The reason for not always cloning the original is that if I am entering 5 very similar products, and my product list for this category is a couple of hundred items long, rather than finding the original and cloning that I just press 'Clone' after saving each new item.
Make 1, Clone,
fill in the details, clone
fill in the details, clone
fill in the details, clone
fill in the details, clone
etc.
I hope this makes sense.