It's easy to find "real brands" if one looks outside of Amazon, Alibaba, etc.
Surprisingly, I find I am more pleased with purchases I make outside of Amazon despite all of Amazon's perks. "Platforms" like Amazon and fake "brands" aside, online retailers that only sell "real brands" are still around; they never disappeared despite Amazon's meteoric rise. Many sell through Amazon but also sell outside Amazon, too. Some do not sell through Amazon.
Being born before the internet existed, I started ordering products delivered by mail in the catalog era. I am biased toward locating "real brands" that have built reputations for high quality. I miss these brands. I loved the transition from catalogs to websites, but it seems like in the last 10-15 years fake "brands" that can offer no promises whatsoever have been killing off the motivation for having real ones that guarantee high quality.
When I went to Shenzhen I found some of these brands with stalls in their vast malls. They're real places. As you walk through you navigate around an obstacle course of dollies, hear endless packing tape and occasionally point out, "oh look, there's Owawuwo, I got a cheap projector from them".
Americans can get a Shenzhen-only 5-day Visa on arrival (VOA) from Hong Kong through the Luohu entry at the LoWu station via the regular MTR. Don't take the HSR, they do not offer it there and you will be turned away. You Must go to the office at Louhu station, it is the only way. It's easy, just take the metro.
Anyways, at LoWu it takes about 45 minutes after doing the paper work. It was very easy. Visa approval for Americans this exact way is estimated to be north of 98%. Exchange your HKD at the government run forex up stairs in the mall after entering China, it's a 1.5% commission, best I've ever seen. Then pay in cash - your Western credit cards Will Not Work. It is a fairly easy day trip - about 45min from Kowloon by rail. The 5-day Visa is a Single Entry.
To go to the trading district take Luobao line (#1) to Huaqianglu (3 stops). It's a 10 minute train trip or a fairly uneventful hour walk if you're up to it. English at the trading district and the border mall is ok. Everywhere else, not so much.
Recommended. The place is absolutely bonkers.
They have this wildly intricate culture of price bargaining. If you're looking to actually buy stuff, you can get amazing deals. But I just went as a tourist.
I went a decade ago (on a standard tourist visa, was easy to get but I had to plan far ahead ). It was neat, but I wouldn’t say it’s a must visit, or a top 5 Chinese destination.
The one cool thing was seeing new products at Shenzen, and then a couple months later starting to see those products in American retailers. Seeing the markup and the flow this way really opened my eyes to how the American consumer is exploited.
Sure but if you happen to be in Hong Kong, which you can just fly into as an American with a standard passport, and you want to go to Real China and didn't bother with the Visa interview, then you actually can with this "one weird trick"!
It's certainly a hard border, Shenzhen is as China as Tijuana is Mexico. So if you're in HK and have a day to travel around, give it a go, it's a fun adventure.
Sounds like Akihabara in the nineties.
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/backnum.html
For example AMD Athlon. Official announcement June 23 1999, official shipping date August 17, 1999. A week after announcement reservations started at Akihabara https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990703/p_cpu.ht... https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990703/price.ht...
>"AMD Athlon 500-600MHz (bulk) price display. The product is scheduled to arrive in mid-July, and reservations are being accepted. However, there is no specific arrival schedule for compatible motherboards yet."
>"the K7 revised "Athlon" has been given a price and reservations have also started. The estimated price is 44,800 yen for 500MHz, 69,800 yen for 550MHz, and 89,800 yen for 600MHz."
A week before official AMD shipping date retail Athlons arrive in Japan https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813.html
>"AMD's latest CPU "Athlon" will be sold in Akihabara without waiting for the official release date on the 17th is started. All products on the market are imported products, and 3 models of 500MHz/550MHz/600MHz are on sale. The sale of compatible motherboards has also started, and it is possible to obtain it alone, including Athlon"
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813/newitem....
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813/image/at... https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813/image/at...
US 4 days later on August 17 Alienware was merely teasing pictures of Athlon system https://www.shacknews.com/article/1019/wheres-my-athlon According to Anand "OEMs will start advertising Athlon based systems starting August 16, 1999" https://www.anandtech.com/show/355/24
Golden Computer Centre in Sham Shui Po in HK itself is a fun destination too.
> It's easy to find "real brands" if one looks outside of Amazon, Alibaba, etc.
You have to be careful, though. There are a shocking number of legit-looking brands with their own sites that are just drop-shipping the same stuff, at an enormous markup. My wife found a piece of clothing she liked for $60; a quick image search found it (with the exact same images) for $8 on Shein. Nice hustle, if you can make it work.
Buy American. False Made in USA claims are subject to fines exceeding $40k per violation.
Good luck enforcing those on a Chinese drop shipper.
You haven't been following the FTC's enforcement?
e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/owner-conservative-appa...
> The company is based in Salt Lake City.
Chinese drop shippers aren't dumb enough to pull the scam from within the FTC's juridsiction.
> after he posted a video on social media titled "MADE IN AMERICA!" in which he said "he could conceal the fact that his shirts are made in China by ripping out the original tags and replacing them with tags stating that the merchandise was made in the United States".
Or to openly advertise it.
I've found I buy fewer things in general, and also the things I do buy are of higher quality when I do it in person. Might even get some useful advice if it's something like a tool. Also it's just more fun, especially if it's a nice bike ride, walk, or trip on transit.
> And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
My girlfriend needed a humidifier last week. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and Lowe's had mostly the same 2-3 brands of single-room humidifiers, most of which were no-name companies that apparently "specialize" in humidifiers (i.e. were spun up to be a shell for selling cheap humidifiers). We found one Honeywell branded one on sale and went with that since it's a legit brand; it was defective (lots of reviews online having the same issue), so we had to return it and make a decision between Walmart's Equate brand and one of the no-name ones from Target. She wasn't sure if she wanted a larger or smaller version of the no-name one, but we ended up not having an option because the Target shelf was empty of the smaller ones. Home Depot had the same model for $10 more, but we were at Target anyway because they at least had her second choice for color, while Home Depot only had her third.
In-person shopping has become just as crappy as online shopping, with a lot of the same problems regarding quality and brand control. The only difference ends up being less options (which could make the experience less stressful, except the options are usually presented in some form anyway, they're just not available, which makes it frustrating). It's largely thanks to big-box stores, but it's not like someone can just up and start a small shop to sell a particular niche of product (let alone all products) with higher quality as easily as you could with a website.
Big consumer brands haven't meant anything for a long time. Honeywell and GE among those. They all sell their name to other manufacturers and have been doing so for decades. The best thing you can do is keep the receipt and make sure you follow up on returning it or getting warranty service if it breaks in those timeframes. It's really not worth even trying to do the research on things that are less than a hundred bucks. Buy something that looks nice, tape the receipt to it, and return it/warranty claim it if it acts up.
On the flip side, I cant find an ice scraper or a pair of snow / ski pants in December in Wisconsin in any store so the only avenue I have left is order on amazon since the other marketplaces are far more expensive. Depends on what you're buying I believe.
As far as tools or other general hardware - the stores like mom and pop 100 year old hardware stores are amazing and have things you probably cant find online sitting on some shelf and the owner knows exactly what box its in. I love that experience.
This is why I have a bunch of stock in Shopify. It's slowly started rolling out discovery features in its Shop app that federates its stores. I try to limit my use on Amazon to things I know can't be faked and things that are so much cheaper that I can deal with it being fake. My purchasing trends have definitely moved toward the edges - aliexpress for chinese stuff (that would normally be on Amazon) and Shopify for "buy it for life" stuff.
Is there a Shopify store? Their website is catered to the business they do, which is to setup shop for businesses. How do you shop on Shopify?
I'm going to genuinely miss the bicycle headlight I have bought under like 4 different brand names. I won't miss the 36 other grotesqueries sold as alternatives and produced by the same business and manufacturing environment, but I'm also not excited about having to choose between 6 $50 lights of similar quality that are locked to a GPS company's equipment. It would be great if in 10 years I could get a similar light for 25% more than the current price adjusted for future inflation. But there's no reason to believe that tariffs are going to make American products better, just that it makes the cheap products American. And there's nothing else about Trump's (or for that matter his Democratic counterparts'-) industrial policy to encourage that either.
I hate the letter soup brands but also not willing to pay $200 for an LL Bean branded windbreaker or such.
Maybe just spoiled from the early days of Walmart and now Amazon.
That’s a lot more true in USA than Canada. Probably the case in other places too.
