When Hasselblad began producing mf cameras there was a close association with Kodak. My first Hassy, a 1000F came with Kodak lenses, so Hasselblad marketing a Kodak view camera would not seem strange.
As for the OP’s assumption that there is no difference among makers in the quality of clothing I still wear sweaters bought from B Altman, a nyc department store that closed ar least 30 years ago. My boots and shoes seem to last for years and years. My wife still looks sharp in clothes that she bought in Hong Kong almost fifty years ago. In the long run, quality is cheaper. Why buy a pair of shoes or hat that won’t last. Oh yes, just had a hat cleaned that I bought about 20 years ago. It now looks brand new!
i might be wrong ( i never lived in sweden in the 40s-50s ) victor hasselblad had a shop and they sold and repaired lot of things
they had a hungarian cabinet maker working for them who was film holders repair / restore/ rebuild / make - guy
and was asked to construct a KNOCK OFF of a kodak camera so they could sell it in the shop
it wasn't a kodak camera they sold or rebranded, it was something they hired an employeed to make using the kodak
as the design to copy... and after a couple of batches of "hasselblad universal view cameras "
the maker no longer wanted to put the hasselblad tag on it but instead his own name, and after that he and victor hasselblad parted ways.
the camera he made for hasselblad was a rip off / copy / inspiration from the kodak and it was good quality.
after working for hasselblad he made hundreds, of cameras and they were well known throughout sweden.
from time to time you see them on ebay, the metric sized ones are not very rare but the non metric / english sized ones are not common.
=
the knock off handbags i mentioned earlier in the thread were written about by a reporter who realized
that her name brand fashion clothes was no longer as high end as it had been when she first began buying the clothes
IDK 10-15 years earlier. in those early days the thread was stronger and the clothes was of higher quality. she wrote a book
about her travels to the factory/factories in china that were making the clothes and handbags and remarked how
after the bags were going down the assembly line there was an island and some bags went on one side and others went on the other ..
she asked what was going on and the owner told her the one side was the name brand the other side was .. the knock off...
she also remarked how the handbags are predominant in the ads because they cost the least and the markup is the most.
as i said earlier --
i am not a collector, i don't have tons of gear that is similar but made by different manufacturers
and i after hearing someone suggest they could pinpoint what region specific olive oil camera from in a blind taste test
it made me wonder if camera collectorafficionatos would be able to tell which cameas made which images and what cameras were which
if they were presented with a blank bodies of a handful of cameras and lenses of similar quality tier.
its been a long standing comment that people who are film/analog camera/process lovers can tell the difference
between digital images and film based images, high end ink based prints and film based prints too ( a lot of them can't ).
there are a lot of folks who shoot LF cameras who collect and use beautiful old brass lenses, and know their "signatures"
and it made me wonder that too, if someone was given brass lenses some no name, some with well known brands/makers on them
and they were all in some generic barrel, would people be able to tell the difference between a port-land lens and a beach lens and a darlot lens and
some random no name that was a knock off or similar ...
there is a lot more mystique about quality