What boxes?
Link to vendor?
A 'box' is a Chinese led fixture which gets called a 'box' because most of them are rectangular box shaped cases.
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There are companies in China that make all the various parts that go into making led fixtures. One makes drivers, another makes cases, another makes led circuit boards, another makes the controller, another one make cooling fans, etc., etc. All these companies want to profit from high volume to keep prices down and profits up and keep other competitors from entering the market.
Then a few other companies buy parts from these various suppliers and assemble actual led fixtures. These companies may or may not sell fixtures directly. But they also make and/or sell fixtures to other 'resellers' who may or may not change the name of the fixture. Some resellers do enough volume that they can get the manufacturer to do 'custom' fixtures and some resellers actually design the fixture and the manufacturer makes it exclusively for that reseller.
Some of the Chinese manufacturers, like EverGrow, understand global markets and the fact that many, like the US, want quality products. Other manufacturers will cut corners like using cheaper fans (noisy and prone to failure), or they don't use real heat sinks but just a thin sheet of aluminum, or they don't use stainless steel screws. A couple even get so cheap they use 0.3 watt leds rather than 3.0 watt leds, these guys are just stealing your money. To these guys, it's all about making an already inexpensive fixture even cheaper and being able to cut costs, lower their price and try to capture a bigger share of the market.
The problem is, they end up making really cheap fixtures (low price) but they are also low quality fixtures and that is what causes so many people to call Chinese products junk. They can make good or even great quality products, like most of the things they build for american owned companies, like Apple. But the Chinese companies are just beginning to see that they can increase their market share and improve brand loyalty by making better quality products.
But a lot of Chinese companies still want to build cheap junk and unfortunately, many customers worldwide are still looking for great deals and willing to buy the cheap junk.
I have bought and used a lot of Chinese led fixtures in the last 3-4 years. I have some that have been working perfectly for 3 years now. But I've bought some that failed (or started to rust away) after only a year or less. And even more scary is there are a couple of 'quality' brand name US companies that actually sell some of the cheapest junk in the market.
Ebay is kind of a wild west dumping ground for product. They really cheap guys sell there because they can find market share there. And some of the quality resellers sell there because they need to compete and keep sales volume up. Look and see who is confident enough in their products and customer service to pay RC to advertise here and keep a Sponsor Forum. A place where you can actually discuss products and quality and customer service. If they don't have a sponsor forum here, ask yourself, "Why not?"
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