Originally Posted by
cdaniels
Specialized put their name on Rensho frames to make the original Allez. Bianchi sold bikes made by someone in Japan. Giant built frames for many other companies. Many bicycle companies have some or all their frames made by other companies and put their name on them. Essentially what I did only on a very large scale. Even Chevrolet puts their name on foreign cars to market here in the USA.
That's not really the same. Specialized contracted with Konno to build a batch of bikes for them. That's not like what you did at all. A more apt analogy would be if Specialized took a bunch of Taiwanese-made Allez frames and painted them as 3renshos with 3rensho decals without permission from Konno. That's what you did. Obviously you can do whatever you want considering your fake isn't a money-making scheme, but I wouldn't compare faking a branded bike with paying a contractor to make a product.
If you want to do the small-scale equivalent to the contract manufacturing examples you mentioned, you would pay 3rensho to make a bike with your name on it. That's what Specialized did. Not much relation to what you actually did.