What do y'all think of private label brands, especially when it comes to car parts?
A certain major auto parts chain here in the US has done a lot of replacing "name brands" with house brands.
I think it's smart from a business perspective. Depending on pricing and supply chain you can source product from a variety of vendors while with a name brand, you are stuck with the terms and availability. But I do wonder if quality will go down. Or perhaps it doesn't matter, because most parts come out of a few major factories anyway?
For example, the place I'm thinking of reduced Moog stocking and availability, sent most of the Moog parts back except for a handful of top movers for common applications, and now carries the Precision house brand for "premium" chassis parts in addition to the MasterPro house brand for "economy" chassis parts.
Bearings and seals used to be National/MasterPro now it's Precision/MasterPro. Some Precision bearings/seals come in nice yellow Precision branded boxes. But more recently many of them coming in generic white boxes. Perhaps already a change of vendor or perhaps they just ran out of yellow ink?
Belt tensioners were Gates. Recently relabeled them all to Murray. The new stuff coming in is not Gates, it's obviously a different brand. Boxes and markings on the parts are different. Off the top of my head I don't remember but maybe it's Litens?
Not saying any of these parts are worse. They could be better or the same quality, who knows. I'm just curious if folks here have noticed that kind of thing and if it's overall a positive or negative or simply doesn't matter.
A certain major auto parts chain here in the US has done a lot of replacing "name brands" with house brands.
I think it's smart from a business perspective. Depending on pricing and supply chain you can source product from a variety of vendors while with a name brand, you are stuck with the terms and availability. But I do wonder if quality will go down. Or perhaps it doesn't matter, because most parts come out of a few major factories anyway?
For example, the place I'm thinking of reduced Moog stocking and availability, sent most of the Moog parts back except for a handful of top movers for common applications, and now carries the Precision house brand for "premium" chassis parts in addition to the MasterPro house brand for "economy" chassis parts.
Bearings and seals used to be National/MasterPro now it's Precision/MasterPro. Some Precision bearings/seals come in nice yellow Precision branded boxes. But more recently many of them coming in generic white boxes. Perhaps already a change of vendor or perhaps they just ran out of yellow ink?
Belt tensioners were Gates. Recently relabeled them all to Murray. The new stuff coming in is not Gates, it's obviously a different brand. Boxes and markings on the parts are different. Off the top of my head I don't remember but maybe it's Litens?
Not saying any of these parts are worse. They could be better or the same quality, who knows. I'm just curious if folks here have noticed that kind of thing and if it's overall a positive or negative or simply doesn't matter.
