The question is - do you want to buy a product which the manufacturer properly understands, and has designed from scratch with a thorough knowledge of the technology being used... or do you want to buy a product where the manufacturer has hacked open somebody else's well-formed product, copied the technology and parts, and released it under their own brand - with no R&D expenses - for a lower price?
Yes Chauvet products can look good. But they look good because they brazenly rip off existing products with no regard for the R&D costs or the expertise that went into the original product. And then, later on; because they have not built the products based on their own understanding of the technology, they are not able to offer the same
level of support that you would get from the manufacturer who actually designed it to begin with.
I am fundamentally against this practice. For anyone who is not convinced, look at the
truss industry. James Thomas Engineering - no doubt one of the pioneers of the industry and who manufactured some of the finest
truss you could buy, went under and were bought up by Milos - a company who's business practice is to buy
truss from Prolyte and James Thomas; and reverse engineer it in order to produce their own equivalents, with eastern european welders, at lower costs... without a true understanding for the product they are selling you, since their
role in it's development was copying it, not developing and producing it. This, in the context of lifting equipment, is worrying. Especially where they are cost cutting in order to maximise sales.
Don't assume that the big brands are invincible. If you want to see lighting products continue to be developed, invest in the companies who develop them, not in the companies who copy them.