Originally Posted by
vespasianus
No way is cost $10. If made in China, the cost is probably less than $1 and maybe even 10 cents.
Wholesale cost = cost that an LBS or other reseller would pay to buy product from the distributor or factory. Not the cost to manufacture them.
Unless the people selling fake cleats online have their own factory, they're buying (or stealing) them from somewhere, repackaging them to make them look like authentic Shimano product, storing boxes of them in a warehouse, listing them online and shipping them out.
Doing all this to fake an item that sells for $15-$20 online seems crazy to me. I get that it's probably a volume game for them, but there are so many other bike related products that have similar carrying costs and sell for a lot more. Why not fake those instead?