Folks Of Interest Corporate Thieves....

Watch Jesse James video about a major company that bought one of his motorcycle fenders then sent it to China to have copies made for them to sell . Sadly big corporate conglomerates take advantage of everyone

 

Many do not know Chinese nationals are required to spy for the mainland. Not just the Chinese as Jeff shows people copying and selling art work I’m guessing those art hacks are good ole American citizens. Very few people care about anything other than cost. Nothing wrong with buying cheap stuff but be aware of outright copy infringements. You can buy an Elderbrock air gap copy for about half the price but should you? Yes big American companies offshored stuff to increase their profits some got hurt but most continue to thrive. The CEOs continue to increase their salaries almost exponentially. There done ranting! Buy local or from a small company if you can! Thanks
Dan

 

Those "Rat Fink" groups on FB are insane.

 

We can simply blame ourselves , if there wasn't a profitable market for cheap , knockoff parts , they would not be produced . If everyone was not so greedy , none of this whole clusterf#$k would be taking place . It's part of the human condition .

 

I have read the article and watched the videos personally I waiting to hear all sides before making a judgement.

I am not saying there isn't corporate thievery a foot, but by the same time anyone can get on Social Media today and claim anything they want.

I am reminded of the Edelbrock vs Smokey Yunick with the Smokey Ram.

Smokey's side of the story was Edelbrock bought the rights to the intake (to sell as a intake/carburetor combo) then put a paper in the box with his shop phone number for tech.

The full story was more complex.

Edelbrock had bought the rights to the Smokey Ram, but with the understanding it fully developed package ready to run with slight tuning.

However Smokey being Smokey thought all the tuning should be done by the buyer, and Edelbrock ended up fielding tech questions left and right.

Vic Jr. and Smokey went round and round finally Edelbrock being totally frustrated and exacerbated started putting Smokey's phone number in the boxes with the intakes.

 

Would be real nice, if someone could get Jason Kencevski
( CEO of Speedmaster) to talk on the record, and try
and explain away, this situation.
For some reason, they disabled the comments on their FB page.
And Youtube.

 

Did Edelbrock sell something without testing it first ?

 

This was the late 1960s 1970s there wasn't the testing there is today.

Not the mention we are we talking about Smokey Yunick! A many who at this point was all ready a legendary mechanic, machinist, fabricator, racecar builder!

 

A company I worked for had all the data stolen without any connection to China. Then they reached out and said that they had it, and the Co. could work with them if desired.

 

It’s not only in the manufacturing of parts and products. The Chinese are stealing seed and grains from test plots used in developing new varieties for food production. Also ag chemicals being developed. Why spend years developing a crop when it can be stolen.

 

In some cases, that's manufacturer-driven. I used to work in sporting goods, and MinnKota had a minimum sale price written into the agreements. I presume to help ensure quality/reputation

 

Rule of business #1-You must make a profit to survive. All of our onshore manufacturing has been put into this position by our very own government. Increasing taxes, crippling regulations have forced companies to look elsewhere to continue to produce a product yet still maintain a certain profit level. Decreased cost to manufacture, means an increase in profit or the ability to maintain a profit. Like gamblers at a roulette wheel, they had to pick their global partner to make their product where taxes and regulation is slack or non existent. Employee wages have to be considered also, spending less on offshore wages increases domestic profits as well. The sad fact is you can never pay domestic wages high enough in most pro profit enterprises and still sell your product at a reasonable cost. $25 hamburger anyone? Recently a news item, massive increases in minimum wages create unsellable products.
It's not one side or the other that has caused this, it's a multitude of factors coming together at just the right time.
Inflatation and the devaluing of the dollar have been around as long as their have been dollars. We just have to watch our budgets and support the ones doing things we like.

 

The enemy is an ever increasing greed of money…

 

I agree to a point. I worked for a major Dow 30 company. In the last 10 years or so I watched the CEOs salary skyrocket as the workers wages stagnated along with loss of pensions, and higher cost for benefits they shipped a lot of production to China, then complained that many products were being counterfeited duh and at the same time insinuated that employees were selling trade secrets. Our best defense is to buy from reputable companies, and try to avoid the knock off stuff. A lot of major players are importing stuff from China, etc. I just bought a Warn winch, paid premium $$s for Yep made in China. I could’ve bought a HF which is basically the same for a few hundred less.
Dan

 

One company I worked at, used to bring in bus loads of Asian "tourists",
for a company tour. The greedy President wanted to get into the Asian market.
Of course, every one of these visitors, had a camera. And they must have
bought one, because a couple years later, China was selling a bad copy,
including all the mistakes in the original. Surprise !!!
Same company, years later, different idiot President. They were getting some
parts made in China, because it was "cheaper". But for some reason, the
Chinese couldn't make them to the print, so the parts had to be reworked
before they could be assembled. The cost of the necessary rework ate up
all the supposed savings, and more. But the President, with his Executive MBA,
couldn't understand how they were not actually saving money. No idea where
he purchased his Executive MBA.

 

Everybody had problems with wet flow, on the Smokey Ram.
Chevy did something sort of similar, on the Corvette, using a
pair of throttle body injectors. Didn't last very long.

 

Stand on quite a few NYC street corners for a bit. You can buy a fake of almost any trendy item. Get down by Canal Street and they stand shoulder-to-shoulder. But people buy them, pirated movies are hot items.

 

This goes for domestic espionage as well. Once the drawings/files are sent to a vendor, they are out of your control. Most places honor an NDA, others will sell their grandma out for 10¢. I know of one machine shop owner that would sift through a competitor's garbage to get information.

One of my college courses was about engineering drawings, one thing was what should be on them, what should not be on them. When we merged with a bigger company in 2004, I saw how they did cable drawings. They included signal names on the wire list. I piped up and mentioned that this is "giving away the store". With a little devious ingenuity, the product could be reverse-engineered. All I got back was crickets.

 

NDA... there is process someone got promoted on.

 

Worked for a company with a brand new compressor model/size. Compliant Scroll Someone broke into building at night, day before production, removed the fixtures from Okuma mills, and left. Most likely measured, photographed, . A window was removed where they entered. 6mo later German competitor came out with identical sized compressor. Their CEO was a former manager. Wink Wink.. Inside job.

 

Yep. We hired a former Carrier Transicold employee (actually several) when we set up shop in Utica, NY. I had just developed a whole series of transit/inter-city bus ac systems. He quit went back to Carrier and stole a bunch of drawings. We learned this when we saw almost exact replicas of our systems at the next trade show. He was pissed because the owners (Canadians) had promised to contribute to their 401K plans, but never did.
Funny thing is years after I left the company, they bought Carrier Transicold. Lol!

 

In the early eighties, speed equipment manufacturers were still producing annual catalogs. We were jammed in the fall getting ready for the SEMA show. A rep from a Hong Kong printer met with us and to make a log story short, our clients were happy to use this printer for catalogs. The savings were such that the client or one of our people could fly round trip from LA to Hong Kong, check the copy and get turn around time that US printers could only dream of. Finished catalogs were sent air freight. The number of speed equipment companies having products made in Mexico goes back to the 1960's. Offy used to offer polished manifolds, the EPA shut it down. Wheel companies were were having chrome plating done in Mexicali. Sandy Belond shipped welding jigs and component parts to Tiajuana and paid value added tax on the finished headers coming back into the states.
Finally Unkl Ian, the last time I was at Speedway, they had 6 CNC machines running 24/7 and a complete shock manufacturing plant in Indiana, a fiberglass fabricating facility and a big R&D facility.

One last comment: how many here went to your local speed shop and spent 30 minutes getting the dope on an Edlebrock manifold and then bought it from a catalog house to save $25?

 

Many years ago when I was an avid ebay seller I had a Snap On plastic case for some tool that came out of a storage unit I brought at auction. Never found the tool and the box looked like new condition so I sold it on Ebay. The buyer was from china and sent me a thank you letter for selling it to him, then he goes on about how he was going to use my case as a template to start making these cases and if i wanted to help him resell them. That was when I took my listings from international and sell to the USA only. I felt guilty about it for a while that I got myself involved in making counterfeits. How was I to know what it was going to be used for? I sold a plastic gun case that was perfect shape right before that and that went overseas too, made me wonder?

 

What local speed shop...?

 

A lot of jobbing shops, used to cut the title block off of
part drawings, before they made it out on the shop floor.
My boss at the time, did not. One day he gets a phone call
from a customer. "Who is this John Nielson guy ? And why
is he calling us, saying he can do that job cheaper than you can ?"
John was a local hustler and con artist, pretending to be a shop owner.
Also a drinking buddy of my boss.

 

I know this is wandering off-track a bit, but I still feel it needs a bit of clarification.

The first quote seems to imply that Summit and Jegs at one time had a working co-operation that has since been severed. I doubt that is really the case, especially in the context of the rest of this thread. It's more likely to mean that Summit and Jegs, individually, have severed their ties with Speedmaster and not with each other.

The second quote indicates that I may not be the only one seeing some potential confusion and misinterpretation here. Unless this reply was being made sarcastically.

Combining the above information only further proves why trying to separate fact from fiction on the internet is often a fool's errand.

 

Are they still selling the design they stole from Vern Tardell ?
Do their shitty Chinese carbs still come in a box with the exact
same graphics as the Strombergs from England ?

 

I wasn’t being sarcastic, I actually thought I missed some allegiance between them
But your reply makes sense.