Fake Clubs

I posted a joke spam mail as Wong Way advertising clubs on this thread -> http://www.golfshake.com/forums/view/3450/Items_for_sale.html ; I was logged in as me and it was obvously a joke but when Dave Ley pointed out my link didn't work, I decided to type into Google "fake golf clubs" to see if I could find a website that was naming and shaming companies selling fakes.  What I found was much worse and amazed me. 

I found a site called Tradekey who were listing Chinese company websites openly advertising "Top quality, mirror quality replica of designer Golf clubs".  I find it unbelieveable that companies can be so open about this and a simple Google search can find them.  They even offer to sell in batches of 10 so people can sell on! 

How have these people got the nerve to be so brazen and why haven't they been shut down?

You aren't looking at the big picture here though Chris.  If, just for an example say Titleist, are looking to manufacture a new range of clubs they go to one of the three Chinese manufacturers that manufacture the items.  So they give them a design and a wad of cash for the tooling and order 10,000 sets.  When they are made they are shipped in pieces to Titleist (Mexico) for assembly and sold to the general public.  So for an outlay of say £4.00 a club they make £30.  The Chinese then keep the production run going (with Titleists' blessing in exchange for a discount on the next run) and sell some of the surplus to Wan Kin Golf Clubs Ltd who then build 'fake' clubs for dodgy websites - and often not as badly built as you may think. The rest are sold to club builders, unbadged, for people like me to buy.

The ultimate result is that Titleist get larger profit margins for increased production runs, they get increased free advertising from people using 'their' equipment, the dodgy sites make money as do the Chinese manufacturers.  Who pays?  All us golfers who buy the stuff.

Fakes only become a problem on the difficult to make kit - mostly putters - that aren't so easy to make in vast quantities and usually made by small jobbing shops in the States or by specialist japanese manufacturers.  

I also suspect that these clubs will be just as good as those they are imitating. Golf clubs are made by an automatic process and can be turned out very cheaply, unlike the days of handcrafted woods from persimmon blocks. The real art of a clubmaker.

A little off topic I am sorry but:-

John, you must remember the Stylo "Rembrants" Golf Shoe.

Stylo sold the 'Reject' shoes to local Pro's in the Leeds area and shaved off a corner of the heal. These shoes were available at about 75% of the normal price.

What Stylo forgot to do was inform all the other Pro's and there own returns department of this. What happened was 100's, may be 1000's of shoes were returned as faulty and replaced with 'Perfects'. Must have cost them a fortune.

Now back on topic.

This is the only problem I can see about these "Fakes", some trying to replace them with the genuine artical.

If you buy a Copy, its up to you, but you should be aware its a copy. How many of us have bought a Rolex for £10 and thought it was genuine?

Things made in the Far East have become Top Quality because they are now able to get hold of Quality raw materials.