Update: Fake PM2 at Cabela's?

Are most these fakes coming off the 'bay, or off shore web sites? There aren't "retailers" here selling them knowingly are there? Or am I just being incredibly naive?

I know that virtually everything with any brand recognition is being faked now days and it really is a serious problem I think the authorities seem to be shrugging off. Over on the Buck forum they're seeing the same kind off crap happening to their brand. And not just the obvious Pakistan clones.
 
Joe58 said:
Are most these fakes coming off the 'bay, or off shore web sites? There aren't "retailers" here selling them knowingly are there? Or am I just being incredibly naive?

I know that virtually everything with any brand recognition is being faked now days and it really is a serious problem I think the authorities seem to be shrugging off. Over on the Buck forum they're seeing the same kind off crap happening to their brand. And not just the obvious Pakistan clones.
Click to expand...

Ultimately the source is the same: China. This is not a knock on Chinese knives or products. I own several fine Chinese knives. This is just the fact of the matter.

They get here either purchased by the end user or to resell, or like in this situation, purchased to return as real. I don't believe there are any official larger scale resellers here or Spyderco could go after them more easily, just some small time resellers on the bay.

We can see the impact this has directly on Spyderco in the thread we saw recently in general. The unknowingly got a fake and thought Spyderco made a crap product. He vowed to never purchase another one. It took a lot of convincing from the community here to get him to turn that around. Is being refunded by the seller and is looking at buying a Sage 2. We can make a difference.
 
Money talks and as long as we keep buying the stuff then the Chinese government isn't gonna do anything about it. Intellectual property rights are a foreign concept to them and they don't believe that what they are doing is wrong. Again, money talks and only economic leverage will force the Chinese government to enforce a law that is ours and not theirs. I think we are getting to the point where goods can be made in other countries for the same or less than China. It is time for us to move on but we aren't quite there yet.

Here is another example I ran across lately. There is a brand of baby carriers called Ergo. They make the backpack style things for carrying your baby and they make the nicest ones. Ergo is the one you see all the celebrities using and they have a strong brand identity. A few months back my wife was shopping for one and sure enough they are all over EBay for half price and they are regularly around $150 so $70 sounded great. It seemed too good of a deal so I told my wife to google "ergo" and "counterfeit" and sure enough they are fighting the same battle with counterfeiters. Disgusting! This is a device designed for carrying some fairly precious cargo and I don't want some half assed sweat shop fake. I wonder how many people buy it not knowing it's fake or even worse they but it because it fake and they want to save money.
 
Bearfaced and Sal are so on point on this one in terms of how bad the counterfeit situation is - average Americans know it's bad but honestly have no idea how bad. I'm Chinese American and travel to China about every year or so to see family. I've always loved life here in America but the contrast just highlights how much better we have it here in the States.

Forget about counterfeit knives, or counterfeit watches, or counterfeit Ergos (have a real one, love it, if you're having a kid, get one, for the first year you'll get as much mileage out of that as you do out of your Spyderco collection). In China you have to watch out for counterfeit milk, counterfeit food, counterfeit cooking oil, counterfeit toothpaste. People go out to dinner and wonder whether or not it's been cooked in clarified alley gutter sludge. People feed their babies and wonder if it's actually formula or just a toxic water soluble chemical mixture that will kill their child.

The government in China is basically a mafia. If you counterfeit and get caught and you're a nobody or you're not in with the ruling clique you get the death penalty. If you're in with those at the top, all the whistle blowers get silenced.

All I can say is, God bless the USA!
 
kubelik said:
Bearfaced and Sal are so on point on this one in terms of how bad the counterfeit situation is - average Americans know it's bad but honestly have no idea how bad. I'm Chinese American and travel to China about every year or so to see family. I've always loved life here in America but the contrast just highlights how much better we have it here in the States.

Forget about counterfeit knives, or counterfeit watches, or counterfeit Ergos (have a real one, love it, if you're having a kid, get one, for the first year you'll get as much mileage out of that as you do out of your Spyderco collection). In China you have to watch out for counterfeit milk, counterfeit food, counterfeit cooking oil, counterfeit toothpaste. People go out to dinner and wonder whether or not it's been cooked in clarified alley gutter sludge. People feed their babies and wonder if it's actually formula or just a toxic water soluble chemical mixture that will kill their child.

The government in China is basically a mafia. If you counterfeit and get caught and you're a nobody or you're not in with the ruling clique you get the death penalty. If you're in with those at the top, all the whistle blowers get silenced.

All I can say is, God bless the USA!
Click to expand...

That puts it into a bit of a perspective.....
 
kubelik said:
All I can say is, God bless the USA!
Click to expand...


Completely sad to point out... but that is exactly what the counterfeiters are saying as well.
And much for the wrong reason.
As long as our consumers blindy keep demanding for unreasonable deals and happily support it, the counterfeiters will gladly supply it. :(
 
When that Chinese "A" site went IPO there was some hoohaa about needing to clean up the endless rampant copyright infringing products for sale.
Seems to me it was all hot air, the problem has only gotten worse. Recently I've seen, for example, a convincing looking Slysz Bowie clone for sale. And folders with a copied Axis lock, with the corner of the box subtly covering it up in the pictures. And many many others. Heck, I've seen blatant clones where you can choose whether or not to have the original (victim of piracy) makers logo on the blade or not.

With the vastness of the 'ol interweb making it so easy to buy from anywhere in the world, and the Chinese seemingly not caring at all, and human nature being what it is sometimes, I think the scale and complexity of the problem is, well, daunting would be an understatement of epic proportions.

I get cheap Chinese knives from there from time to time, and do my best to make sure what I buy isn't a blatant copy of someone else's work. There is a place for very cheap but functional knives. I have thought that by doing so I wasn't adding to any problem, that by only ever buying knives that aren't a blatant ripoff I might, in some minuscule way, be encouraging the production of reasonably original work.

Maybe I'm wrong about that.

kubelik, your post is sobering reading indeed.
 
kubelik said:
Bearfaced and Sal are so on point on this one in terms of how bad the counterfeit situation is - average Americans know it's bad but honestly have no idea how bad. I'm Chinese American and travel to China about every year or so to see family. I've always loved life here in America but the contrast just highlights how much better we have it here in the States.

Forget about counterfeit knives, or counterfeit watches, or counterfeit Ergos (have a real one, love it, if you're having a kid, get one, for the first year you'll get as much mileage out of that as you do out of your Spyderco collection). In China you have to watch out for counterfeit milk, counterfeit food, counterfeit cooking oil, counterfeit toothpaste. People go out to dinner and wonder whether or not it's been cooked in clarified alley gutter sludge. People feed their babies and wonder if it's actually formula or just a toxic water soluble chemical mixture that will kill their child.

The government in China is basically a mafia. If you counterfeit and get caught and you're a nobody or you're not in with the ruling clique you get the death penalty. If you're in with those at the top, all the whistle blowers get silenced.

All I can say is, God bless the USA!
Click to expand...

This is accurate and these products have caused illness and deaths in many countries. Even a lot of the honey in grocery stores is China fake honey that is shipped to another country and relabeled. A major USA distributor was busted about 2 years ago for importing this stuff and it is rampant. Companies world wide can make much more profit selling the fake than the real.
A Chinese company bought out Benelli Motorcycles and now produce them. I saw a guy drive off the lot with what he thought was an Italian motorcycle and the frame broke in half. Over here in SEA these bikes have a terrible reputation and got it very fast.
 
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