Stumbled upon a thread in forum about furniture maker Da Vinci accused of faking country of origin. I find the markups darn absurb just for the brand & there are still foolish people buying products primarily for the brand. 'Price is what you pay, value is what you get' by Warren Buffett succinctly sums it up.
Those foolish buyers ought to ask themselves if they have bought into the lies the maker of a product project about its brand. On the bicycle scene in S'pore there have been comments about Trek being overpriced & people are paying premiums for the brand. Other commodity products like Finishline lube sells for $11 there while Rodalink sells it at $9. Money is certainly not wasted in such a way on commodity products & mainly for brand name.
Do you heavily depend on brand for using a product? For example, does riding a Trek bicycle make one a much better cyclist? Does using a Yonex badminton racquet make one's racquet skills better than other equal quality but lesser name brands(perceived by others)?
Another quote i like is 'We buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, just to impress people we don't know'. Relying on branding by external products as a primary way to impress people is shallow & fleeting. What about that person's internal attributes such as integrity?
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Da Vinci accused of falsifying origin of furniture
Shanghai investigators have said Singapore luxury furniture retailer Da Vinci deceived its customers about the origin of its products.
Local media had reported that the company's furniture was made in China, and not in Italy as claimed.
Preliminary investigations by Shanghai's Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau showed that for the first half of this year, nearly 10% of Da Vinci's so-called "imported goods" were actually made in China.
They were made in Chinese factories, exported to a logistics park, then re-imported on the same day to its warehouse in Shanghai.
Customers have been turning up at Da Vinci's flagship store in Shanghai for refunds. Many of them had paid 5- or even 6-figure sums for the furniture. But none of the products had the label "Made in China".
The Shanghai Consumer Protection committee said this amounts to deceiving customers. It planned to get Da Vinci to offer full refunds.
Customer Wang Jun said: "I bought it for the brand(how foolish). But with all the controversy these few days, I don't trust it anymore. Regardless of whether it is really manufactured in Italy, I don't feel like buying it anymore."
Mr Qi, another Da Vinci customer, said: "We bought a sofa set at 450,000 renminbi (US$70,000). We'll be more careful when buying furniture in future and not buy it just because it is expensive, it also has to be right."
A Da Vinci's spokesman would not comment on whether furniture purchased a while ago can be returned and refunded.
Daisy Wu, a marketing supervisor at Da Vinci Shanghai, said: "We will offer due compensation in accordance to the country's legal regulations."
When asked what documents a customer needs to produce for a refund, she said: "Whatever documents as stipulated in the law."
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