Here's what I've found through browsing through Decathon's line of table tennis stuff. They do sell low end stuff for the basement rec room crowd - cheap, lightweight balls, rackets with thin, bare sponge, roll-up nets... This stuff often gets labeled as "for use in limited space". But looking through their bats and balls - they do have high end stuff. The 3 star balls are, I think, out of the same Minkow factory that makes DHS ABS balls. They're ITTF certified. And their high end bats are very definitely enthusiast quality. They have a long line of rubbers that are ITTF approved (though this isn't unusual - Stiga has their one star to five star rubbers approved also).
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https://www.decathlon.my/table-tennis-r ... bc950c01c0
This is from packaging of their top of the line pre-made. When have you ever seen anything like this in a non-table tennis dedicated sports shop, let alone a big chain store? This tells me that, at least for table tennis, they've paid attention to detail - they actually carry stuff that "people in the know" - or people who think they're in the know - that is, us  - would actually buy. I'm actually considering buying the bat above - it costs MYR129, which translates to USD28. That's for a carbon arylate blade with two sheets of rubber on it. I suspect it's all made in China, but they've obviously consulted with someone - my guess is with an established table tennis retailer like TT11 or Zeropong - to source this stuff. I suspect this blade/rubber combo will not be to my liking (probably too heavy if anything) but I've always wanted a carbon arylate blade, and it'd be an opportunity to review it. If anything, I'd like to see how easy it is to remove the rubber...
Iskandar
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