Right now the 'Brand' abilities only have use for 'DAMAGED' items found in dungeons and sometimes leve rewards. The idea is that the 'vintage' items they produce provide a slight stat upgrade above the regular stuff in the crafting log. The items are not that useful as by the time you can HQ them you have already leveled past and are probably getting your iLvl55 crafting gear (HQ1star).

I'd imagine that SE is going to have further use for these brand abilities as the game develops in the next few months, with recipes that are actually worth crafting aside from filling up your log.