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Comment by resoluteteeth | Hacker News Reader

There are some pretty obvious PR motivations for Specialized here:

1) Try to dissuade people from buying cheap Chinese frames (not just the counterfeit frames in the article, but the higher quality ones that have been gaining popularity on various internet forums).

2) Justify Specialized's extreme litigiousness with respect to trademarks (which has gotten it a lot of negative press) by spreading the idea that it's motivated by the goal of protecting its customers from unsafe products.

On the other hand, I'm sure counterfeits are really a problem. It's probably tempting for Chinese companies that are making a pittance selling bike parts to other companies to make copies to get prices that are many times higher.

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"Surprisingly, Tombragel’s fake fork passed impact testing—but barely. If this had been a real Specialized, it would be re-engineered to pass by a higher margin."

This line is when I decided this was probably a PR placement. I guess that maybe took me a bit longer than most, but it just feels so stilted.

"We passed our test, but we'd want to pass more." - then why did it 'pass'?

That struck me as well, though as a consumer, you'd like to hope that gear has been engineered to exceed tests, not to the minimum. Though perhaps the minimum should be increased.

The article also contained examples of catastrophic failures in use of handlebars and catastrophic failures in testing of helmets.

> Though perhaps the minimum should be increased.

It may have been—which is what makes the angle in this PR piece so questionable. The minimum might be a value that is equivalent to a 200kg rider jumping off a 15ft cliff and not breaking the forks.

(or it may not be, but I'm sure you get my point: Specialized just wants to seed doubt regardless of quality)

I agree- I've seen some amazing Chinese products across all hobbies recently, which are oftentimes almost as good, if not better with a little modification. That being said, counterfeit products are almost universally worse than their real counterparts.

I would not be surprised to see Chinese products that are identical in quality to their genuine counterparts within the next couple years, especially for high-end products.

I'm sure there will be some great brands coming but when they are ready they will spend money and really develop brands. While they are selling literally no-name or no-history brand names that are churned rapidly there is almost no cost in getting a bad reputation, just start a new brand.

This doesn't mean that brands never fail or do wrong (cough VW) but the fact that they have something to lose is a good thing. Also you are more likely to hear if there are huge problems with a product.

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