You are both right and wrong as well though. It's super cheap to produce in China, but that has to do with production costs (cost of labour, electricity, etc.) and doesn't mean that the materials or labour are of a lesser quality, there are a hell of a lot of over engineered hard to build "jerry" skis. The high end Chinese skis can be more expensive, but I'd argue that is has less to do with materials and more to do with marketing ($1000 race or any other ski). Edges and base material only come from a few select producers and when buying in bulk like a large manufacturer would, the costs drop, while they would remain high for a small manufacturer.
Jskis don't seem any different than any other manufacturer in terms of materials being used (there is no way a 1mm thicker edge and base are eating up $250 extra dollars per pair of skis). The cores aren't anything special, plenty of companies use maple, everyone sells on carbon stringer hype, a lot of companies use quad-axial fiberglass, which still isn't the most optimal fiber orientation. The factory isn't anything special either (Utopie MFG) as they aren't exclusive to Jskis, I'm pretty sure Ninthward has used them before and if you wanted to build a run of skis, you'd only have to look them up and give them a call. I'd argue that it all comes down to marketing yourself as a superior product and the cost of utilizing a North American ski manufacturer and has a lot less to do with the materials in question.
