You’ve probably seen them at flea markets, near perfect copies of the latest handbags from top designers like Gucci and Prada selling for a fraction of what an authentic bag would cost.
Or you attended one of the hottest trends in home parties since Tupperware, the home purse party, where for cash only you can pick up a designer purse for 10 to 20% of what they normally cost in a retail store.
You may have been tempted to buy one for yourself or maybe you did buy one thinking you got the latest purse style while saving lots of money and no one really gets hurt by it. After all, those big name designers are swimming in money and a fake purse here or there is no big deal right?
Well, I bet you didn’t know that fake designer purses and bags are just some of the products that make up the $500 billion counterfeit goods trade and the shocking part is that some of these counterfeiters are linked to terrorism groups around the world.
In fact, counterfeit goods helped finance the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and is just one of many terrorist attacks that have been funded by the sale of counterfeit items.
The manufacturing source of the best of these knockoff handbags is South Korea where it has become a very large and lucrative industry. China also supplies many counterfeit handbags as do some smaller Asian countries but the quality is generally much lower than those produced in South Korea.
The typical method of selling these knockoffs is to place a generic label on them for legal purposes and once the sale is actually made the label is switched and a fake logo for a big name designer is affixed to the purse or bag.
These bags should not be confused with look-alike handbags that have a similar design style to them like the many variations on the brown Louis Vuitton bag that has the overlaid LV symbols covering it.
Those bags, and others like them, do not purport to be originals so they aren’t classified as counterfeits and are perfectly legal to buy.
Here is just a partial listing of bags that have been or are currently being counterfeited:
Armani
Burberry
Chanel
Christian Dior
Dolce & Gabbana
Fendi
Gucci
Prada
Louis Vuitton.
So, the next time you run across a designer purse with an unbelievably low price that someone is selling from the trunk of their car, flea market stall or purse party you might want to think twice before handing over your cash as you just might unknowingly be helping some of the most ruthless people in the world.
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