Sure, but you could say the same thing about pretty much any consumer product - i.e. tennis rackets, hockey sticks, baseball bats, etc.. that look virtually identical with small deviations.
In all cases, the companies that are first to market will have a far greater share of R&D, but will also benefit economically from being first to market and having a virtual monopoly.
At a certain point though, R&D costs have been more than recovered, and pricing for the product should go down.
But that hasn't happened, which leaves a spot in the market for a lower margin producer to come along and offer something similar for a fraction of the cost.
YMMV, but IMO monopolies or virtual monopolies are never a good thing. Case in point, the Maxtrax and Trex are priced virtually identically, which suggests they are colluding on price-fixing to protect their high margins.
I think the only reason we are having this discussion about recovery boards is that the market is so limited, and the Maxsas are actually a viable alternative to the big 2 producers that dominate market share. If it was a more broadly used consumer product, people would welcome competition and see it as capitalism working correctly.
In most cases (just ask my wife!) I buy the best of the best, but in this particular circumstance having done quite a bit of reading about all 3 products, I just didn't see that either the Maxtrax or Trex justified the huge premium over the Maxsa product. If the cost difference were smaller, I would have definitely have chosen the Maxtrax or Trex, simply for the convenience of the superior stacking/nesting compared to the Maxsa.
Louisville slugger you pick up today is virtually identical to ones grandpa used.
