ARB/Safari made their money back a long time ago I'm sure. With computer modeling and how easy GM made it to hook up the snorkel to the airbox I'm sure they didn't have to invest a whole lot into the development of the product. It's actually just been within the last half a year that the knock offs have even really been available. Prior to that (so for over ten years) the ARB/Safari was the ONLY option. No one else made anything for the H3 as far as I am aware. This is very unlike the Jeeps and many other vehicles that have at least a couple different manufacturers making different snorkels for each model, not including the knock offs available.
On top of that you can even got the knock offs for the Jeeps and Toyota and everything else for half the price of the knock off for the H3. Arb really is still only charging so much for them because it put its name on them and did the initial work. But trust me, they have more than made their investment back on every single snorkel model they've come out with. Manufacturing costs for those are really quite low, and they are far from a precision part so the reject rate must be rediculously low.
So while it's great to support the brands that do the initial work, business is business and you're always going to end up dealing with a copy of your product that you have to contend with, especially if you don't patent it, which I don't think they bother doing on something like this since it's such a generic part, you'd have to go through the patent process for every single model and that might not be worth the costs involved, especially globally. But I could be wrong.
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