Yeah there's all that but...
Typically in those filters "life" is more important than efficiency. When you swap to an aftermarket "car" filter, you get more efficiency and shorter life.
Just keep that in mind.
Kubota is/was built by Champ in North America. I know because they were my account for 2 years. Champ also builds some John Deere.
As for price...besides the distribution angle there is also the volume of production runs. There aren't as many OEM filters being built as there are Wix, Purolator, Super tech or what have you car filters. Every time a production line has a change over to run X amount of filters there is additional cost. Your buying production time..
So if Craftsman sells 100,000 filters a year and Car brand sells 1,000,000+ of a part number..
Let me add this..Kubota would stock their warehouses in early January. So they might order 10,000 of a part number. Or as low as 1,500 for slower moving part numbers. Then they would have their dealer meeting and give them early season specials to move the product. Around April they would come back with another decent set of orders for the spring season. Somewhere around August they would come back again with another decent set of orders. In the meantime the fill in orders would be low volumes of 2,000 units or less to fill in the gaps on specific part numbers based on retail sales.
Now you can ponder why the lawn and garden filter costs are higher...compared to Champ running a complete shift with a Ford OE number on a production line..
[ March 18, 2006, 07:30 AM: Message edited by: Filter guy ]