'Knockoff' Browser Extension Hides Sketchy Brands on Amazon

The weird brand names are because Amazon requires the products you sell to have a "brand" in order to provide them plausible deniability that your product is not generic OEM stuff from China. So the sellers of generic Chinese OEM stuff have adapted by making up nonsensical brands and registering the letter jumble they come up with as a trademark. Now Amazon can claim everything on their site is a "brand name" product, see? It's all totally above board.

It could be designed by company A and made in Factory A, then designers at factory A come up with a way to cut costs and make a worse design that is similar to company A's design but slightly worse and much cheaper, then the factory makes that, and drop shippers sell it.

That is true, but sometimes you want the established brand because of the warranty.

It nicely dims out items with sketchy or no brands but you can still select them if you want.

A lot of times we’re talking about something that was actually designed in the 80s or 90s, maybe not even by a company that exists anymore or in the same country where it’s currently being produced.

That would be great, except it seems that most companies are actively discouraging you from using their website, as it's easier for them to list through Amazon. Recent experience was the product on the website was higher prices, slower shipping and a restocking fee if you need to return. Amazon? Next day, 'free shipping' and easy returns.

Not sure unless the place exists locally and you can go in store and actually buy something (that's becoming rare as well), that there is a better way except to not buy anything in general.

No I dont think that's true statistically speaking. My cousin works in brand protection and IP theft of contemporary creators is by far the majority. I'm generally a free software and anti copyright but manufacturing theft is really pushing me in favor of copyright here. Most of it is so incredibly blatant and bad faith - it's not a good thing unless it's actually a practical device like medicine or something.

Lots of factories design things. This isn't the 80s. The factories are often a complete firm with design, R&D teams, etc. It's what ODMs are and they exist for all things, simple and cheap to complex and expensive.

The next level is getting it straight from AliExpress, skipping the 25% Bezos Yacht tax.

Okay? So? Brand names exist to have a reputation. A random string of characters isn't trying to develop and trade on a positive reputation and so is automatically suspect.

The Chinese design-manufacturing-retail pipeline isn't like what it is in the West. There aren't nearly as many "bespoke" products made for a single company.

Yes but aren't people entitled to revenue of the brand they build? And I dont mean Nike here but something like a band selling their t shirts etc. The copying in chinese manufacturing is going too far to the point where it's a net negative on our society and I say this as someone who's generally anti copyright.

Making new tech innovation is such a gamble these days - you only have a few months to make back money you spent on your initial design because manufacturers just overpower you eventually unless you make it not worth it for them through explicit brand protection strategies. It's such a waste of everyone's resources and stiffles human effort overall.

That being said i think the most realistic answer here is in house manufacturing which is becoming more and more acessible but still a long road to go, especially in more complex niches like electronics. You either ship a competitively priced product and hope you make your effort back in a few months or build in house for 3x the market price and even then get only a bit more than those few months. It's not a healthy, just environment no matter how you look at it.

But don't forget you can finance it! And who doesn't want to brag with their "Expensive Brand" labeled something, that mostly doesn't have any inherent benefits or quality over the cheaper Chinese OEM stuff.

Most "name brands" have long been acquired by large umbrella corporations, and shortly after doing so, the "brand recognition" is often leveraged to market white label products; which is increasingly the only differentiator between it and off-brand products. That, and the price-difference: simply paying more for a meaningless "name brand", on an equally inexcusably poor quality product; besides a slightly less shitty customer experience, hopefully.

I really think it's poor design to purely filter on appearance of brands, rather than actual brand reputation. Yes, it might serve as an overgeneralized indicator for questionable reputation, but marketable brands shouldn't be treated as reputable either.

it just dims the listing by default, you can also allow the particular brand for you.