I'd better expand on "no".
Most softboxes, including ours and those from most of the leading brands, are made in the same factory. This factory knows nothing about photography or lighting but they have the capability to make pretty much anything in terms of softboxes and metal bits.
They make a vast range, and their cheapest softboxes start from as little as £8, factory gate price, and you'll find them all over Ebay and similar, because the biggest sales are always from the cheapest products, as with just about everything else in life.
Once we get past the cheapest, they also make folding softboxes, and they use a folding mechanism that we developed, and other mechanisms that we didn't develop for them. It's then up to their customers to specify
1. The materials used for the softbox construction (the walls) and this can vary from paper-thin, where the light leaks out through the walls, seams and flaps, to really heavy duty stuff that will last for years and which doesn't leak light. The walls are also available with a whole range of different finishes, white and silver obviously, but also the silver ones can be flat or irregular, and the irregular ones can have either a subtle or varying levels of aggressive stippling, which affects the distribution of light enormously.
2. Then we get to the inner diffuser, which can be positioned in a place where it's easy to make, or in a place where it works well, and it can be made of plastic "tissue paper" or it can be much thicker. The inner diffuser is safe from UV, and tends not to discolour over time, so as long as it's colour temperature neutral, it will last for a while. Also, it can have a massive gap between itself and the walls, which is cheap and easy, and which can compensate for poor softbox design and poor outer diffusion, or it can be positioned in the correct place and create much more even light diffusion.
3. Then we get to the outer diffuser, again thickness, quality of materials and quality of diffusion can make a massive difference here, and also the good diffusion material needs to be stable so that the colour temperature doesn't change as soon as it is subjected to UV light.
For many years, it was Chimera who set the standard, nearly everyone used to use Chimera softboxes, especially for fashion photography, and we used to say that Chimera softboxes made cheap clothes look good - because of the qualities of their diffusers. Apart from Chimera, Bowens put a lot of thought into softbox design and quality, with their wafer series, which had semi reflective panels added, extra diffusion in places and very good outer diffusers - all of which were needed with their very shallow design.
When I first got involved with Lencarta, a lot of years ago now, the softboxes were standard factory issue, but over the years there have been a lot of changes, because we believe that our customers would rather pay more to get more.
