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The problem is (and I saw this happen with Stainless Works), the second one thing you sell is made overseas, people question if everything else is also and use it to question the brand.
Also, if you are doing business the right way, you never get as cheap the ebay knock offs. Take Stainless Power. They are only really $300 or so less than what you could get American made Stainless Works for. Not the $600-$700 less the ebay copies are. Most of the ebay stuff is coming out of China, and the quality is simply not something Kooks would put their name on. If you have a clue what you are looking at, the quality is not there. This means that you go with a higher wage country like Taiwan where the header costs more because people have a bit better standard of living.
In terms of quality, you always lose something when you off shore. Other countries do not have the same standards as America. That means your header gets made with stainless of a quality that would never be acceptable in the US. Ever wonder why the overseas stuff is so thick? It is because the chinese stainless tears in the bender if you try and use the thinner gauge stainless US manufacturers nornally use. You also get products made by people who work too many hours, and have no clue what they are making. Craftsmanship goes way down. Will you get an acceptable product..maybe, but it's never the same as made in the USA.
Additionally, the business models are very different. Running a real business like Kooks does, has vastly more expense than dumping runs of knock off headers on ebay so cheap there is little expectation of real support.. A business like Kooks still would have US based support along with the expense of R&D and the equipment needed to do it. The CMM arm they use to digitally design headers alone costs tens of thousands. They also have to still pay their American workers for the premium product a living wage. There is a dealer network who stocks, promotes and installs their product..they obviously want to make money. Advertising and sponsorship requests. No one likes all this stuff when it is in the cost of the product, but they like it when they are on the recieving end of the benefits from it. All of this cost gets baked into every header made.
Another issue is that Kooks just recently expanded, and built a new 40K sq/ft facility in North Carolina. They have a lot of money in that plant, and I suspect they would rather use it to make quality products than undercut theselves, and hurt employee moral by offshoring production.
Just thought I would throw a few things out. While I know Stainlessworks is doing it, I don't feel Kooks is at that point yet.
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