than just "beware".
Just like a supermarket!

[flying free]

That Chinese base is good. 
I bought one about 10 years ago in pale blue with white (might have bought two and used them for flowers for something iirc) and the base finish was shocking.
m

[Anne]

Maybe the improvement is as a result of the migration of master glassmakers from eastern Europe, that's been referred to before in posts.

[misha]

Improvement in production or not, marketed as a brand that it is not is SHAMELESS.

Surely there are trading Standards there to remedy this sort of thing, or is the little [easy remove] sticker enough to get past the regulations.

[Anne]

Ahhh it's not fraudulent though. I understand that Caithness is a brand name now not a production company, so they buy in from various places and sell under their own name. It's not uncommon for many big names to outsource production to China or eastern Europe.

[misha]

Ahhh it's not fraudulent though. I understand that Caithness is a brand name now not a production company, so they buy in from various places and sell under their own name. It's not uncommon for many big names to outsource production to China or eastern Europe.

Yes, understood. 

And I understand the consequences of doing so.  A flood of cheap look-alikes appearing on-line and in discount shops. 
Outsourced production all too often ends up as loss of consumer confidence in the brand name due to sub-standard merchandise in the marketplace.

e.g. As much as I loved my 1st pair of Koss porta-pro headphones with their unconditional, no questions asked, fixed even if dog chewed, take it back to retailer or mail in service, fixed for free lifetime warranty.... when lost by theft and replaced with an online purchase that looked OK, turned out to be poor quality transducers installed in very genuine looking body frame.  Koss outsourced production to China from USA and lost control.  All components probably came from same factory and plastic mould sets, but the key components [speaker/transducers] were sub-standard junk. Heck, even with my industrial/loud venue hearing damage I can sure tell junk at any volume.  No Koss warranty in replacements of this cheap copy stuff, imposable to tell difference buying on-line [had to due to living in regional redneck wonderland Western Australia]

Anyhow, not just audio equipment made as cheap branded cruddy quality knock-offs.
Not just the likes of a formerly well regarded Co. like Koss loosing all consumer confidence very quickly. 

Heard the saying?......
A good reputation is hard earned over a long time, BUT easily lost in an instant.

Thats,  SO IT GOES.

[chopin-liszt]

Whether something is fraudulent or not depends entirely on what completely arbitrary laws are made.
Laws can be changed with the stroke of a pen.

As far as I'm concerned, this is fraudulant and dishonest and it is completely morally repugnant.
And so are any arbitrary laws which permit it.

Drano. 

[KevinH]

Maybe thoughts about the morality of "branded products" in the sense discussed in this thread, could be a reasonable discussion in the Cafe?

But here's another thought ...

What if a company had no specific brand of its own within a certain product line but simply outsourced a couple of lines and sold them as their own; would that be immoral? Examples of this were two types of millefiori paperweight sold by Edinburgh Crystal; the first were made in Murano and the second were made by Caithness Glass.