Why was the SBD thread deleted?
 

Seriously had lots of good info on the kit.

@Mike&Ike Because members were being overly opinionated about the Greddy kit and SBD kit being exactly the same. Basically the thread got way off topic because members think that their opinions actully matter when they don't. All it did was ruin a thread that had a lot of good information for member who wanted to purchase the kit.

The discussion about the SBD being a rip off or not should also be good information for a member who wants to purchase that kit. Its good to know what your buying into.

And opinions do matter because if you don't buy it they wont sell it.

Here is a part right out of the SBD box, if I had paid for this I would want some answers.

http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps7e26d601.jpg

Atleast people who bought sbd got greddy parts for a much cheaper price. ����

The thread was an SBD kit owners thread - if you and others want to crap on it, feel free, but start your own damn thread.

What happened to that part? ^^

That's how they come from SBD. Honestly it turned me off a little when I saw it, but I cleaned it up by sanding it and you can't even tell it is there.

In case you missed it..

It's not "Damaged" thats the Greddy Logo grinded down so you cant tell what it is... They could have done a better job, someone dropped the ball on that one, Or the grinder as it were.

wtf they seriously come like that? You can see it still says GReddy lol

I completely agree about wanting answers as my kit came the exact same way. But it also can raise the question... Who is supplying Greddy with their parts? Because the "Real" Greddy kit comes with that same pipe stamped in that exact location... But this back and forth about whether or not this kit is a copy when no one really knows the truth is the reason why the original thread was deleted. If you dont like the kit, then dont like it somewhere else. Create an arguement thread on your speculation that this kit is a copy, but dont bring your opinions to a thread with out having actual facts(from Greddy, SBD and Zage) to back them up.

Someone isn't very skilled with the grinder. :bellyroll:

You guys would be surprised about the Japanese part makers that outsource to Taiwan. Greddy has been outsourcing the intercoolers in Taiwan for a while same as their coilovers. This isn't something new to the market. A lot of Japanese manufacturers do this to save money because the labor rate is cheaper.

I don't think outsourcing is the issue. I think the logo being taken off with a grinder is the issue

I agree, but I can see why they take it off. However, SBD should look into cleaning up the pipe before shipment so it doesn't look like a damaged piece.

How do you like this one ? Also from SBD box:

http://s5.postimg.org/5p5vn3ruv/DSC_0193s.jpg

Hey, at least you know now that you're getting a top notch knock off. Or are you getting the real thing? It's so confusing :bellyroll:
It honestly wouldn't bother me too much since it looks cosmetic.

The interesting thing was that when Greddy bitched about it on the forum, they got banned.

They gotta pay to play.

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Those who do the research and development get ripped off by companies who can sell the product at a lower price since they don't have R&D costs. A lot of vendors don't care because the customers don't care, they just want whatever is cheapest and they will try to justify how its morally okay to themselves.

As an aside, I don't really see the appeal of the Greddy kit. (or the knock offs)

I don't know the origins of these kits but i do know these Taiwanese factories aren't exactly known for loyalty and honoring private label agreements. I've been shocked with some of the products we've been offered to say the least.

That seems like a great reason not to use them for manufacturing. Cheaper costs only works as long as you're the only one selling your product.

Word is Greddy was using Zage for production of their kits, but then backed out. So Zage needed a distributor to buy the kits Greddy didn't pay for, and as a result started making new ones for SBD.

If the contract was broken on Greddys side why doesn't Zage just be upfront about that and say hey the reason the kit looks like this is because that happened.
They claimed to be supplying SBD and Greddy at the same time, Greddy came and dispelled that saying Zage was never contracted to supply them.
SBD kits now rocking up with Greddy ground off the pipes etc.

Either way something is dodgy and at the very least the quality of the SBD turbo should be called into question.

lol morally okay? It's not like we're talking about child labor here (at least as far as I know) :D

I get the whole 'anti-rip-off' crusade, I really do - but it's the way of the world today, there's no fighting it. If you come up with a new product, you need to manage your business expecting someone to rip it off, especially if it's a really good product. Greddy is making plenty of money, and I'm sure this isn't the first time they've seen something like this happen. Not justifying it, just the way it is....

Me, as a consumer, yeah I'm not going to pay $1000 more for the same kit and I sleep fine knowing that $1000 can go to my kid's college fund. Sorry Greddy.

Getting off topic, but you are the problem with the world today. Blame the victim. Reward those who steal and make inferior products. That is precisely what discourages innovation ultimately..

Seriously, that's the problem with the world today? Free market capitalism? I think the world has bigger problems than that.

Anyway, I hear what you're saying, but the market self corrects. People will start paying for more quality if the cheap stuff is truly crap, but when the quality is equal, people will pay for what is financially feasible to them.

Also, companies get to write off R&D expenditures, so the companies that innovate have financial incentives to do so beyond charging more to the customer.

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My last words in this thread - I'm one of those innovators you refer to actually - does it bother me that others inevitably copy my work? Used to when I was younger, I complained a lot and played the role of 'victim' which you may be familiar with. Now I just anticipate and adjust my expectations accordingly. Much happier in life that way, but ymmv. Btw I consider this on topic for this thread - this type of crappy endless opinion thread is exactly what should have happened OUTSIDE of the other SBD thread with some actual productive discussion (regardless of where the kit came from or how soapbox jockeys personally feel about my 'morals'). Cheers


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How exactly is it an inferior product if it had greddy stamped on the parts?
It's not even a knock off at that point... it's a "legit" part.

Fact is... none of us have the facts except greddy and zage. So everything is speculation at this point.

lol, it's a knock off in the sense that the greddy stamped is knocked off.
gotta suck to be the guy that paid an extra 1k for greddy stamp.

IBTL

i knew it!

lol

the most realistic scenario unless greddy came on the board and said they have never ever gdealt with zage.

oh wait did they?

who knows anymore with all the threads getting deleted!! :)

Greddy just came on and said Zage wasn't making their kits, not that they have never had a relationship with them.

It's been de-counterfeited.

Law's pretty loose on knockoffs, but you outright counterfeit at brand name and you take a lot of shit.

Says to me that these guys are selling parts from a counterfeiter and doing the bare minimum to make them 'legal' for import.

Greddy posted there side of the story. Here it is word for word. These are not my words.

"We have been getting calls and emails regrading our GReddy Turbo kit vs Speed by Design Turbo kit so we would like to clarify this once and for all.

First of all, GReddy Performance Products, Inc and our parent company Trust co. Ltd in Japan has no business relationship with Speed by Design or their turbo kit supplier Zage Turbo in Taiwan. In the post made by Speed by Design promoting their kit for the FR-S, people are confused on who manufactures our kit and why ZAGE/SBD kit are so similar in design with our kit. The kit Zage and SBD are selling is a direct copy of our product except for the airfilter and BOV. ZAGE pretty much took our kit and copied everything down to manifold, intercooler layout even to cast piping, brackets and heat shields. If you look at our kit and compare them to kit from Zage/SBD, you will see that they are identical.

We use genuine GReddy Turbo custom made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Turbocharger in Japan to our spec, we invest many hours testing for the ideal turbo spec, manifold design, intercooler and piping layout. Also invested in all the tooling and molds for all the components included in our kit. While testing these kit we have also designed other necessary components such as the oil cooler kit which is a must for this application. Knockoff companies are not capable of this.

Companies such as Zage without any R&D to develop their own products, simply takes other companies products and mass produce them in China and Taiwan where it is much cheaper to produce and offer these products back in to the market profiting off other companies hard work.

If you look at other forced induction kits in the market for FR-S/BRZ you will see many different layout and setups made by each designers, fabricators and tuners. GReddy Kit is our original kit designed and developed by our own R&D team and manufactured by Trust Co. Ltd. in Japan. and if there are identical products our there it is not a coincidence.

We have visited Zage in Taiwan and confronted them about the kit they are producing and all they could do was make up excuses and was desperately trying to earn our business so they can make the claim they supply to us as well. We were not going to let that happen. Instead we teamed up with Garrett this year to add another high quality products to our product line up. We are in the process of developing new kits as we speak. No China or Taiwan knock off turbochargers will be used in our GReddy kits!

So to answer many question we get from this FT86Club community and other FR-S and BRZ clubs, GReddy Turbo kit for the FR-S/BRZ is not from the same supplier as Speed by Design and what Zage and its distributors are selling is a complete knockoff product of GReddy. (expect for the air filter, BOV and other minor features).

We hope Ft86Club and its members respect our efforts and hard work to deliver quality products to this community and let us tell the truth regards these knockoff products such as what is being sold by Zage and its distributors.

We recommend everyone in this forum that before you spend your hard earned money, do the research and make sure you fully are aware of what you are buying and what kind of companies you are supporting. "

If they copied the cast, I want to know why they thought it was a good idea to keep the big ass greddy logo and grind it down.
I'm assuming they either have one of the casts or they get the piping from someone who does.

Does every SBD kit have that ground down logo?

I was referring to his attitude/mentality when saying that is what is wrong with the world today.
Piracy and theft is certainly not free market capitalism. The market "corrects" itself by companies being exposed for what they are. "Write off R&D expenditures"? Sorry, but no; it doesn't work that way.

If this was a case of piracy and theft, I guarantee Trust/Greddy would have sicked a can of legal whoopass on these guys.

Something else is going on here.

And yes, talk to a tax accountant about R&D tax write offs. It does work that way.

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well the can of legal whoopass isnt cheap.

but even if we assume that they absolutely had no business relationship at all as greddy claims and this really is a clear case of design / ip infringement the cost of getting a judgment in the US and getting it enforced in Taiwan would be pretty high. sbd have sold a total of what, 50+ kits in the US?

i agree though - something else is going on - but then again i love my conspiracy theories! ;)

You act like writing off R&D means it never cost the company anything. Surely if you are a tax accountant you know this is far from the truth. Tax is still pretty small in the big picture, they are paying a lot of money and time for R&D.

We know that Greddy put in the R&D for the kit. We know that Sage is putting out a forgery/clone/copy/rip-off of the kit. Not too hard to connect the dots here..

I didn't say it cost them nothing, I said companies that innovate have financial incentives to do so beyond simply charging more to the customer.

Charge more because you truly have a product, service, or process that sets you apart from competitors. If what you make can be provided by some other company for less, and their product is inferior, let the consumer beware. If the product is of comparable quality and the only differentiator is "we did the R&D and deserve to be paid more but we don't have a legal leg to stand on to enforce it" then you're doing something wrong.

Not targeting this at you, just speaking rhetorically since I see this argument a lot for some of the brands on here (many of which I've personally spent money on, don't get me wrong.)

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