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Through the looking glass: At first glance, it may appear that the Chinese cooling company DeepCool has been sneakily rebranding and reselling its products stateside under the name "Shaking Tank" in an attempt to sidestep economic sanctions imposed by the US government. But things may not be so simple.
Back in June, the State Department slapped DeepCool on its sanctions list. The alleged offense was that the company did over $1 million in business with Russian firms involved in the Ukraine invasion. The sanctions barred the company's US subsidiary from conducting any business transactions with its Chinese parent company. US residents were prohibited from any commercial activities involving the DeepCool brand as well.
With these restrictions in place, DeepCool should have been legally barred from any sales in the US. However, it appears some entrepreneurial sorts weren't quite ready to ice the DeepCool brand out of the lucrative American market. YouTube tech reviewer Greg Salazar shared some product listings from Amazon on X/Twitter showing the company's coolers and fan hubs conspicuously scrubbed of any DeepCool branding.
Dug a bit deeper and found several instances of Amazon storefronts blurring brand logos and selling products under the "Shaking Tank" name. This doesn't appear to be Deepcool-specific, and is likely a reseller's way of circumventing sanctions in order to offload banned inventory. pic.twitter.com/YJOdj0E14J
– Greg Salazar (@GregSalazarYT) August 23, 2024
Even cardboard packaging shots have had any DeepCool insignias blurred beyond recognition; instead, the products have now adopted a "Shaking Tank" prefix. For example, the DeepCool AK620 air cooler is now listed as the "Shaking Tank AK620."
In some cases, the seller hasn't even done a good job at blurring the branding out. The DeepCool logo is still desciperable on an RGB convertor listed on the site, for instance.
As for who's behind this, the likeliest scenario is that it's not DeepCool itself pulling a fake rebrand – the legal risks would be far too severe. Salazar did note that the rebrand did not seem to be specific to DeepCool either. So, the more plausible explanation is that it's just a third-party reseller who snatched up the company's remaining US inventory and is burning through it by slapping on a new alias.
Whatever the reason, buying a so-called Shaking Tank product may not be a good idea because the sanctions have likely also killed any prospects of after-sales service or warranties.