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Ask AI · How can Dayfeng’s encoding system make trust visible?

In China’s consumer market, the word “brand” carries not only product functionality, but also a promise—trust in safety, trust in quality, and trust in after-sales support. In recent years, this promise has been precisely harvested by “name-alikes.” When consumers go looking for a familiar brand name, only to end up buying a product of “unknown origin,” the chain of trust begins to break.

Hidden Damage: When Trust Becomes the Target to Be Harvested

We often see certain familiar brand names being combined with all kinds of prefixes. Although the color scheme, fonts, and logos on the packaging may look strikingly similar, these products—seemingly “that brand” at a glance—still end up deceiving consumers, leading to mistaken purchases and wrong buys, and causing various losses.

These businesses are known as “brand-name hitchhikers.” They don’t need to invest huge costs in building a brand. They only have to tweak the product packaging to seize market share at a price lower than that of genuine products. Consumers often don’t understand the fine distinctions in trademark law, can’t interpret the company’s full legal name shown on the packaging, and won’t check the company’s business registration information before purchasing.

Such issues are not new. But in the new era of consumption, deeper concerns have been exposed. The more developed the market economy is and the more refined the division of labor becomes, the wider the information gap between consumers and producers. In the face of this gap, consumers neither have the capability nor the obligation to become identification experts across every industry. The only rope they can hold onto is a well-known name. And that rope is being used by some people as bait to lure their prey into the net. This is no longer a simple case of business ethics going wrong—when trust can be monetized and harvested at such low cost, it erodes the underlying logic of how the market operates.

Regulatory Sword Flash: A Turning Point Toward Institutionalized Market Order

To be sure, in recent years, as efforts to protect intellectual property have continued to intensify and both judicial and administrative actions have been launched, this gray industrial chain has begun to pay a heavy price.

In the kitchen and bath industry, the Fujian High People’s Court recently issued a second-instance ruling in a trademark infringement case filed by JOMOO against “Guangdong JOMOO.” The court found that the defendant constituted trademark infringement and unfair competition, and ordered赔偿 of 6 million yuan. In the electrical appliance industry, Bull Group’s lawsuit against the “Gongniu” cable trademark infringement case resulted in赔偿 of 20 million yuan.

In the pipeline industry, similar rights-protection actions are also frequent. As a benchmark brand in the pipeline industry, from “Hangzhou Dayfeng” to “Shanghai Dayfeng,” the number of lawsuits involving pipeline-company-related trademark rights infringement and unfair competition disputes brought by only Dayfeng Enterprise Group Co., Ltd. as the plaintiff alone runs into dozens. In a case involving “某某 Dayfeng Aluminum-Plastic Co., Ltd.” in East China, the court ultimately determined that it constituted trademark infringement and unfair competition. The ruling required it to change its enterprise name, not to use the term “Dayfeng” again, and to pay compensation. In March 2025, a notice of an administrative penalty published in relevant newspapers showed that a water-heating and plumbing business in Heze was fined heavily for selling fake “Dayfeng” brand manifold valves and pipe materials.

But more deserving of attention than case-by-case compensation is the fact that the institutionalization of market supervision is accelerating. In June 2025, the 16th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress reviewed and adopted the newly revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People’s Republic of China. The number of articles increased from 33 in the original law to 41, effective from October 15, 2025. This revision is widely seen within the industry as a key step in cracking down on “involution-style” competition and standardizing market order.

A series of institutional outcomes is sending a clear signal: the cost of brand-name hitchhiking and riding on others’ work is going up. Those opportunists trying to confuse the market by leaning on “the same name” and seizing share with low prices are facing a two-pronged squeeze from market supervision and judicial protection. From high-amount case rulings to the top-level design of laws and regulations, the space for “brand-name hitchhikers” is being systematically squeezed.

Clear the Source and Purify the Waters: Benchmark Enterprises Build a Fortress of Trust

As the institutional sword of market supervision is reshaping the rules of competition, and as the judicial protection balance keeps tilting toward honest operators, the underlying logic of market competition is quietly changing. In early 2026, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the “Opinions on Improving Housing Quality,” clearly proposing to increase the supply of “good homes” that are safe, comfortable, green, and smart. Starting from multiple dimensions—materials, construction, and operation and maintenance—it sets new benchmarks for housing quality. The real estate and home improvement industries are shifting from “price wars” and “name wars” to “value wars” focused on quality and service.

Against this backdrop, some industry leaders have long moved from passive rights protection to actively building quality-based fortresses. Their practice shows that genuine brand protection is not about fighting lawsuits—it’s about making it so consumers can “recognize it at a glance and buy it with confidence.” When the cost of identifying genuine products drops low enough, and counterfeit products have nowhere to hide in the open, the market ecosystem will change at its roots.

Taking Dayfeng Enterprise Group, for example, which received the “Home Improvement Plumbing NO.1” honor issued by the World Brand Lab, the starting point of this “offense-defense battle” is hidden in each seemingly unremarkable string of codes on every product.

On the tens of billions of meters of pipelines produced by Dayfeng every year, each product has a unique identification code. This code enables precise traceability of every product—what batch its raw materials came from, which time it was produced in which workshop, which worker performed quality inspection, which logistics route transported it, which distributor it was shipped to, and even which installer ultimately installed it and which consumer’s home it ended up in. With this string of codes, every product gains an unforgeable “identity card.”

What this reflects behind the scenes is Dayfeng’s three-decade commitment to quality and its accumulated technical expertise. Since its establishment in 1996, Dayfeng has stayed focused on the pipeline industry. Today, it has grown into a home-improvement pipeline giant integrating R&D, production, sales, and service. The advertising slogan “Dayfeng pipes, usable for fifty years” echoes across the country, but this promise is not empty talk—it is built on strict standards and continuous investment. According to publicly available data, Dayfeng’s products sell well in more than 110 countries and regions worldwide, serving countless households globally. This demonstrates its solid position in consumers’ minds.

To ensure the quality of every single pipeline, Dayfeng has cumulatively invested more than several tens of billions of yuan in R&D. It has multiple provincial- and ministerial-level research platforms, including CNAS national-level certified laboratories, national-level enterprise technology centers, and Guangdong provincial engineering technology research and development centers. It has cumulatively received more than 1,000 domestic and international patents, completed more than 140 international certifications (including the five major international authoritative certifications from the U.S. NSF, the EU CE, Germany DVGW, Spain AENOR, and the Netherlands KIWA), led and participated in the formulation of more than 110 national and industry standards, and promoted high-quality development in the industry through technological innovation.

Quality is the foundation; service is the guarantee. Dayfeng innovates within the industry with a “product + service” model and launched a value-added service called the “Dayfeng Safety Guard.” After consumers purchase PPR water pipes, they can schedule professional engineers to visit the site through official channels. Services include product authenticity verification, pipeline water pressure testing, and VR panoramic photo capture. For pipeline systems that pass inspection and acceptance, Dayfeng provides a free product warranty for up to 50 years and a free welding warranty—its “dual warranty” commitment gives consumers peace of mind.

As of the end of 2025, Dayfeng has arranged 9 sales subsidiaries nationwide, 32 marketing offices, more than 1,500 distributors/agents, and 130,000 distribution partners. This nationwide sales and service network ensures consumers can receive professional support anytime and anywhere.

Dayfeng’s practice reveals a deep logic: in markets with information asymmetry, trust is not an abstract slogan—it is an asset that can be quantified, encoded, and delivered. That unique string of codes is, in essence, a form of “visualized trust.” Dayfeng has used 30 years to complete a “system build” for trust. This is not merely defensive passive response, but proactive definition of standards.

Conclusion

The reason why the brand-name hitchhiking phenomenon persists again and again is that it reflects a deep paradox in the development process of a market economy: once brand assets accumulate to a certain extent, they become not only an enterprise’s core competitive strength, but also an object coveted and eroded by others. Those opportunists who try to take a slice by “borrowing a shortcut with the same name” are essentially running down the market’s entire trust reserves. What they harm is not only the reputation of a particular company, but also consumers’ overall confidence in the word “brand.”

A real brand never comes from “name-bumping” on someone else’s reputation. Instead, it is built day after day through steadfast quality commitment, ongoing technological innovation, and meticulous service guarantees—accumulated piece by piece. Dayfeng was founded 30 years ago, starting from a single pipeline, and gradually grew into an industry benchmark covering multiple businesses such as pipelines, bathroom fixtures, waterproofing, and water purification. What it relies on is its persistence in honoring commitments to consumers. This persistence, in essence, is a choice of “long-termism”—with 30 years of focus, it answers what never changes about its original intention; with the trust of countless households, it defines what truly constitutes a brand; with every product’s commitment, it interprets what sustainable development looks like.