Insider Exposes the Low-down of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Hermes Handbag Industry
I worked as a Purchasing Specialist for a big Hong Kong handbags trading company when I just graduated from school 5 years ago. During that period, I spent most of my time in Malaysia, South Korea and mainland China, and thus knew many friends engaging in the production source of handbags.
With these suppliers of resources, I started my own online trading business in 2007. At that time I only sold handbags, counterfeit brand-name bags, of any brand you possibly know about, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Hermes, Jimmy Choo and etc. And I only did dropshiping, completely resale. In this way I almost didn’t have any stock, and I sold dozens of bags a day in the best days. I chose HandbagsMaMa.com, the largest upstream replica designer handbags suppliers in Asia to do dropshipping, later www.HandbagsMaMa.com started to do retail business, and thus my price advantage lost its appeal and the volume of handbag business declined, so I switched to replica watches and VERTU mobile phone business.
These are all chitchats. When I was doing dropship business with HandbagsMaMa.com, I became acquainted with one of their product managers, Mack Chen, and it was after I befriended with him did I truly understand the inside story of replica bags industry.
The following is some excerpts of our talks.
I remember that when I first started doing replica Louis Vuitton handbags business, I have asked him that:” Do the so-called 1:1 top high replica designer handbags that look exactly the same as the genuine really exist?” Probably most replica lovers and genuine users are desperate to know the answer. Mack Chen’s answer surprised me, as his answer was relatively long, I am going to divide it into paragraphs.
Mack Chen:” For those top-level replica bags, except for Production Directors who are responsible for the product management of certain models, all the official personnel, including manufacturing workers, quality inspector, after-sales customer service staff and after-sales maintenance personnel, have no way to tell whether a 1:1 replica bag is authentic or fake”.
Mack Chen continued that, In China, Malaysia and other places, there are several large handbag factories which used to be and remain still OEM manufacturers for Louis Vuitton , Gucci, Prada, Hermes and other brands, and his company HandbagsMaMa.com is the largest one in China. Although the control over management and material supply was strict, since these factories mastered the technology and production processes, they began to skip these brand-name enterprises to obtain similar raw material supply through various secret channels, so that with the raw materials and crafts, they could easily produce exactly the same products. After the factories mastered the crafts and production process, some began to build their own handbag brands, and continued to provide OEM manufacture to the big brands while operating their own brands, therefore, a number of handbags of the same style and quality as genuine goods slowly entered the market, which was an important source of top replica bags.
Why I said that only Production Directors responsible for this production were able to distinguish the authenticity? This was much related to the characteristics of handbags.
Mark Chen continued to explain:” The trend of handbag manual production, raw materials and styles changed quickly, which determined that handbag was not pure standardized goods, when there was no standard, there was almost no difference between genuine and counterfeit, but only different quality levels.”
That’s why there were a lot of enterprises engaging in the replica handbags industry, and since many replicas looked almost the same as the genuine, many consumers loved high replica bags, which had become a global consumption habit and consumer trend.
Let’s give you a simple example, when producing a certain Louis Vuitton bag, the origin of animal fur material might alter due to stockout when the market for the supply of raw materials changed, only Production Directors responsible for the product management were in the know of such subtle changes and how to distinguish. In addition, details such as the sources of sewing thread, whether the sewing thread suppliers were different, whether there were changes in the sewing thread’s toughness, color and fiber strength, were only known by the production directors.
Therefore, if you want to tell whether a bag was genuine and counterfeit, not even the brand-name enterprises themselves can be sure, unless he was an experienced senior technician or products director.
Later on in the replica designer bags industry, to people in the line, there were no longer the so-called difference of the genuine and replica in model making, purchasing, production and circulation, only the quality varied.
Mack Chen also mentioned a very important point: because of the non-standard market situation, only about 3% of replica handbags belonged to the category of 1:1 top high replica, about 17% was super-A level and the other 80% were plain refuse, any discerning people could tell they were crudely made fake.
A few days ago, a female friend of mine was distressed for a bag, she was so troubled that she lost appetite and even couldn’t fall asleep. She has bought a Louis Vuitton Monogram Multicolor Aurelia in Hong Kong recently, but the problem is neither the bag nor the store. The fact is she recently heard from one of her girl friends that many exclusive stores wanted to raise profits, and some staff secretly sold 1:1 replicas to the customers. She freaked out after what she heard, and she couldn’t stand the thought that she had spent much more money on a replica bag than others, so she asked people to identify the authenticity for her. Of course everyone told her that her bag was real. I later told her that, she did not need to worry if her bag was a 1:1 replica, as name brand consumption was always to satisfy the mental need. You go to exclusive stores and enjoy the distinguished shopping experience, having your own share of enjoyment of luxury goods, as long as the goods you get are high quality, then what channels the bag come from does not matter, because you already have the best product and inner satisfaction.
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