“What’s wrong with buying a good quality imitation?”, you ask.

The counterfeit market is not funded by one or two ignorant person(s) asking this question. It is fuelled by women around the world happily buying counterfeit goods and who would ask the same question if questioned. What they also don’t know is that the $100 they paid for each of their imitation LV bags is channeled into money laundering and funding underground businesses.

The majority of counterfeit goods are manufactured in Asia, mostly from China and Korea, and are made by slave workers. Most of them are young children, some as young as six (!), who are taken away from their homes to work in shockingly poor conditions, and for as little as a dollar an hour. The counterfeiting industry rakes up to $650 billion a year. That $650 billion is going somewhere, and you can be sure it’s not going back to the child labour who make these merchandise. The money goes into cash flow supporting the drug business, arms business and funding international terrorism.

Some people think it is not worth it to pay $10,000 for a Birkin. Some may not be able to afford the real item. If one can find a knock-off out there that is a hundred times cheaper, why pay so much for the real thing?

But stop to ponder a moment. Why is the real bag priced that high in the first place? Birkin handbags are hand-made, stitch by stitch, by experienced craftsmen, one of the primary factors contributing to the high price of all Hermes handbags. The production of each bag may take up to 48 work hours, translating into weeks. Involving a multitude of steps, each bag is of very high quality and immense craftsmanship. When you think about the cost of a specialized artisan who makes those bags, it’s very much worth the price.

Counterfeits on the other hand, are of extremely inferior quality. Instead of using fine lambskins or calfskins, counterfeiters use plastic or man-made leather. These will not be lasting and the designs are usually off. Even for the so called “good quality” imitations, the stitching is usually inferior and not even, the printing skewed and the print (if any) off colour. People who carry imitation goods may not have any idea that it is painfully obvious that they are projecting a false glamorization.

The issue here though, is not about how much business they lose anymore, because in most cases, consumers who resort to purchasing a counterfeit probably won’t buy the real thing anyway. The real issue comes in what does it stand for and how far back you trace it as to the slave labor that happened in the beginning. It’s an intellectual property and a human rights issue, and that is what’s serious. The luxury brands will always be making money because luxury goods will always be a hot commodity. When there is a high demand for luxury goods, there will be counterfeits.

France has laws implemented to target the counterfeiting industry. If you enter France with a fraudulent item, you will be fined very heavily, and your item will be confiscated. That is what they’re doing to protect their national industry. It does not seem to be happening in Asia soon, but in time to come, I hope to see that happening.

Ultimately, it is really up to us- the consumers. When consumers boycott counterfeits, there will be no need for it. If that doesn’t happen, it will continue to be there; it will continue to be a multi million dollar industry.

Let us do our part in not making child labour lucrative.

1 Comment »

1. [...] you cannot afford to carry a designer bag but must carry one, please do not carry a fake. There are affordable options like That Bag I want and Be a [...]

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