I installed powdered lead conveyor at Exide many decades ago.
I was surprised at the various labels that went on one run of batteries.
There was even different lengths of warranty in the same run. They just charged more for the sticker with the bigger number on it/longer warranty.
Then there were other batteries on different runs that were in an fact lower quality.
Reminds me of when a good friend of mine was working at the Goodyear (now known as Veyance Tech, since Goodyear divested their hose and belt production and sold it to some Union-busting venture capialist assholes about a decade or so ago) hose and belt plant here in Lincoln back in the early 1980's.
I was there doing some construction work for the company I worked for that summer while school was out, digging new trenches under the concrete floor to run new steam lines for the new "pots" they were installing that vulcanize and "cure" the hoses. How that worked was there was a mold that had 36 forms on it that resembled and was called a "tree". Straight lengths of hose were slid onto the curved hose forms on the tree, the door on the pot closed and sealed and high pressure, high temperature steam ran through the pot for a set period of time. Then, while still hot and pliable, before the now vulanized rubber cools and takes its shape permanently, the operator had less that two minutes to slide the still very hot hoses off of the forms on the tree. Too slow and the hoses would take their permanent set and be stuck on their forms - necessitating cutting them off and rendering them unuseable.
It was hot, sweaty work, but paid damn good with great benefits. Hose Pullers had a quota each had to make of useable hoses per shift (Union negotiated contract) that an average worker could attain. If you were quick, efficient and had learned your job well, a good Puller could make their quota a couple of hours after lunch break and then spend the next 1½-2 hours just kicking back cleaning their area, staging empty wheeled bins for the next shift to put their finished hoses in, shooting the breeze with your fellow workers, etc.
After working 3rd Shift for a couple of years pulling hoses, my friend had enough seniority to bid on, and get, a Day Shift job as a Labeler. Those were the people who printed the manufacturer's logo and part number on the hose or belts. For hoses, there was a jig that properly oriented the hose so that it was printed in the exact same place on every hose. There is a "cartridge" that has a silkscreen of the logo and part number, a roller and a reservoir to keep the roller that runs across the silkscreen primed.
So, I was on lunch break from the construction job cutting the concrete floors and trenching for the new steam lines back in the Hose Department and decided to wander over and see what was up with my friend. He was printing FOMOCO logos and part numbers on the hoses in light blue from a half-filled bin next to him and then putting the labeled ones into another bin on the other side of his station. He got a few more done while I was there, glanced at the cycle counter on the machine and told me to watch what he did next.
He rolled away the partially filled bin of Ford hoses, popped that cartridge out of the stenciling machine, cleaned off the machine, looked at the clipboard hanging next to him, went over to a shelf and pulled off a new cartridge, loaded it into his stenciling machine, rolled up a new empty "finished" bin by his work station, reached into the same bin of blank hoses he had been using to make Ford replacement hoses and began stenciling those hoses. The first few he tossed into a reject barrel because until completely primed, the stencil doesn't fully print. I noticed that these were printed in a gold color. He told me to take a look at one, so I pulled it out and it had a partial NAPA logo and PN on it! He told me that his entire shift the day before he was printing Goodyear logos and PNs his entire shift on those exact same hoses from that run and they'd switched over from Goodyear to Ford sometime during 2nd Shift the night before.
Point being, you may pay way different prices for the exact same item made by the exact same manufacturer to the exact same quality standards - depending only on the brand name put on it for its final retail price.
