What and Why are the most counterfeited items found in the Fashion Industry?

Counterfeiting in the Fashion industry is the most favourable aspect for counterfeiters for its high profitability. Therefore, more than any other product, you will find products associated with the Fashion Industry contributing most to the fakes of the world.?

Some principal products involve most of the 3.3% of the counterfeiting industry. These products belong to different categories: footwear (22%), clothing (16%), leather goods (13%), electrical equipment (12%), watches (7%), medical equipment (5%), perfumes and cosmetics (5%), toys (3%), jewellery (2%), pharmaceuticals (2%), other industries (12%) according to the report Trends in Trade in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods (Manganello, 2019).

Summing up, the counterfeiting industry holds 65% of the counterfeit luxury items consisting of footwear, clothing, watches, cosmetics, leather, and jewellery.?

But why are these subcategories from the luxury industry most sought after by the customers?

Moreover, why do they hold a particularly significant percentage in the counterfeiting industry?

Footwear holds a larger percentage over any other luxury industry in producing counterfeit items. Around 22% of the fake luxury industry comprises footwear brands like Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Christian Louboutin, etc., and these brands’ exclusively rare products. In addition, the shoe industry has seen massive growth in recent years, as consumers are subjected to more vivid images paired up with fashionable clothing. As estimated by Statista, the revenue of the footwear market is expected to grow annually by 3.60%, amounting to $94,527 million by 2022.?

The boom of e-commerce has brought a tidal wave in the sale of celebrity-endorsed products that lure customers in the desire to look like celebrities. Moreover, the young generation has become more fitness conscious than ever before, making all types of footwear products enjoy the high market demand.?

A young millennial or Gen-Z would not opt for a single pair of shoes for every occasion and any particular purpose. They would instead make various purchases for different events and purposes. Reckoning that, an individual will have one pair of trekking shoes for treks and mountaineering, another for morning jogs, sprints and runs, and the third for casual daily commutes. In addition, if their income allows, they will also have one pair of exclusive and rarely available items to satisfy their irresistible desires. This has led the footwear industry to become an emerging and booming market for brands and on the parallel for counterfeiters.?

Unfortunately, the customs and law enforcement find it challenging to trace the source of manufacturers as these new-age clever counterfeiters outsource pairs from a cluster of subsequent small networks of factories. This process of outsourcing counterfeits, where factories have to design and manufacture near-identical products, is acknowledged as ‘third-shift’ manufacturing.?

The replication of counterfeit footwear has now become so prolific that a New York Times reporter received a statement from a fake producer who said, “the only way you can tell the difference between the real ones and ours is by the smell of the glue”. In addition, counterfeit shoes are highly damaging brands risking their reputation, revenue and taxes obligated to governments. Counterfeits can pose serious injuries for the use of substandard material, and the quality offered can cause severe ailments to a stakeholder’s feet due to harmful chemicals.?

Clothing holds the second position on the most counterfeited articles in the luxury industry. The fashion industry, especially clothing, has seen a massive bombardment of purchases in recent years due to the emergence of e-commerce and social-media hosting platforms. It has made it effortless for anyone to design fake apparel and churn out sales directly.?

Instagram has appeared as a highly prevalent market of counterfeits in promotion and sales. People hiding behind screens offer incredible offers to the customers already looking for an alternative that doesn’t make a hole in their pockets, unlike heavily-priced trend-setting products of fashion companies like Gucci, Dior, Fendi, and Chanel.?

Moreover, Instagram is also used by Influencers to promote fake products — either wittingly or unwittingly. In most cases, the consumer and influencers do not find any harm in purchasing or wearing counterfeit apparel, believing that it doesn’t cause any damage to them and is even available for a fraction of the price of a genuine product. Unfortunately, this perception has led to a loss of more than $50 billion in 2020, stealing the sales and reputation of authentic brands.?

Counterfeiters directly compete with genuine brands and original sellers by using identical names, trademarks, authentic images, and logos. As a result, buyers lured by the incredible price are attracted to make a purchase, making the original manufacturer lose a customer. This practice of deceiving a customer through online counterfeiting has made the clothing luxury industry incur a loss of around $30.3 billion.?

It is a common perception and the subsequent trait of a consumer to get lured by incredible prices that satisfies their visual appeal for the product. Even if the product turns out to be on the lower side of its value-expressive function, the customer won’t bother purchasing it for its offered pricing that is nowhere close to that of a genuine product.?

But this does not mean only the brands are a victim of counterfeiting. In hindsight, consumers are also the victims of counterfeiting, if not immediately — incurring losses in other aspects like increased taxes, victims of terror attacks funded by counterfeits, and more.?

Besides, in partial negation to the victimisation of a customer, if any customer deliberately buys a counterfeit item, they are also an accomplice in the losses incurred by the ones who were deceived unknowingly.?

Watches, alternatively known as timepieces, are the most sophisticated luxury products counterfeited in the luxury industry. Nobles often acquire luxury watches with superior build quality and magnificent visual appearances. And these attributes themselves make people lured to look for other alternatives in the form of “superfakes” because they cannot afford such big-ticket timepieces. To fulfil this gap of the desire to act as a part of a noble community and still not have perforations in your pants, counterfeiters stand in between to satiate the customer’s needs.?

Counterfeiters flourish the online marketplaces with fake brand-name watches targeting the customers who are unaware of the products’ deceptiveness.

Most sites (from the Asian Regions) are aware that they participate in selling and promoting counterfeit products. Therefore, the people who sell these “superfakes” — no matter how shady they are — are open to disclosing the fake quality of watches upfront. This is because they assume their target market is the ones who are willingly interested in buying fakes over unaffordable and unavailable authentic products.?

Fake watches and knock-offs are not that hard to find. You can easily visit a beach market or a street hawker, and you’ll witness that the portable shelves have stacks of copied genuine watches. An interesting fact about these fakes is that they are available for a fraction of the price of an authentic watch. Some are available for as low as $100 to $500 compared to their original counterparts, priced at $7,000 to $8,000. However, the precision of dials and physical dynamics are nowhere close to genuine products.?

Despite knowing the product’s inferior quality, people intentionally buy these fakes. A believed reason is the desire to be a part of the high-standard status of society. Moreover, in some cases, it is also found that people who were oblivious of the counterfeiting industry fall for the exciting and exclusive deals offered by sites like Alibaba and Bukalapak, which seem to be selling original products but deliver cheap fake quality.?

In addition, there are instances where sites like eBay have unwittingly auctioned fake watches sold for the value of the genuine product. Even on Youtube, the people who consciously sell counterfeit watches explain how to buy counterfeit watches with sites’ links mentioned in the description.?

Leather Goods and Jewellery are the two areas in the counterfeit luxury industry that may not have massive production compared to other products mentioned above. However, they still have enormous demand in the market.?

The market for Leather goods such as leather bags, purses, belts and more has declined in recent years because the new generation is more conscious of the environment and, therefore, opting for vegan or synthetic leather over genuine leather. However, those who demand real commodities do not hesitate to lose their pockets for the quality offered. Therefore, counterfeiters tend to target these individuals by imitating the actual designs, trademarks, and dynamics of any product, such as purses, wallets and belts. And because the market for leather goods is comparatively small and is gradually declining, the customers believe the product to be true — which in contrast, is untrue.?

The most prevailing products in the luxury leather industry are appreciated and manufactured in Italy. The leather products made in Italy are appreciated enough to have a particular commercial value only because they have been manufactured in Italy. Due to these high demands for Italian leather, counterfeiters prey on stealing the trademarks and IPs of Italy-manufactured products. Counterfeiting in Italian leather is practised to such an extent that, according to IPERICO data, during the period 2008-2013, there were over 36,000 seizures in Italy for the counterfeiting of clothing accessories (excluding footwear), representing over 36% of total seizures, totalling approx. 64.404 million seized items with over Euro 1.3 billion estimated total value. More than 37% of the goods were seized in Lombardy, approx. 16% in Campania and Lazio respectively.?

Consumers tend to purchase Jewellery products mostly on an offline basis. However, because jewellery articles require physical presence to decide the likeability of their appearance, individual consumers often go to retail stores to buy any jewellery item.?

However, sometimes jewellery items sold at the small beach or highway shops have links to counterfeiting. This is because the products may look almost identical to a genuine jewellery item but have a great possibility of being a counterfeit — if one is unaware of the methods to examine its authenticity.?

Therefore, customers usually buy jewellery items from official stores and websites because it costs a fortune to buy one. Moreover, no one would like to be deceived for a token of love and compassion.?

Why are the most counterfeited products found in Fashion Industry?

A consumer searching for fashionable products, or more so luxury ones, is usually looking for a great deal on a genuine article. However, in reality, counterfeiters make their imitations so indistinguishable and nearly half the price of the actual product; it attracts the consumer for the attributes offered. It is only later that consumers find out the product or item is functioning less than claimed by the brand, which was not even the case for its fake and unknown production source.?

Here are some observed reasons for most counterfeited products found in the Fashion Industry.?

1. The sole motive of fashion brands is to appear in the minds of their consumers when they think of purchasing a particular fashion item. Therefore, to fulfil the need to persuade and pervading into consumers' minds, they advertise and market their products enough to be accepted as the most desirable products one should have. Moreover, they create this desiring factor while keeping the supply limited.?Therefore, when customers search for the most desirable brand for a product, they opt to search for it extensively. Thus, creating a demand more than the supply adds to the bubble of unmet demands, eventually increasing the value of the product and the corresponding brand.?Witnessing the pattern and the increasing demand, counterfeiters take charge of the market to fulfil the unmet supply and demands with incredible prices, offers, and availability. These factors further thrust the consumers to purchase the product that is low on the price and readily available, only to realise later that it’s fake.?
2. Consumers usually purchase these products for the status and value it holds in the market. A consumer is willing to spend money on symbolic/intangible value. Here, the intangible value is what brands have created in customers’ minds.?This intangible value further multiplies to create prestige and a sense of gratification—meaning self-satisfaction—the brand aims to provide. As a result, in some cases, consumers purchase these fashion-oriented products as an act of social emulation because they aspire to be the person to own or wear these products.?The counterfeiters gauge the value and demand of these products from the customer’s self-satisfaction and social emulation behaviour. Then, they produce and introduce an exact copy of the genuine item, conforming with the symbolic value. But unfortunately, consumers in this category only search for the symbolic value and unwittingly undermine the product's functionality, only to get duped later for various consequences.?

Concluding Words

Although the counterfeiting industry is expanding its horizons to enter into new markets and steal the sales and reputation of the stakeholders, these were the most counterfeited products in the luxury industry.?

And to stop the practice of counterfeiting in the luxury industry, the most significant role — even more critical than technology — is to be played by consumers themselves.?

To bring down the sales of counterfeit luxury and upscale the reputation of brands, a consumer must appreciate the investment of time, energy, and knowledge of an artist in designing and manufacturing a luxury product.?

However, brands and logistics companies must introduce awareness campaigns to educate customers and install innovative technologies like Countercheck to intercept any fake product roving on supply chain belts with image recognition and machine learning mechanisms.