LOL! Good luck with the new UK business!

With regard to "copies", I'm personally more interested in determining which "brands" sell the exact same products available unbranded direct from the factory. Those products would not be copies at all but instead the "real deal" without the US branding or marketing etc..

 

Absolutely but what interests me is are the same factories in China that supply the US vendors selling the same, or a near identical variation, unbranded as well? Such units would have no such issues and could not be labelled as copies.

With regard to RR I personally gave up on them a couple of years ago. The products I purchased from them were (by my measuring stick) sub-standard so they've been off my radar ever since, unfortunately. They may well have improved since but once (3 times) bitten..

 

Well, the reality is that anyone who works with a contract manufacturer (CM) to build things like this likely works with several CMs to build identical stuff. There's many reasons why but a lot of it has to do with parts ordering and availability and economies of scale etc. So a CM is like a commodity vendor. The products they make for you are essentially identical. Each CM might have some minor variability, like maybe they have different subassemblies for a DC-DC converter or whatever, functionally equivalent but slightly different in detail, but from the OEM's point of view they are identical/interchangeable.

So what this would mean is that ANY of the CMs might sell what would be equivalent to the "authentic" product.

There's no reason for an OEM mfgr/vendor to disclose which CMs they work with and they probably want to keep each CM in the dark about who they are competing with. Especially given Jeepers' sensitivity to non-USA-made stuff, USA companies will bend over backwards to find a way to clam their products are "made" in USA even when they are delivered as complete or near-complete assemblies from a CM.. you know the claim a manufacturer makes that their stuff is manufactured in the USA could be the lens is attached to the body of the light in the USA so they claim they are "manufactured" in the USA, while the lens and the rest of the assembly are considered "components". You know, this is just marketing.

 

That's pretty much my suspicion word for word and why I'm interested to try the $150 set. After all, at the end of the day, lights are something we do change from time to time, mostly because of damage, but not often. I've owned my JK now for 7 years and upgraded the stock lights about a year into ownership, so this is the first time in 6 years I'm replacing. If the $150 set perform as well or similarly to a $600-800 set and last for around the same time without issues then for me they've done what I wanted and saved me 450-650 bucks. If they are, indeed, the exact same lights then even more so, though without a branded set to compare with it will be difficult to confirm or deny that.

 

I have had the $150 set for a year and a half (switched them from my first new to the second) and having owned vehicles with "higher priced light sets" the only difference I have seen so far is the extra cash in my bank account. Even if I could tell any difference (I can't yet) I can't see paying even 50 percent more. Three percent mark up from the $150 set, all your getting is the name and paying for their marketing.