Originally Posted by
easyupbug
After years of doing vendor evaluations in the PRC I can tell you this is not uncommon. The usual way it works is a manufacturer for Shimano made 10,000 pedal for Shimano with Shimano's QA/QC team on site keeping the Chinese honest in using only the approved parts. As soon as the contract ends and Shimano leaves the manufacturer has the production line and no doubt some materials inventory and knows where to get more. That is when they might start skimping on quality as inventory decreases until they are making junk. Their culture is not our "fool me, shame on you" it is "you are the fool for not doing do diligence". You might have bought counterfeit pedals made with 100% Shimano approved parts and manufacturing.
I believe the contract doesn't even have to end - could even be one the following scenarios:
1) Shimano orders 10,000 complete sets of pedals, so the factory orders/manufactures 10,500 or 11k sets of components (or even more), understanding that there is typically x% failure rate. If the failure rate is lower for that particular batch, then the factory can make (nearly) 11k sets of pedals, deliver the 10k to Shimano, and the other 1k might end up... somewhere else.
2) 'Factory Seconds' often have a way of making it out the door, as well. You see this with shoes, apparel, furniture - but as far as I'm aware, there's no sanctioned Factory Seconds distribution channel in the cycling space. Some factory seconds products have structural or functional issues and should be scrapped, but there's plenty where (for example) the printing got smudged, the color is off, or the product got scratched - minor cosmetic faults that would cause them to not pass QA (and thus not get boxed and shipped to a distributor/LBS), but still good enough for the factory manager to put that bin of pedals into his own truck rather than the dumpster.