I worked in a sporting goods store back in the 1970's and FIE would buy stuff from anybody and everybody. Spanish makers, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian, Italian. They didn't discriminate. Some items were pretty fair quality and some were slightly better than paper weights. It is very hard to judge quality based solely on the brand marking. Italians and Spanish armories had different options and levels of quality control. So off the same tooling and production line you could buy the $29.99 level of fit, finish and quality or the 99.99 level. Some times a company offerred their "loss leader" and a better model of the same.