The upward push of realistic false designer bags

The fake designer handbag business is nothing new let's take a look at this the quality of knockoffs today is at a whole new level and that is causing tremendous problems for Brands selling the real deal fake bags have been developed so well they can trick nearly everyone and the market right now is booming fueled by social media users and.

Influencers showing off their hyper realistic replicas Amy Wang is here with us now she is an assistant managing editor for the New York Times magazine and you wrote about this Amy welcome so thank you for having me I'm gonna Dive Right into this because you brought along two uh samples for us to basically examine okay let's see we don't know uh.

So is one of these fake and one of these is real that's the thinking unless you guys disagree in other words you can smell it you can you can fondle the bag okay do whatever you need to do too okay I have to tell you I cannot tell I mean the stitching looks good on this it smells like real leather I I cannot tell it seems real.

Um same as this I look at the stitching and that seems to be yeah I'm gonna say the um smaller one is real the larger one is fake oh interesting would you would you agree I no I actually would have said the opposite that this is fake and this is real well I guess this is a good moment to reveal that both of these are.

Fake the two bags are both counterfeit bags which is from China um in this in this categorization known as super fakes which are bags that are now so realistic that uh the average person or even an expert or even often an authenticator or person at the actual Boutique can't tell so what are you discovering about how bags are becoming.

Super fakes now because I thought there used to be a smell test there's a quality test I've exhausted everything that I know how to cut try and look at which is very minimal so what's happening I know a lot of these bags being manufactured in China right so we used to be familiar with this sort of Canal Street breed of bag where you're.

Like oh that's so clearly a fake bag you know the the stitching's all off the color is all wrong but there are a couple factors that have contributed to the rise of superfics two on the demand side of things one is that consumers are being asked to pay higher and higher prices right like a Chanel handbag actually costs ten thousand dollars or.

More now wow and that's an extraordinary price to ask out of people who are feeling squeezed who are feeling impacts of a recession and might not have high enough salaries to even like afford their their average daily life but would like a luxury and then secondly right they want to shop in a convenient way people are used to buying on Instagram.

On AliExpress on dhgate on Amazon so there's no real like sort of fear of buying a good online now and if you're being advertised an ad on Instagram for a fake bag you might as well take that up right you're like well it's a hundred dollars you know if I pay a hundred there for that and I pay a hundred dollars for like a meal at a restaurant.

What's there to lose so these sellers in China are also getting very Savvy at the same time and realizing they can advertise over these new sales channels and they're also getting better organized within themselves the labor chains are better organized the technology is better organized and then of course most importantly the selling.

Of it is just so easy when you can just create an ad on Instagram put it out to a bunch of American women and across the globe seamlessly conduct the sort of sale that would not be possible before yeah so Amy what does all this mean for designer Brands themselves how are they responding to those yeah so naturally designer brands are pretty worried about.

How to address the problem and they're spending billions of dollars in these sort of like trade organizations trying to to counter and Tackle counterfeits but U.S customs for example to use one example of a border patrol group only has so many people and they can only inspect about five percent that's it's estimated about.

Um five percent of what comes in into the border so it seems like a really great uh odd or a great yeah right like great Stakes for people who are interested in buying bags like you only have a five percent risk of getting something relaxing and I wonder if the perception of customers has also changed because there is considerable markup for.

Actual designer handbags right it did not cost the company ten thousand dollars to make the handbag so I'm wondering if consumers now have a lower guilt level in purchasing a fake have you found that that's exactly right there have actually been some studies that gen Z in particular is more interested than ever in than any other.

Generation in purchasing fakes and by some estimates around 60 or 70 percent of young people of Jen's ears have bought consciously a counterfeit item and been happy about it they intentionally gotten by the 200 version rather than the ten thousand dollar version because they see it as a sort of subversive like Stick it to the Man like.

I don't want to give any more money to the bottom line of lvmh I'd rather you know do something really subversive and and cool um so that kind of vibe is definitely pervasive amongst people I think people realize that as there's widening wealth disparity across the globe too it's sort of difficult to be putting your money.

Into something that you feel like you're not totally getting the value of yeah people I guess are becoming a bit more conscientious about what they're putting their money towards but really fascinating to see I definitely taking both of them Amy thank you so much thank you so much for having me.

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