Very interesting. How do they manage to use better materials for the same weight? What is the 'knock off' called? Did you need to pay import duty, V.A.T. etc ?
My 1st 'Chinese' tent was the Cloud Up2 from Nature hike
https://www.naturehike.com/cloud-up-2-ultralight-two-men-tent-upgrade/It has been a good (no complaints at all) tent -except- I decided that I wanted a tent with more headroom and 'sitting' space for those lazy days when I don't move and just lounge about - you can only spend so much time lying on one-elbow or sitting 'hunched' so that why I looked at the Wolfwise / MSRs at 1000mm internal height, over a large area which resulted from the side entry instead of the front entry.
There are various 'knock-offs' of the MSR, Hubba range mine is called Wolfwise, another is Nature Hike and called the 'Mongar'
Compared to the MSR 'Hubba Hubba NX' the tent area is pretty much the same, but the 'vestibule/porch' is slightly smaller, the overall package is 30g (virtually nothing) heavier.
It was purchased from Amazon with next day delivery included in the price. No additional taxes or duties to be paid.
On receipt I did have a small problem - one of the 'nipples' on the end of the pole legs (that goes thru the tent and the flysheet and then pegs down) was too large to go thru the eyelet. I sent the supplier photos of the 'good end' and the 'bad end' for comparison and the next day they sent me an email saying they were sending a replacement part (I wasn't worried as the end-nipples are only a couple of £s on ebay).The next day the replacement part arrived in a rather large package.
The replacement part consisted of a COMPLETE package - tent, flysheet, poles, pegs, guys, the works !!!.
I contacted them and asked where they wanted the 'old' one sending to and they said keep it and apologised for the inconvenience.
I ordered 5 spare nipples from ebay (I only needed one), fitted it to the 'old' tent and now have two superb, lightweight 2-man tents for £75.
I have thoroughly checked all of the taped seams, the elastic and checked that all guy and anchoring points have reinforcing points sewn into the fabric.
I have made a 'couple' of additions / improvements.
1) Added wooden toggles to the guy ropes as 'clip-on' rather than tie on.
2) The supplied pegs are only 150mm , so I have replaced them with a set of 180mm Y-shaped pegs.
3) I have added 'spares' into the kit (an alloy pole splice - in case of breakage, a spare toggle, a couple of spare guy ropes, some elastic shock-cord, 2x spare 'nipple ends')
The total weight including additions and pole / peg and overall bag is 1858g
To play it safe, I have also subsequently purchased a footprint, The MSR foot print is around £50, I got the 'copy' for £8. Weight of the footprint is 231g