Warning About Chinese Counterfeits Of Petzl Products

I gather that the motivation behind moving production to China is all about lowering production costs and increasing profit margins. It’s got little to do with providing cheaper products for consumers. Of course there are enormous consequences involved in moving production to China. In addition to the important issues re working conditions, the lack of environmental compliance, etc, which enable Western manufacturers to bypass their industrial and environmental obligations, one consequence of the move to China has been that manufacturing in the West has been destroyed, and along with it a whole raft of manufacturing traditions, including the tradition of manufacturing excellence which had hitherto existed in Europe (though to a lesser extent the US). It’s virtually impossible to buy anything nowdays that’s well made, whether it be clothing, electrical goods, tools and so on. My father’s set of imperial spanners made in Britain in the 1930s which I inherited years ago is far better made than anything you’d find on the market today (my problem is the spanners aren’t metric!). OF course before the advent of globalisation, a number of quality products were made in China, or at least Hong Kong. So the issue is not that the Chinese are unable to produce quality, but rather, that quality has been virtually factored out of manufacturing. Nowdays, quality is something added on post fabrication by advertisers. Well almost. So, in addition to my concerns re labor conditions and environmental degradation, my big concern when climbing gear manufacturers move production to China involves quality. They’ve made the move to China based on considerations re margins, and on this basis, you’d assume that they’re going to be finding ways to cut production costs all along the line – and I wonder where will this stop? As I see it, when a climbing gear manufacturer moves production off shore, this signifies that quality and product safety have become less important to them than hitherto was the case. Not unimportant, but less important. OK so I still buy Petzl gear (including a couple of Attache biners!), and I’ve got a couple of newer BD camelots which are now made in China – and until I hear otherwise, I assume that this gear still meets the various standards. All up, my prediction is that in about 20 years time people will start making climbing gear in the US and Europe again. They will be climbers, small scale operators, and they’ll be learning all over again, starting from scratch. So if you can wait, I’d say that someone will start manufacturing Aliens in the US in about 40 years from now. Get your orders in!