The main advantage we have in making our items inhouse in our own factory is that we can control quality.
The big disadvantage we have is our factory is in Vietnam and lots of junk comes from the local market here. Unfortunately, people who don't know much about that but have heard of “ScootRS” incorrectly associate us with local junk. A few examples:
Twice on US forums recently people who commented on hackjob scooters from Vietnam in the US have called ones “ScootRS” bikes. One was a fake Vespa fenderlight, something we've never done. Another Lambretta had a knockoff disc brake, therefore it was assumed... Given that we only do a few a year, and you can even see them on our website and read what we do on our restored scooters (which is better quality than most scooters being resold at Western shops), luckily that doesn't happen much.
About parts: recently we've been brought local samples of custom twisted Lambretta stands but found them unsellable. They are made badly wrong: wrong brackets, wrong height, wrong angle - yet you see these at UK resellers of low-end Vietnam local market parts for around $115! Bizarre. If we sell them we'll have to completely redo them.
Unfortunately we'll still get wrongly associated with the poor ones in some cases. For example, similar problems exist with the local regular Lambretta stands. Again recently, we saw a post on a forum about an incorrect straight-up stand that someone guessed was from ScootRS when in fact it was from a major UK dealer who probably brought in the local Vietnam market items.
Here's the incorrect stand, which is what the local market Vietnam stands look like:

We used to carry these before too and fix them up so not so bad but we were never happy with them so, having our own factory, we made them inhouse ourselves the other year. Here's an actual ScootRS stand:

Two stands, both from Vietnam, but one pumped out from little shops for the local market while the other is made firsthand in our factory by our own workers and sent direct to you. (Which is why we love customer feedback and can act on it!)
Quite an obvious difference in quality, no? The same story can be repeated with 100s of other items, from little items up to poor quality “Spaq/Sterling” sand cast knockoff disc brakes that crack.
So, keep in mind as you shop for scooter parts:
- ScootRS does NOT equal Vietnam. Most of our items are made inhouse and nothing like the local Vietnam items.
- Don't assume Western shops equal quality. They all import parts, even Casa Lambretta buys parts in Vietnam. Some shops in the UK have far more to do with “Vietnam” that we ever will, selling all manner of local market items we never would.
- Ask who specifically made the parts before buying and don't accept a vague answer. Most of our larger items have our name on them but a few Vietnam reseller shops in the UK and elsewhere have been caught saying items were from us while supplying poor quality local market items.
- If you specifically want our item, ask us if we supply parts to that shop.