A pair of Prada sunglasses, a Jacquemus bag, a Saint Laurent bag, some New Balance sneakers and some Adidas Samba… A young man shows off his latest purchases by doing the classic unboxing (opening packages) and telling the camera about the quality, packaging and smell of each of his purchases. In the background, shelves full of designer handbags and sneakers. In the comments, his followers ask him for “the links”, links with which they can access these products. This young man is not a influencer He is not just a luxury consumer, but a regular and expert customer of an app that sells counterfeits. He is one of the many who populate TikTok and whose videos sometimes reach half a million views. Last year, according to a study carried out by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), European companies lost an average of 50 billion euros and failed to create around 416,000 jobs due to this cause. Fashion and perfumery top the list of counterfeit items.
The rise of digital retailers selling ultra-fast fashion such as Shein or Temu led some young people a few years ago to join the so-called hauls, i.e. huge orders of very cheap clothing that is normally used once and then resold on platforms such as Vinted or directly returned. With the implementation of this consumption model, it was only a matter of time before the digital trade of counterfeit brands proliferated. “The increase in these applications after the pandemic is a complex phenomenon with multiple causes. The economic crisis has driven consumers to look for cheaper alternatives, while the rise of e-commerce has created an environment conducive to these transactions. The improvement in the quality of replicas, combined with a change in the consumption priorities of young people, has blurred the line between authentic and fake. The lower perceived risk in online shopping and the anonymity offered by apps have facilitated this illegal market,” Pedro Mir Bernal, academic and research director and professor of marketing and consumer behavior at ISEM Fashion Business School, explains to S MODA.
Searching for the name of some of these apps on TikTok yields more than twenty million results. Among the rules of operation of this social network is that of “not publishing, sharing or sending any content that violates or infringes the copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property rights of third parties.” That is why the purchase of these imitations works through hidden links that the protagonists of the videos distribute privately or via Telegram. Once on Telegram, there are numerous groups with hundreds of members in which the distributor, mostly from China or Korea, provides photos and prices of these replicas, which range from classic bags from the most famous brands, and which in stores cost between 2,000 and 6,000 euros, to sneakers, jeans, mid-range brands whose real price would not exceed 200 euros or even clothes that have just been seen on international catwalks. The fake fashion market has expanded to the point where you can find almost anything, not just luxury, and it has become sophisticated. It has nothing to do with the bad copies of iconic bags or T-shirts from some brands that you find in a street market, and little to do with the most perfected copies from semi-clandestine flea markets. The digitalization of the sale of counterfeits allows access to thousands of models and colors of garments that are not always obvious. The applications now satisfy a much more expert and more niche customer who follows experts in networks to get fakes. According to a recent report published in Wired, It is estimated that with the help of these influencersChinese counterfeiting apps have increased their turnover by 26% in 2023.
The influencers Fake sellers get discounts or gifts for providing links to the garments, becoming ambassadors of the replicas. In addition, when they want to sell counterfeits themselves on second-hand sales platforms, such as Vinted or Vestiare Collective, they warn their followers that they will upload the image of another item, a pen, for example, although the buyer will receive the fake bag or shoes, thus managing to avoid the anti-fraud policy of second-hand fashion websites.
When asked via direct message about buying counterfeits, one of these users responds that “the designs are the same and the brands inflate the prices. It is not worth paying that amount.” This is a common argument among these young people; “the brands deceive us,” replies another user, and the truth is that, despite the intangible nature of certain logos and the years of history they contain, many luxury brands are not clear about where and under what conditions they manufacture. “What does it matter if it is fake if it is the same,” replies another user. That is perhaps the main difference with these new customers of copies: they are not ashamed of the fact that the fake is fake.
Although most market studies position Generation Z as activist and sustainable, a recent study by The Business of Fashion and the consulting firm McKinsey&Co. directly addressed the issue: 54% are happy for others to wear counterfeits, and 37% admit that they wear them or would wear them. “These are young people who openly display their counterfeit luxury items, particularly handbags, without any qualms. This breaks with the traditional taboo around counterfeits, reflecting a significant change in the attitude of Generation Z towards brands and consumption,” explains Mir Bernal. “This apparent boycott of luxury draws on several distinctive traits of this generation. Their strong social and environmental awareness leads them to question the practices of the luxury industry, perceived as elitist and unsustainable. Authenticity, a fundamental value for these young people, is being redefined: it is no longer about the authenticity of the product, but about personal honesty in admitting that it is a counterfeit,” he notes.
“My nephews (aged 13 and 17) buy clothes of dubious quality: zippers that break, letters that fade, but they don’t care, the important thing is to have the logo in big size,” explains a colleague when discussing this issue. Because in this tangle of applications, hidden links and Telegram groups there are also ranges: leather bags for 200 euros and plastic bags for ten. In fact, last summer The New York Times published an extensive report on the rise of the superfakes; fake bags costing between 500 and 1000 euros on average, with a quality very similar to the original. They are made in China and there are dozens of people who make a living acting as intermediaries between the factories that make them and the western buyers. They are practically indistinguishable. Even the large second-hand luxury platforms, despite having expert teams, are not capable of making a fully effective screening: Vestiaire Collective explains in its latest report that it has 90 experts in authentication and 50 in quality control distributed in six centres around the world, a small figure for the sales volume: two and a half million items last year. They claim that the number of bags they have stopped because they consider them fake is 4.64%. Also in 2023, Amazon seized seven million counterfeit products, one million more than in 2022. Its anti-fraud team is made up of nearly 15,000 employees and its annual investment to stop the sale of copies is 1.2 billion dollars.
According to Europol datait is estimated that the counterfeit trade represents 2.5% of world trade. In Europe, 5% of imports are counterfeit items. Beyond the fact that very cheap products, whether fake or not, are so because there are irregularities in their production chain, the purchase of counterfeits on the black market “is the second most profitable criminal traffic, only behind arms trafficking. It enriches organized crime and impoverishes countries with the loss of jobs,” They affirm from the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office.
For its part, the fashion and luxury industry is facing a medium-term problem. Counterfeits have always existed, but for the first time there is a proud purchase of them in a digital environment increasingly plagued by copies. The companies that own the major firms in the sector (LVMH, Kering, OTB and the Prada group) created Aura Consortium two years ago, a digital platform that guarantees the authenticity of their products through a QR code that redirects the user to blockchain. This way, you can find out the origin of the bag if it was bought outside the brand’s store. But it is not enough. According to Pedro Mir, “this new consumer trend raises questions about the future of luxury brands and how they must adapt to remain relevant to this generation. Are we witnessing the beginning of a revolution in the perception of luxury or is it a passing phase of youth rebellion? Only time will tell.”
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