How Make Millions From Fake Designer Handbags

[icyfroth]

An unfolding criminal case offers a rare glimpse into how a group of Chinese immigrants turned knockoff Michael Kors bags and Jimmy Choo shoes into a multimillion-dollar business, allowing them to snap up luxury cars, Rolexes and real estate in New York and Florida.

For $2 a pop, they imported plain handbags from China, along with jackets, boots, sunglasses and other wares, and brought them to a Long Island City, Queens, warehouse, where the items were transformed.

Embroidery machines, replica buttons and badges, decals, logos, symbols and manufacturing plates that were used to make the imports look like items from Prada, Coach, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Tory Burch were all recovered from the Queens warehouse, authorities said.

They sold the "luxury" products at too-good-to-be-true prices in Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia, Queens and Long Island, where authorities caught wind of the scheme after street sellers began badgering customers in beauty shops and nail salons, peddling the goods for $18 to $25 ($20-$27AUD).

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And the moral of the story is, if it's too good to be true, it usually is.

[pct001wine]

Is it wrong of me not to feel any concern for those caught up in this ?   Knock-off decorative products for those folk whose vanity is only exceeded by their cheapness ?

[the_great_she_elephant]

 One day while we were in Paris we walked the length of the The Champs Elysees, and the pavements were lined with hawkers 'selling Louis Vuitton bags

I doubt though whether those particular  knock-offs really damage the brand all that much  - they are so obviously fakes, and the idiots who buy them almost certainly couldn't afford the real thing anyway

[mugssy65]

I bought me Jimmy Choo hand bag at a store in Bali called the "100% genuine fake store"
Tell me it's real? Lol

[polocross58]

The real message seems to be that people will buy what they can afford

Sell a few items with high mark-up

or

Sell thousands of items with low mark-up

Wonder who wins at the end of the day ?

Wondering also if there's any discernible difference between the happiness-contentment of the wearer of an original Prada or Rolex and that of the wearer of the knock-off ?

Never in my life have I grabbed anyone by the shirt collar so I could investigate the label.  Call me weird, but I'm 'label blind'.  I just don't care.  Some things look attractive (to me) others not so much.  Others must be different and prepared to pay a ransom for something based on its brand-name.  Those unable to afford the originals are prepared to pay whatever they can afford for a fake, even if it's ugly.  Ah well, money in the till, either way and the world keeps spinning

[icyfroth]

---

@polocross58 wrote:

The real message seems to be that people will buy what they can afford

Sell a few items with high mark-up

or

Sell thousands of items with low mark-up

Wonder who wins at the end of the day ?

Wondering also if there's any discernible difference between the happiness-contentment of the wearer of an original Prada or Rolex and that of the wearer of the knock-off ?

Never in my life have I grabbed anyone by the shirt collar so I could investigate the label.  Call me weird, but I'm 'label blind'.  I just don't care.  Some things look attractive (to me) others not so much.  Others must be different and prepared to pay a ransom for something based on its brand-name.  Those unable to afford the originals are prepared to pay whatever they can afford for a fake, even if it's ugly.  Ah well, money in the till, either way and the world keeps spinning

---

I find these quite ugly

[izabsmiling]

the happiness/contentment might be affected if the buyer knew that the sale of the fake product they  were  buying could be linked to and supporting other forms of serious and organised international crime such as drug trafficking,people smuggling or terrorism (as  reports from Interpol, the OECD suggest can be the case)

[izabsmiling]

I think that they are ugly too Icy.They look more like vintage toiletry bags to me.

[icyfroth]

It really would be hard to tell the cheap knock-offs from the real thing when the real thing just looks like cheap trash anyway!

[the_great_she_elephant]

I've never been a fan of Louis Vuitton - but each to his own, I guess.

BTW Muggsy, I wasn't implying you were an idiot, only that people who thought they were buying the real thing were idiots.