i recieved a unsolicited email from a company called action sports trade offering to supply any thing i need for sports… heres the lettter.
Hi there,
We are writing to introduce our company Action Sports Trade. Our website can be found at www.actionsportstrade.com and contains over 100 different categories of quality producers of OEM action and outdoor sports products which may be useful for your company’s sourcing needs for current product lines or any additional product lines you may wish to add in future.
Kind regards,
Action Sports Trade
i got curious… i had a look and found one of my fellow shapers boards from up the road on there… i didnt think it was his style… i rang hing and asked… he new nothing of it and was devastated as to what to do next… i also saw clark blanks for sale along with a southern australian blank. they also offered noise guards with T&C or DHD logos…i then wondered about the"surfshop" from taiwan that asked about my boards for thier store and wanted me to send hard copy of my board artfiles! now will we see my DVart appearing on imported boards this summer? freaky huh!
i thought he looked a bit suss i had this chinese looking guy trying to sell me boards that looked like this …i asked if could take a photo of one coz i knew a guy who would have liked the gunny looking one …i was going to ask you about these???
only joking …
yea that sort of stuff doesnt surprise me …
i was talking to guy a few days back …pretty much considered a pioneer of sandwich construction in sailboards …hes doing alot more surfboards these days … and rang to ask me about my pump set up …
he told me horror stories about how the asians tried to shaft him and steal his technology …
he was telling me about one time he was in a meeting over there and three seperate people came in and asked him detailed questions about his techniques he said it was like interogation …
they want the know how , they want the technology , but there not prepared to pay for it …
i could tell you some other really wrong stuff thats been done by asian production houses … as far as using names and brands they didnt have permission to …
i cant really tell the story tho , coz its kind of incriminating …
but so far ive seen some really unethical business being carried on from some of the new asian board production factories…also by there western representitives …
who has any authority to be able to stop them from doing stuff like that???
what is your friend going to do ???
anyone know anything about how to handle a situation like that ???
can you gaze deeply into the xtal ball and see the new china making slowly improving copies of every thing western our culture has been ddangling in front of their noses for a centuty or more…
when it was toothpaste like gleame toothpaste it was funny or tyde soap o peet milk
now get ready it is to be Hoby ,and Cuperfish,and Valzee and Robert Yaiter,and last but never forget that the highest promoted will be the first targeted…RIIF sandals will display the finest in asian foot wear in their adds …well just go straight to the front and back covers of the magazines each and every one of the brands represented are being targeted as we write and read … and the guys that are preemptively selling out aren’t immune the old story is they make your stuff all day and they make the 1/2 price poorly constructed and looks like stuff all night…the real revolution is going on directly under your feet as the world we worked so hard to understand for our first 20 years spins on it’s way into our old age with a mind of it’s own laughing all the way…I can’t wait for the Young Surfboards you know that venerable old chinese family and their World Famous Record Holding patriarch…Midgit Young…ambrose…all the stars no mike is sacred
the target market that has been feeding the now large corperate entities like Quick and rip and vol ,are nothing... the real world target market will dwarf the number of units of clothing magnitude and they will surely never see water let alone surf... the lat laugh is yet to come the lawyers that are rubbing their hands together are peparing for world wide litigation protecting the interests of their new clients that have such deeeep pockets the quicksilver profile is very apetizing to the large feeders oh action sports, will the Jimmy Z sell-out to the big bidder stratagy be excercised by the most wily of the oppertunists? time oh time what will you teach us.....think about 50 million surf trunks all in a row with the same stripes that michael peterson is wearing in that archival photo...and they have 45 million of them already made for spring distribution in the southern hemisphere
Does this mean I should toss out my Chicago Brand $25 sander from Harbor Freight Tools…uh made it China?
(Seriously, I should have known better. Sometimes I look at it and wonder whether it was made by prison labor, child labor or just conficatory wage labor. All at the expense of some honest worker somewhere else. Geez, I sound like a bleeding heart liberal, which I am not.)
andi, this board is from australia not bali. i make them all here on the gold coast. i have made approx 100 in bali over the last few years but havent since the bali bomb. i still ship and sell a lot to bali. if you look up the website i quoted at the start of this thread you will see there is many surfboard factorys in china and tiawan. my thread was in disgust of the nockoff of my friends brand…