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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

If you pay for a factory to make unique tooling like this, can you avoid them using the tooling for their own runs, to undercut you as the sole source for your target market (such as on Alibaba/Aliexpress)?

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Their price for the small runs already is discounted if they think they can reuse them.

You don't really want to pay full price anyway.

I worked for a molding company long ago, and exclusivity for customer tooling was part of the standard agreement. I don't remember the verbiage.

Yes, but this scenario is a bit different. If you ask a connector factory to custom-make you a connector it's common that they are allowed to add it to their catalogue, though you can of course stipulate something else in the contract. You'll see this in the electronics markets in Shenzhen for example... they still have a lot of the connectors and switches from MP3 players, which I believe was one of the early boom industries in the region.

Did you work in china though? I don't want to make wrong assumptions but I think the intellectual property protections are taken a bit less serious there.

It was the 1990s and we were in the US.

For a large order this might be a concern, but for a smaller order (as it sounds like this one was) I would think it's unlikely to be worth their time to compete with you.

You could ask them for the molds at the end or stipulate in the contract that they can't use them for anyone else, they might not abide by this or might not sign a contract requiring this but you can ask.

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