Trust me they make a lot of money.
Re "No money to be made", I was talking about a single piece shipment through international mail or Fed Ex.
The product comes over in a storage container bundled with all kinds of other products. Piggy backing off more expensive shipments within that container. I would guess the mfg pays about $1 for that shipping.
Containers are always filled to the max because the flat rate is currently $1300.00 per container from China/Korea to US, before tariffs on the contents might be applied and port fees for handling/storage are assessed. How do I know?
I work at a paper distributor and we import multiple containers at a time from those 2 countries.
Once it hits our shores then the real cost is US shipping charges which could be 10 bucks or so. So that is $11 for shipping and probably $5 for manufacturing which leaves 9 bucks for profit.
I don't dispute the research you did but I still don't think that's the model here.
I think you missed when I asked if it looked like it was shipped from a
domestic origin (ie,
after being unloaded from a container and having all the warehousing/handling costs associated with that coming into play as well), he said "it came from China".
If it came off a container somebody has to put some handling and packaging costs into it to ship it inside the US.
The issue being if that's not a licensed use of the logo it's a legal counterfeit as soon as it hits the dock here and if it's sold for money, the trademark holder has a legitimate claim for damages.
I have had FREE shipping from China on items that cost $9.99 and the items are worth $9.99 so I decided to look into how they do it and above is what I found out. China is the capitalism KING of the world.
Right, but were they items that had a copyright protected trademark printed or used on 'em?
Not that China hasn't also been ID'd as the counterfeit king of international trade, but that's all I'll say about that.
Another thing occurs to me:
Containers take 6 weeks on the water so if it's delivered in less than 6 weeks it's definitely being warehoused here somewhere (more cost and risk of seizure of counterfeit goods) or else it's shipping direct in "mail" as I suspect.
