Knock Off Purses

[angel2814]

I must admit I am a purse snob (named by my friends who don't understand my Coach obsession). Up until 2 years ago, I bought a $10.00 purse every year from JC Penny and would carry it until the strap broke and buy a new one. 2 years ago DH bought me a Coach purse out of the blue and after being ashamed of it for 2 weeks because we really couldn't afford it I started carrying it with pride. I wanted a matching wallet but they were more than the purse. My SIL bought a knock off in NY. It broke as I was putting my CC in it, the pockets weren't big enough and within a week the stiching started coming out. DH bought a real one for my birthday and I've had it almost a year with no problems.

 

My original Coach purse had a string hang off the handle, I had had it over a year, I took it back to the store to see if I could buy a new handle. For $25.00 shipping they sent it in to be repaired. A week later I received a letter from Coach stating they were sorry for the poor quality and gave me a full credit including sales tax to obtain a brand new purse. That sold me on Coach, I'm sure other name brand purse places are the same but I just love my Coach purses (I now have 4 and two wallets...it's an obsession but DH started it!).

[floridagirl07]

i think the real question is why are people traveling to the bahamas to get knock off purses when you can get there anywhere in the states??

 

i know i know, you aren't going to the bahamas SPECIFICALLY for purses, but why spend valuable island time searching for knock offs you can get at your local farmers market.

 

i live in suburban philadelphia and can get them in philly of course, but can also get them in little shops, farmers markets, and fairs. there is no way i would waste vaulable space in my luggage for junky bags.

 

I agree. I can go the flea market in Orlando and see all kinds of cheap fakes. I splurged for my birthday on an LV from the LV store in Orlando. Now that I'm going to the Bahamas, I guess people will assume it's a fake. Oh well, I know it's the real thing and that's all that matters.

 

Heidi

[brianroberts2526]

A fake purse? Does it not hold things?

[laura2161]

My wife is the same way . She has a purse fetish that has gone beyond obsession. *LOL*

 

We go into NYC quite often , you can get knockoffs of purses, watches you name it on every street corner. Some of it is so so at best, most of it is crap. I wouldn't know fake from real, but my wife can spot a phoney a mile away, and she even says the fakes fall apart in no time and aren't even worth the bargain basement prices they are asking.

 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Fetish purses. I want them all!!! Tell your wife I said she has excellent taste. (heheheheh) :D

[readytolose]

i think the real question is why are people traveling to the bahamas to get knock off purses when you can get there anywhere in the states??

 

i know i know, you aren't going to the bahamas SPECIFICALLY for purses, but why spend valuable island time searching for knock offs you can get at your local farmers market.

 

i live in suburban philadelphia and can get them in philly of course, but can also get them in little shops, farmers markets, and fairs. there is no way i would waste vaulable space in my luggage for junky bags.

 

Not that I have a real desire to go out and buy a purse (real or fake) while on vacation, I wouldn't assume that everybody can just get them locally. Not every body has flea markets or other places nearby that sells them.

[NCTribeFan]

I lived close to an outlet shopping center for many years. It had a Coach store. I now own 6, and my daughter has 3. I never buy until the outlet store price has been marked down another 2 or 3 times. I got my last one (a lovely Carolina Blue hobo) for $89. The strap broke after about 6 months (the only time I've ever had a problem with any of them). Took it to the Coach store at the mall, gave them $20 for shipping, and had it back in about 3 weeks.

 

I saw all the patchwork Coach bags in the Straw Market last December and almost bought one, but decided against it. I'm going to have a look again, but I imagine I'll decide it isn't even worth the $25-$30 it would cost.

[mommyto2girls]

I have been trying to say this for years on these boards..PLEASE READ before you buy a fake anything!!!

 

 

Op-Ed Contributor NY TIMES

Terror’s Purse Strings

 

By DANA THOMAS

Published: August 30, 2007

Paris

 

LUXURY fashion designers are busily putting final touches on the handbags they will present during the spring-summer 2008 women’s wear shows, which begin next week in New York City’s Bryant Park. To understand the importance of the handbag in fashion today consider this: According to consumer surveys conducted by Coach, the average American woman was buying two new handbags a year in 2000; by 2004, it was more than four. And the average luxury bag retails for 10 to 12 times its production cost.

 

“There is a kind of an obsession with bags,” the designer Miuccia Prada told me. “It’s so easy to make money.”

 

Counterfeiters agree. As soon as a handbag hits big, counterfeiters around the globe churn out fake versions by the thousands. And they have no trouble selling them. Shoppers descend on Canal Street in New York, Santee Alley in Los Angeles and flea markets and purse parties around the country to pick up knockoffs for one-tenth the legitimate bag’s retail cost, then pass them off as real.

 

“Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys shop here,” a private investigator told me as we toured the counterfeit section of Santee Alley. “Affluent people from Newport Beach.” According to a study by the British law firm Davenport Lyons, two-thirds of British consumers are “proud to tell their family and friends” that they bought fake luxury fashion items.

 

At least 11 percent of the world’s clothing is fake, according to 2000 figures from the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group in Paris. Fashion is easy to copy: counterfeiters buy the real items, take them apart, scan the pieces to make patterns and produce almost-perfect fakes.

 

Most people think that buying an imitation handbag or wallet is harmless, a victimless crime. But the counterfeiting rackets are run by crime syndicates that also deal in narcotics, weapons, child prostitution, human trafficking and terrorism. Ronald K. Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, told the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that profits from the sale of counterfeit goods have gone to groups associated with Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist group, paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland and FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

 

Sales of counterfeit T-shirts may have helped finance the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition. “Profits from counterfeiting are one of the three main sources of income supporting international terrorism,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.

 

Most fakes today are produced in China, a good many of them by children. Children are sometimes sold or sent off by their families to work in clandestine factories that produce counterfeit luxury goods. Many in the West consider this an urban myth. But I have seen it myself.

 

On a warm winter afternoon in Guangzhou, I accompanied Chinese police officers on a factory raid in a decrepit tenement. Inside, we found two dozen children, ages 8 to 13, gluing and sewing together fake luxury-brand handbags. The police confiscated everything, arrested the owner and sent the children out. Some punched their timecards, hoping to still get paid. (The average Chinese factory worker earns about $120 a month; the counterfeit factory worker earns half that or less.) As we made our way back to the police vans, the children threw bottles and cans at us. They were now jobless and, because the factory owner housed them, homeless. It was “Oliver Twist” in the 21st century.

 

What can we do to stop this? Much like the war on drugs, the effort to protect luxury brands must go after the source: the counterfeit manufacturers. The company that took me on the Chinese raid is one of the only luxury-goods makers that works directly with Chinese authorities to shut down factories, and it has one of the lowest rates of counterfeiting.

 

Luxury brands also need to teach consumers that the traffic in fake goods has many victims. But most companies refuse to speak publicly about counterfeiting — some won’t even authenticate questionable items for concerned customers — believing, like Victorians, that acknowledging despicable actions tarnishes their sterling reputations.

 

So it comes down to us. If we stop knowingly buying fakes, the supply chain will dry up and counterfeiters will go out of business. The crime syndicates will have far less money to finance their illicit activities and their terrorist plots. And the children? They can go home.

 

Dana Thomas, a correspondent for Newsweek, is the author of “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster.”

[Virgin_cruiser2007]

I have been trying to say this for years on these boards..PLEASE READ before you buy a fake anything!!!

 

 

Op-Ed Contributor NY TIMES

Terror’s Purse Strings

 

By DANA THOMAS

Published: August 30, 2007

Paris

 

LUXURY fashion designers are busily putting final touches on the handbags they will present during the spring-summer 2008 women’s wear shows, which begin next week in New York City’s Bryant Park. To understand the importance of the handbag in fashion today consider this: According to consumer surveys conducted by Coach, the average American woman was buying two new handbags a year in 2000; by 2004, it was more than four. And the average luxury bag retails for 10 to 12 times its production cost.

 

“There is a kind of an obsession with bags,” the designer Miuccia Prada told me. “It’s so easy to make money.”

 

Counterfeiters agree. As soon as a handbag hits big, counterfeiters around the globe churn out fake versions by the thousands. And they have no trouble selling them. Shoppers descend on Canal Street in New York, Santee Alley in Los Angeles and flea markets and purse parties around the country to pick up knockoffs for one-tenth the legitimate bag’s retail cost, then pass them off as real.

 

“Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys shop here,” a private investigator told me as we toured the counterfeit section of Santee Alley. “Affluent people from Newport Beach.” According to a study by the British law firm Davenport Lyons, two-thirds of British consumers are “proud to tell their family and friends” that they bought fake luxury fashion items.

 

At least 11 percent of the world’s clothing is fake, according to 2000 figures from the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group in Paris. Fashion is easy to copy: counterfeiters buy the real items, take them apart, scan the pieces to make patterns and produce almost-perfect fakes.

 

Most people think that buying an imitation handbag or wallet is harmless, a victimless crime. But the counterfeiting rackets are run by crime syndicates that also deal in narcotics, weapons, child prostitution, human trafficking and terrorism. Ronald K. Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, told the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that profits from the sale of counterfeit goods have gone to groups associated with Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist group, paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland and FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

 

Sales of counterfeit T-shirts may have helped finance the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition. “Profits from counterfeiting are one of the three main sources of income supporting international terrorism,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.

 

Most fakes today are produced in China, a good many of them by children. Children are sometimes sold or sent off by their families to work in clandestine factories that produce counterfeit luxury goods. Many in the West consider this an urban myth. But I have seen it myself.

 

On a warm winter afternoon in Guangzhou, I accompanied Chinese police officers on a factory raid in a decrepit tenement. Inside, we found two dozen children, ages 8 to 13, gluing and sewing together fake luxury-brand handbags. The police confiscated everything, arrested the owner and sent the children out. Some punched their timecards, hoping to still get paid. (The average Chinese factory worker earns about $120 a month; the counterfeit factory worker earns half that or less.) As we made our way back to the police vans, the children threw bottles and cans at us. They were now jobless and, because the factory owner housed them, homeless. It was “Oliver Twist” in the 21st century.

 

What can we do to stop this? Much like the war on drugs, the effort to protect luxury brands must go after the source: the counterfeit manufacturers. The company that took me on the Chinese raid is one of the only luxury-goods makers that works directly with Chinese authorities to shut down factories, and it has one of the lowest rates of counterfeiting.

 

Luxury brands also need to teach consumers that the traffic in fake goods has many victims. But most companies refuse to speak publicly about counterfeiting — some won’t even authenticate questionable items for concerned customers — believing, like Victorians, that acknowledging despicable actions tarnishes their sterling reputations.

 

So it comes down to us. If we stop knowingly buying fakes, the supply chain will dry up and counterfeiters will go out of business. The crime syndicates will have far less money to finance their illicit activities and their terrorist plots. And the children? They can go home.

 

Dana Thomas, a correspondent for Newsweek, is the author of “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster.”

 

 

 

In my previous post...I actually saw a documentary on this.. the story behind the kids are. In China, when the family is a poor family and the kids feel as though they have to help support or are the only means of supporting their family, they go to these wharehouses that provide jobs for them at a very early ages, they get paid and they are given housing and they send their money back home to their family for support. They get upset when they are caught and shut down because as your article stated they now have no means of supporting their families nor do they have housing becuase they have no means to get back home. Most of these kids start working at very early ages and work well into their early twenties. The sad part is the living conditions and some of these kids die (some while working) from working so hard trying to make more and more money.

 

I do not support child labor however from what I saw on this documentary this is very different from being sold into child labor as we often hear about in Africa. Whereas the kids are sold into labor to become fisherman and are not allowed to go home unless they escape or are rescued. However if this is how we are going to look at purchasing handbags then we should not eat seafood either. If we stop eating seafood then the demand will go down and there will be no reason for this to occur in Africa. Also we need to stop wearing brand name clothing (especially jeans) because as we are aware most child labor occur in wharehouses that produce these brand name clothing as well as the authenic handbags. We will have to stop driving cars and anything that uses oil, Counterfit items in my opinion is hardly the reasoning behind the funds for the attacks when our main oil supply comes from the very countries that are making these attacks, (which means we as americans) are putting money into their country for oil.

I get what you are saying, Please believe me I do but our problems in this country needs to be laid where responsibility needs to be laid and that is hardly the selling of "non authenic" items... but the government....

[Littlegoo75]

For all of those that buy counterfeit....just don't cry when Customs takes them away from you. You may be allowed to keep one item for personal use and the rest will be seized as it's an offense of the "Intellectual Propery Rights" law. They will then be destroyed.

 

Did you know there is a company that will rent out high end bags? It kind of works along the same concept as Netflix, you pay a certain fee and then you can borrow bags? You then return a bag and get another one in return. I think it's called "bag borrow or steal". It's an interesting concept, but I like owning my bags.

 

Knock offs are so wanna-be. Just buy something that's in your price range and don't try to come off as something you're not. There are plenty of cute bags out there under $100. Only the super elite own numerous $1000+ handbags. People who can spot fakes (and it's not hard to) are just going to laugh at you.

 

Just my opinion.

[x3brookiie]

There is a Coach store in Nassau, I wanted to go in but as it was early Sunda when we docked it was not open yet.

As for them all being made in china for pennies, that not entirely true, most are made in New York for pennies as well, yes we still have sweat shops here too. I bought a knock off in Nassau but i am not a person who cares about labels, I just happened to come across a bag I liked. It could have been here at TjMaxx or Target and I still would have bought it.

 

 

Hey, I just noticed that, under your comment, you listed that you've sailed on Sovereign of the Seas several times. I'm leaving August 25 on that ship for Nassau and CoCo Cay. How was your experience on that ship? I've been on Navigator of the seas, one of Royal Caribbean's largest ships, so I'm a little nervous about the difference from that to Sovereign of the Seas, the smallest ship in the RC fleet.