I dont know that most people here find it hard to accept, and thats certainly true in a few cases, but how many lights do you see that look just like any of the Fenix or Zebralight products out there with different brand names on them? Besides, I think most of the Chinese companies are just that, Chinese companies, not US companies selling products mass produced by just a few big shops. If that were the case, there would be more similarities than there are.
The only 2 that I can think of off hand that are supposedly designed in America and built in China with some American parts is Eagletac and Zebralight. Most others are Chinese companies through and through.
I agree that it's not EVERY single brand.
An easy example is that the popular ITP A1/A2/A3 line was also seen with styling differences as the Maratac line, and then again with some styling differences as the Olight line, and then some more styling differences as the 4-Sevens Mini line, and in titanium as the "Illumina-ti" line. Who knows how many others?
The 4-Sevens Preon Revo was discontinued after a clone with styling variations showed up from Klarus.
Another 4-Sevens "dual head design" never made it to market after Klarus introduced a version of that design, and it raised a big dust-up here on this forum about a year or so ago.
It has been obvious for quite some time that Jetbeam and Nitecore and some other smaller brands were all variations on the same themes. And then it came out that they were the same company.
Spark and Zebralight are obviously using the same housings, and who knows how much else is the same? About a year or so ago, Klarus had a line of lights that were obviously in Zebralight housings too, and had similar specs. Then, they got a new line that looked alot like Nitecore and Jetbeam.
Etc, etc.
If you go to CnQualitygoods website, you can see a lot of stuff like this. Various versions of similar lights with different names appear and disappear, looking a lot like these other lights that we recognize.