Who actually sales the Chinese repro stuff

[Retro Pedro]

Seen copy stuff via 'Made in China' web site but can't actually see who are the retail outlets that single items can be purchased.
'Made in China' talks in terms of multi unit purchases but I've never got a satisfactory reply when requesting distributor lists.
Mr Wolff posted that he bought a Chinese turbo but he is in Norway.
It's not so much that I'm looking to buy, but more interested to see what the costings are and the availability of items such as diff lockers that could possibly fit the Frontera.
Seen the ARB youtube clips showing comparisons with their products and warning how weak the copy alternatives are - but they are defending their own market share/product range.

[BoxCleva]

[Drift]

I saw a post about this on an Aussie Isuzu forum, they where talking about a bulk buy, but I think a few got cold feet after some dubious emails where sent back and forth and they couldnt be sure of delivery dates or the quality of the goods as no samples could be sent or description of materials used in snorkels and other off road equipment, it never came to anything in the end.

[MrWolf]

I ordered my new turbo from this place http://www.turboalta.com/ and they were able to send single items with shipping by DHL, no questions regarding bulk buy.
The machining of the turbo looks a little rough, especially where they have ground down parts of the exhaust impeller, probably to balance it. But I'll have a go at installing it and see what it is able to put out. Luckily I had just recently bought a full set of gaskets from Milner, cause there were no gaskets following the turbo. Price and speed of shipping was very nice.


Erik

[MG Autos (Mark)]

I had a look into this sort of thing about a year ago in the run upto my retirement Pete, as I wanted to import Mikilon Motorcycles as well as bike clothing and spares.
After much research and back and forth with the e-mails & ohone calls it just wasn't financially viable. It would appear that there are some genuinely good company's in china that have well made products and are still much cheaper than here in the UK, however by the time you've added shipping fee's, port / landing fee's, UK VAT, etc, it's no longer worth while.
You have to be carefull as well and research each individual company as there seem to be a lot of chinese company's that make knock off's of the better chinese knock off's
Sounds odd I know but what you find is the bigger company's have proper factory's with decent tooling, knocking out cheap, but still reasonable quality products. Then you get the smaller ones using crap tooling in little warehouses undercutting them by using very poor quality meterials and even worse assembly.

I gave up in the end as it was proving to be a real mine field in terms of establishing who was actually worth doing buisness with...

[V6POWER]

I buy many bulk items from China and the far east for my company and will say unless you know someone over there (lucky i do) the only real way to any kind of reliable buissness with them is face-face. The whole process of importing from over there is very difficult to do in a way that you can make money or a saving. You can ask for a discount on ebay but they will not give you anywhere near what they could if they really wanted to. The cost price of items in china is frightening compared that of uk retail value, get it right and its great.
Example i buy 100x 58mm conversion fish-eye lenses direct from sauce, they go down to a nett of £3.70 per unit Plus import duty and tax, final cost £5.05(shipping is free) UK Retail value, evan on ebay £49.99 .
Many people and i mean more than you think will not buy anything of ebay if its come from the far east but if you are a UK stockist of that item you can sell it for 30% more than they have it advertised for just because its uk stock.

[BadBoy]

Pete,
I deal with the Chinese every day. If you know what your after give me a call at work and I'll get it all priced for you (not just the item price, I can do the whole import lark including taxes and shipping so you don't get caught out again).

[BoxCleva]