Quote Originally Posted by Jeff Mohr View Post
I think what some of you are forgetting is that there is a portion of the laser people who buy bulk boxes (or insert thing here) and merely laser a picture or word on the top and then sell it as hand made. I'm not buying the hand made part there. For what it is worth, I'd complain about a marquetry person doing the same thing.

In my opinion, however, the person who makes the box and then carves/inlays the top has more of a right to call it hand made than the bulk purchaser or the add-on people.
True but I don't think any of us are forgetting that. We know that the folks who misrepresent pre-made mass production items with laser engraved personalization are part of the problem.

In international shipping there are designations that you use to describe how much of the work was done where. For example if I want to ship my product to another country and have it carved and then shipped back to me I have to fill out the paperwork that indicates it will be "embellished". Thus there are no import duties on the product when it goes to the country it's going to. On the export though there will likely be a duty on the cost of the work done. As well as a duty on the import also on the cost of the embellishing. What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Nothing except to illustrate that under the law governing customs there are very exact descriptions for how and where products are made.

It's kind of sad that we do live in a world where so many people can get away with marketing deception and ruin it for those of us who are trying hard to present our products as just good products.

For years I had to fight against knockoffs of my work with the cheap knockoffs being sold as "Hand Made Genuine Leather" when in fact they were assembly line crap covered with the leather industry's equivalent of plywood - ground up leather bits and glue pressed into sheets with a thin plastic surface. :-(

Now, one of my competitors loves to tout that his cases are the "Choice of Champions" - of course he doesn't disclose on his website that he gives away the cases to all these players - easy choice when it's free. I wish the laser manufacturers would adopt a policy of giving away lasers just so they could claim that their product is the "choice" of laser professionals.