Aren’t all the clothes in UK coming from China and Bangladesh. Why would they not have their companies registered? It sounds to me like the companies wanted to not populate the opinion that their clothes are made in china or Bangladesh and therefore they had just used their logo and name. but not registered the company there. So well it serves them well. And its not a big deal because in china people wouldn’t be buying UK based dealers anyway as their local clothes are much cheaper and same quality. Of course for foreigners visiting china it might be a shock that they find Lewis for 10% of their UK price but they can explain that as a price drop due to transportation or taxation etc. no biggie for such large companies. Because they wouldn’t base their market in china anyway.
It seems to be mostly brands that are known for physical stores rather than goods that are sold in third party shops, but it's still an unusual problem. I liked the way BrewDog approached this fake bar in China - https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/dear-fake-brewdog-china They essentially knew that they couldn't really challenge the actual trademark infringement easily, so they made a joke of it, and got a whole load of publicity on the back of it.
Well this is actually a good way of dealing with copy right infringement. Now the public knows that’s a fake and because of this funny letter people also found out about brewdog. For example, I never knew brewdog until I read this article. So as the saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. The writer of the letter some how says the quality wouldn’t be good. But for the Chinese people it wouldn’t matter. For many of them who didn’t taste the real BrewDog this would be their imagination of the taste. Honestly, such large companies or organizations cant loose much of a market based on one fake shop. But then again brewdog doesn’t have any shop in china so they cant loose any customer to the fake shop anyway. So why make such a big fuss out of it. Probably just because of the publicity.
The only way to protect your brand in China is to partner up with a Chinese company. I think it is actually law, to sell products in China you need to have a local partner. If you think about it, it does make sense having someone on the ground who knows the local market and the way things "are done".
Yeah, apparently China are starting to crack down more on IP infringement but that's just from rumours I've seen.
Well its not just china is it? many countries where large companies manufacture their products but do not place their market have copyright infringement. Lets talk about Bangladesh, you can find all export quality clothes like from bershka or HnM at prices cheaper than a meal in Bangladesh. Those are the clothes that have been sold my the manufacturer to a clothes shop owner because they produced more than the order for example. So they sell it on a subsidized value to a local shop owner who then makes minimum profit and sells the product to others. This is also a type of copyright infringement. But large companies don’t care about these small occurrences, especially where do not base their market.
Yeah, true. I got a waterproof jacket in Vietnam once for a fraction of the retail price. I'm not sure true it was but apparently they are made at the exact same factory as the 'real' ones.
Yes that is exactly how it works. And with the same material and quality. No non-sense, but there is no control over it so it might also be made by another manufacturer posing as the one who makes the real ones. The marks labels and everything would be the same except for the material. And you wouldn’t be able to figure the difference at all. Manufacturers can copy products so well, you know.
Yeah, it seemed to work well! It just shows the crazy markup that name-brand manufacturers have on their products. (I'm not condoning counterfeit goods, as I know brands have other costs - R&D, marketing etc., I'm just making an observation)
