Word: counterfeits
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Your article on counterfeit luxury merchandise, "The Purse-Party Blues" [Aug. 2], never asked why Louis Vuitton or any other high-end manufacturer deserves to be paid $1,500 for a handbag when, as you reported, "a 40-ft. container filled with fake bags can turn a profit of $2 million to $4 million" at $35 a purse. Is the quality of the real designer bag truly worth so much more? Perhaps not, since the president of the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition maintains that "the machines that companies use as legitimate manufacturers are also available to the bad guys...
...luxury fakes are part of a much bigger counterfeiting problem, also largely based in China. Worldwide production of counterfeit goods--everything from DVDs to pharmaceuticals to brake pads--has jumped 1,700% since 1993, according to the Italian anti-counterfeiting coalition Indicam. No longer just a localized business in Asia or Mexico, counterfeiting accounts for more than 6% of worldwide trade, or $450 billion a year. And some $100 million worth of fake goods are seized each year entering...
Luxury-goods manufacturers are fighting back. They are spending millions of dollars a year on legal teams and private investigators, who work with international customs officials to bust rings of organized counterfeiters. Louis Vuitton is one of the most aggressive manufacturers. The company employs 40 full-time lawyers and 250 freelance investigators around the world, and last year its operatives were involved in 4,200 raids on counterfeiting rings and 8,200 legal actions. Companies like Kate Spade, Chanel and Coach, whose purses are also widely copied, are members of several consortiums of luxury-goods manufacturers that facilitate civil...
Authorities recognize that counterfeit trafficking is part of a broader, organized-crime problem. In June, U.S. immigration and customs-enforcement agents busted 17 people for smuggling tens of millions of dollars' worth of bogus Louis Vuitton, Prada, Coach, Chanel, Christian Dior and Fendi merchandise in thirty 40-ft. containers through Port Elizabeth, N.J. According to the customs officials, 15 of the defendants are Chinese nationals who are part of two separate crime networks that use shell companies to import counterfeit luxury goods from China and distribute them through storefronts on Canal Street. Each organization paid undercover agents...
CHIC ON THE CHEAP Counterfeit purses and other luxury items can be big business. But at last a crackdown is beginning...