Chinese track frame group buy

Apologies for the delay in updating, currently job hunting and it's taken priority over riding for the moment. Couple of things I've learned going back and forth with a some manufacturers over the past few weeks:

• It's hard to figure out who the actual OEM is for a given frame as lots of companies claim to own the rights for the more popular moulds (e.g. the AliExpress specials). No one is transparent about where they come from, what QC looks like or shows much knowledge of mfg processes (e.g. bladder vs. sol core) even when talking about a big order.
  
• Frames that are unique to one seller tend to be a lot more expensive than the AliExpress specials. One quote I had was for 900USD ex-shipping, dropping to 850 for an order of 10 frames. They weren't willing to ship them as freight so no savings to be had on shipping costs either. On the plus side they seemed much more knowledgeable about what goes into making their products (e.g. using soluble core vs. bladders)
  
• I found it quite difficult to negotiate a discount across multiple product lines, seems we'd need to be buying 10x of every wheel and frame to get any appreciable discount so it doesn't really work when everyone wants something different.
  
  

All this in mind, seems that the group buy format probably isn't the one for these frames. If you're after a track frame your options remain either the $500 AE special of unknown provenance or the ~$1k frame from a known OEM. The bulk discount factor just isn't there and I even if it were I'd only be comfortable taking that risk on something without known provenance from an OEM, at which point it's getting quite expensive.

Happy to share findings with anyone else looking to buy and will come back with a review after I've got some income again and pulled the trigger on one. H