i believe there are several company's buying blank tubes from the same manufacturer like ionics brodex , Alex has a different manufacturer, i spent some time looking into and calling company's for carbon tubes i found a couple the sent me some samples and i looked at make in my own prototype, but i found it time consuming and costly trying different carbon tube with texture and different thickness, i also found it a issue with getting a different clamp to fit, so its not easy to design and test different ones to come up with a good pole let alone the cost of development stages, so i would say Alex is on the right track, then there is the fact we are all bust people cleaning away who's got the time to try develop a pole, i don't think some understand what company's go through developing a new pole for the market