So weird

A local PS customer, Evan, came by the office yesterday with an AC12 power cable he had purchased on eBay. He suspected it might be counterfeit and wanted us to tell him yes or no. It looked nearly identical to a real AC12 with but few clues to tell if it was a fake or not. Noticed was a slight difference in the outer weave, the diameter of the cable, but not much else. I was in a hurry yesterday and didn't pay much attention to the goings on as the engineers and sales people looked over the cable and compared it with a real one. It occurs to me now that a simple test would have been to simply listen to it. What's the old saying? "If it looks the same, smells the same ......" But before I knew it the boys had sawed the cable in half. Definitely a fake. Instead of the complex geometry of the real power cable, this looked more like something out of Home Depot, sheathed in a lot of insulation to create heft and weight. What's fascinating to me is the skill employed by these counterfeiters. There wasn't much outside differences between a real and the fake one and, if you look at an AC12, there's a LOT of tooling, work and expense that goes into making that cable. Definitely not something you'd make in a garage. It's just stunning to me that someone with enough talent and wherewithal to make such a cable doesn't do one of two things: finish the job and make the inside the same and sell more, or make their own version, or both. If it were me I'd finish the job, build it internally correct and proclaim it is a copy: sounding and performing the same yet costing half as much. I'll bet they'd sell a lot more cables if they did this and they could also come from a position of strength forcing us into a tight spot in the marketplace. They have the talent, the tools and the skills to do so. Why don't they? I guess it's like the battle between my father and I when growing up. I spent more time and mental energy trying to game the school system than I did with my studies. My father could never figure out why I didn't just apply the same amount of effort into getting good grades that I spent trying to get out of the work. From an efficiency standpoint he was right. What he didn't get is this: it's a lot more fun and exciting to get away with something than it is to knuckle down and do the hard work of succeeding over the long term. Plus, it's a lot scarier to succeed at something than it is to hide behind the skirt of those that do. It took me a long time to figure that out and re-channel my efforts. I suppose some people just never get there. It's a shame to see talent wasted. Even if it is more exciting.