And I say respected not on the ground that n00bs buy them, or that they're particularly high performance, but that they have a very good reputation for reliabilty, and there are very few things to fault in their blocks. They make cheap, decent performance blocks, and as a company, they seem freindly and customer orientated.
For example, they did have a slight issue with the clear tops on the Maze3 when they first came out. They fixed the problem, but also replaced many blocks, free of charge, that had had problems. To me, thats the mark of a respectable company.
I know what you mean though, there are many ways to measure respectability, but to me, they do very good work.
( I'm less pissed off now, after some sleep, was a long week at work
)