Item — HN Reader

i mean... maybe they got so good at marketing that they have succeeded in incepting the concept of "decently built frames for non hipsters" in your mind to be the stuff they produce?

thats kinda sorta the whole point of marketing a branded commodity product...

1 comments

Even if so, the point of blinding is that it's not the brand per se, but the actual design. And unless they have intellectual property defending the design, there should be nothing keeping a competitor from copying it.

The problem may be the copying. If what the cheap brands do is copying the expensive brands while trying to subtly change it to avoid getting sued (trade dress/copyright/design patent), the changes are likely to make the design worse in some way.