“I had heard weird stories about Hong Kong, talking about lavish palaces, some One Thousand and One Nights' Asian equivalents used as department stores of counterfeit goods. I thought they were just a figment of someone’s imagination, some sort of contemporary legends [and yet 50% of fake luxury goods come from Southeast Asia (source: INDICAM)].
But then here’s my first business trip to the old British colony: it is so modern that it feels like it never had a past.
And here’s our first night out, after a whole day at the trade show: in the blink of an eye our wives, who are leading this merry band, take us into one of such legendary kingdoms of counterfeiting.
The owner of these fake treasures is a man going by the name of Wilson and he’s already leading us through his showrooms, overflowing with perfect copies of the western luxury items: handbags, garments, watches, glasses etc. The palaces of counterfeiting were not urban legends: it was all true!”
That’s the personal – and quite illuminating – experience of one of our agents.
The data about counterfeiting in the fashion industry are alarming (source: INDICAM):
- The whole business is worth $150 billion worldwide and €4,5 billion in Italy
- 125.000 jobs lost in the fashion industry in Europe during the last 10 years
- The Web is where the counterfeiting is mostly rooted: for some luxury brands, online counterfeiting accounts for 80% of the whole phenomenon they’re affected by
>>> SAFE79® wisely marks each single product (a garment, a handbag, a pair of shoes etc.) with an innovative traceability system that eases control procedures.
SAFE79® provides a new way to take care of customers: it lets the fashion industry keep watch over the intrinsic value of the original product and ensure the rights of the consumers through a high-tech deterrent and inspector.