Apex DVD

Here's a story our group heard in China that I think is interesting. Do you know the Apex brand of DVD players that you can see in Wal-Mart? I bought one for around $30, and their sales price is much lower than the competition. Others have seen one for as little as $15. They are easily the low-cost leader.

Some questions have been asked as to how they do this, especially as merely paying for the right for the licenses to create and sell a DVD player are $20 per unit. Well, it turns out that they never paid these fees. And then they never paid the Chinese company that built the DVD player, which is left being owed hundreds of millions of dollars. It's very easy to make a profit when your Cost of Goods Sold is zero.

The only article I could find on this is here, showing an arrest of their chairman in Shanghai. Just another example of the corruption that is rampant in Chinese business practices.

UPDATE: I found this as well, showing how secretive the company is.