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Well you’re making some assumptions about what I’ve said which changes the meaning entirely.
I haven’t told you to buy anything unbranded in the first place. The conversation was about Hylix.
Nor did I say that any brands at all are buying from AliExpress. They will have suppliers with reputations you crave so much. But if you think that established brands aren’t buying “unbranded” open mold carbon then you’re kidding yourself
PhilDAS-
Not sure what we are discussing then, you were basically making fun of the idea that having a brand on it makes a difference - and yes it does - Hylix is a brand too btw. Even now you still say "reputations you crave so much". Uh... yes? It's the only thing you can go on here. Well at least for me - maybe you can measure the quality by eye.
But if you think that established brands aren’t buying “unbranded” open mold carbon
Of course they do, exactly as you said yourself: from suppliers with a reputation, and with some quality control, that they have reason to have confidence in. I'm not sure why you adopt this mocking tone in this context, I really don't think wanting your forks to be of a certain quality is a bad idea.
Even if you actually do get unbranded forks from the same manufacturing building, they might very well be the ones that didn't pass quality control to supply some brand. You just don't know, and that's my point: I don't have any reason to believe those completely unbranded things won't snap any second.
That's all I'm saying. It doesn't have to be a Western brand either: as mentioned, I'm getting rims from the very Chinese Light Bicycle company as they appear to be very reputable and have quite a lot of happy customers. I will happily pay a bit more for someone having a vested interest to ensure a certain level of quality from their supplier - though I'm maybe not as open to the idea of paying triple for the pleasure of reading 'ENVE' on the rim.
SwissChap
Yeah I mean that is just straight-up not true. I know it's a popular trope, but no, brands don't just go on Aliexpress, select some random no-name forks, put their logo on it, and sell it on as their own thing. That's not how that works.
Also of course warranties don't stop things from failing, but it provides a certain incentive to provide some minimum standard of quality. But more importantly than that, it's the reputation that makes a difference.
The facts are this: If you buy something completely unbranded from an unknown source on Aliexpress, you are not sure what you are getting, you have no way of checking what the quality of it is, you have no way of finding reliable reviews for it, and you have no one to turn to if something goes badly wrong. I am not prepared to run that risk vs buying something from an established brand that has a direct financial interest in not getting loads of "my fork broke and now my head is caved in" reviews. But you do you