Down in the weeds, who's who in RC manufacturing?

[wvrailfan]

I was wondering if maybe Alpha or one of the guys at Motion could give the rest of us a little primer on who is making what for who in the RC plane world? Searching YouTube provides a confusing array of videos of planes bearing more than one company name, sometimes several, but apparently coming out of the same factory.

Who is FN-RC or XUAV or any of several other names that appear to be manufacturers for several brands. Does FMS, Freewing, Dynam, HK and all the other names we are acquainted with manufacture their own planes, or farm that out to factories that also manufacture planes for other companies?

Just curios about some of the "behind the curtain" stuff that goes on in the business side of the hobby.

Jim

[DonRhone]

I have wondered the same thing. Having perused a number of web sites and seeing different band names on what seems to be the same plane I can not help but wonder what the relationships are. I remember that FMS used to make some of the Durafly warplanes in the 1100 series, but then the contact ended or at least the relationship ended and now another company has taken over making planes for the Durafly series of planes carried exclusively by HobbyKing.

Then of course there is the latest new brand, Eleven Hobby, which it turns out is made by FMS and is exclusive to Bang Good, the large Chinese on line company specializing in on line merchandise. That relationship is too bad, I would have liked to have seen Motion RC carry those planes as well. However it seems that Motion RC is now going to partner with Freewing on the Flightline brand as their exclusive distributor in North America. I see Fliightline is now available in a number of Asian sites now as well as the parent Freewing planes as well.

[Alpha]

Many factories manufacture brands for themselves and also for other companies. Freewing, for example, makes planes under the Freewing and FlightLineRC brand in partnership with Motion RC, and occasionally with distributors like Ready2Fly and Sebart.

FMS is also a full house manufacturer, and does the same as Freewing, producing planes under its own name while also contracted to produce planes for certain distributors under other names.

FN-RC is a primarily a distributor in Taiwan, that distributes products made by Freewing, FMS, LX, and other manufacturers. FN-RC also has a very limited production capacity for planes that are essentially build by a couple of guys for very small production runs. FN-RC itself isn't considered a manufacturer in the sense that FMS, Dynam, Freewing, HSD, etc are actual manufacturers in control of a wider gamut of the supply chain.

Beyond all that, brand names aren't talked about much, because, frankly, companies pour a lot of resources into promoting their retail facing brand names, and drawing too much attention to the inner workings behind those scenes could potentially put that exclusivity at risk. Eflite, Parkzone, Flyzone, A-RC, BlitzRC, and many others, for example, are brand names, not manufacturers or factories. We don't mind talking up our deep relationship with manufacturers like Freewing and our continuing partnership to develop their products under the Freewing jet brand and the FlightLineRC warbird brand, but on the other hands I can understand the hesitation for other distributors to clearly outline who makes what for them under their respective store brands.