Lets please not advertise an overpriced profit center for a US company whose business model is to sell overpriced (depends on your position...) chinese goods into a market of illiterate consumers, by advertising them through social media friendly video packages on "how you will save money, fixing your IOT toaster".
The business model is perfectly fine, especially since there is also a value ad in getting professionally produced disassembly tutorials - but at some point the "brand believe" has to come to an end.
This point turns out to be, when you are flogging a 60 USD "Kit" to users that might need a 2 USD screwdriver. And doing it three times in one thread.
Also the "I bought a cheap screwdriver and it broke - Thanks" interaction will haunt me for the rest of the week (only a day - *pfew*), because its just so *hrm* special.
Guess who else found cheap chinese vendors, repackaged their goods and is selling that with a 300% markup to US customers? iFixit. (
https://www.quora.com/Where-are-iFixit-tools-made ) Every company in the world.
If you buy a 2-4 USD screwdriver including shipping, and the difference between "quality" is 70 cents spent, you can still leave the western reseller out of the occasion - quality wise. If your screwdriver doesn't "break" after about 8 screws, chances are, that you are more likely to misplace it in the following two weeks, than to care about the matallurgy chosen for the manufacturing process.
Also - for those of you that don't know -
Amazon opened up their platform to chinese sellers in 2017:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadesh...-is-hurting-american-innovation/#12a3c6dd1df2
And there is a subsection of businesses that ship containers of "assorted goods" to a western state, prop up about 3-10 "internet shops" on popular western platforms and sell goods to you until the container is fairly empty, then resell whats left over to whoever is specialized in "odd lot items". When they are finished their Amazon store goes offline, and so do your chances of product support. Strangely all of those stores usualy have 3000 4 star reviews - every time.
This is how you see competitively prized products on amazon or ebay, what arent freightshipped directly from a port in China.
The reason why shipping takes so long btw is, that they ship once they've filled up a container, and ship "slow" to save as much of the unfiltered crude oil, even Luxury Liners are burning at high sea, as possible..
What I'm trying to say - the age where "you are paying the price for good quality" was true in any field thats been taken over by industry towns near Shenzhen or Guangdong, mainly is over. The reason being not that it wouldnt take effort to do so, but - that if you can produce products at a 10th of the cost that western consumers are acustom to pay for that good historically - the "mark up" for quality ranks about at the 20th position of the cost of good - shipped and delivered.
edit: Here are some references on taobao (a ("the") reseller aggregation plattform, thats not western facing).
Conventional screwdrivers for 30-80 US cent, delivered, with all the platform sales markup included (end consumer price):
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=561476752251&spm=a230r.1.0.0
Two screwdrivers and a spudger for PSP, eh switch, eh DS, eh who knows 1.30 USD -
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.7.44159d5eQeCrFk&id=18938144320
So as a user of platforms like alibaba (Ali Express), you are already paying a 50-70% markup usually. And you want to, btw - because of the logistics those vendors have set up (to deal with international delivery).
