I agree with you, but I also disagree with you.
Take clothes for example, I buy lots of "labelled" clothes and some non-labelled clothes. I have found that the more expensive clothes last a lot longer. I bought Mr price 3/4s at the same time as I bought some guess 3/4s (about 4 years ago), after about a month the Mr price pants had lot a button, the zip didnt work properly and the material was fraying, I still have the guess pants, nothing has gone wrong with them yet. So thats why labels mean something. You do pay for quality in most cases.
But give Chris Gayle a R500 cricket bat, and give me a R10k cricket bat, and I promise he will bat far better than I (until his bat breaks...). Yes most international cricket players bats are made in the same place, but that doesnt mean that the bats are crap quality because they are all similar, those bats are all being made to the standards that are required by international players. I can also promise you, Ernie's clubs that were unbranded were probably made by a top end golf club manufacturer, they werent made by maxed or anything.
Marketing is sadly what rules for companies, if "john smith" endorses our product, more people will buy it, and think its great.
Spy007 said:
A sad fact of our society. People are so brand aware that it is sad. I coach kids between the ages of 9 to 17 and even at 9 they want this brand and that brand. I have seen many parents do this. A kid that is 11 years old gets a R3k cricket bat because so and so bats with it, yet that R3k bat will last at most 4-6 months before he outgrows it or it is left in the rain. In fact it is so bad that GM use to sell Stickers but they stopped. Reason. People would buy cheap Kasmir willow bats and buy GM stickers and put that on the cheap bat. Most International players' bats get made in the same factory and then the sponsor slaps his sticker on it. A nother reason why todays bats have such thick edgers is that there is extra space for sponsers to plak stickers.
Cricket balls that carry a certain players signiture in print are on avg. R20-R30 more expensive than a ball from the same factory.
This has happend in Golf aswell. In fact Ernie was seen playing with a non sponserd set of clubs that were made for him to test. He liked them and his sponser just put on their stickers.
The world has just gone mad. Label Label Label. Yes there are some labels that is worth buying for the qualty of the product but that is getting few and far between. You are not paying for the quality anymore but rather for the name on the product.
