Stephen,
You'll remember the time when if you wanted chips in the UK, it used to be the case that the chip shop owner was probably Italian. Nowadays you can buy chips from a Chinese takeaway, and if you don't tell anybody where you bought them from, unless they can taste the difference between Italian and Chinese frying oil, then you'd probably get away with it.
Years ago I wouldn't have considered buying anything other than a "genuine" Fender electric guitar. Then they started making "second quality" instruments in Mexico, and subsequently made them in Japan, China, and Indonesia under a different brand name.
As the years progressed guitarists realised that the Asian instruments became (almost) as good as the "MIA" Made in America models, so what they would do, if image was a consideration, was just apply a Fender decal to the headstock of their Asian acquisition, and (virtually) nobody in an audience would have been any the wiser.
OK, electric guitars are not as sophisticated as accordions, and they can make them in such numbers to make them ridiculously cheap. There is a good chance that there is just not a big enough market for Asian built accordions that would bring their construction standards up to parallel Italian craftsmanship in so short a time, in the manner of Fender guitars.
That being the case, no doubt many Asian manufacturers will continue to confuse the less knowledgeable of us, until their brands gain their own reputation to "float" on the accordion market.
Back in the 70s who'd have thought that European roads would have been clogged up with Korean and Japanese cars these days? More to the point, where have all the traditional "quality" British makes gone? The answer was that they failed to see the threat of foreign imports, and eventually priced themselves out of business. My own father was a casualty of the failed British car industry. A strike every other week about who made the proper nut to fit a certain bolt was the norm, as well as "ghost" night workers who turned up to do a job that was covered by others, and they would take it in turns to sleep through the shift, or disappear home after an hour or two. That was the British car industry for you, and it never took the Asian makers long to capitalise on the shambles it eventually became.
Finally, if you care to open up a top of the range digital accordion of any make, check out where the circuitry was made. If it says "Made in Italy", then the chips are on me!
