A Fake Is Still A Fake
word by R.E.Saw
တခ်ိဳ႕နာမည္ႀကီး luxury brand ေတြကသူတို႔ရဲ႕ ဆိုင္ထဲက ပစၥည္းေတြကို ဆိုင္ထဲဝင္ၿပီး ဓာတ္ပံု႐ိုက္ခြင့္ မေပးၾကဘူး။ ဒါကေတာ့ ႀကီးက်ယ္တာထက္အတုလုပ္တဲ့သူေတြပစၥည္းေတြရဲ႕ ဒီဇိုင္းအေသးစိတ္ရသြားမွာကို ကာကြယ္တာပါ။ တခ်ိဳ႕ေတြကေတာ့ ဒီလုပ္ရပ္ေတြကို ရယ္ခ်င္ၾကတယ္။ ဘာလို႔လည္းဆိုေတာ့ တခ်ိဳ႕ အတုလုပ္သူေတြက Hermes အိတ္ေတြကိုေတာင္ အစစ္ေတြဝယ္ၿပီး ဘယ္လိုခ်ဳပ္ထားတာလဲကို အေသးစိတ္ ျပန္ျဖဳတ္ၾကည့္ၿပီး အတုလုပ္ၾကတာပါ။
ဒီဇိုင္နာပစၥည္းအတုေရာင္းတဲ့ ေဈးကြက္က ေဒၚလာ ဘီလီယံေက်ာ္ၿပီး တခ်ိဳ႕ အတုေတြဆိုရင္ ပစၥည္း အေကာင္းစားေတြသံုးထားၿပီး ေဈးလည္းႀကီးတယ္။ BBC ရဲ႕စစ္တမ္းအရ ဒီဇိုင္နာပစၥည္း အတုဝယ္ယူသူ တစ္ႏွစ္မွာလူသံုးသန္းေက်ာ္တယ္လို႔ ေတြ႔ရွိရပါတယ္။ အဝယ္မ်ားတဲ့ brand ေတြ ကေတာ့ Yves Saint Laurent, Burberry နဲ႔ Gucci စတာေတြပါ။ သံုးပံုတစ္ပံုေလာက္က Internet မွာ ေရာင္းရတာပါ။ ပစၥည္းအတုေတြဝယ္ယူတာကို ကန္႔ကြက္ၾကတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းေတြကေတာ့ ဒီရတဲ့ဝင္ေငြေတြက ဒုစ႐ိုက္ ဂိုဏ္းေတြဆီကို ေရာက္သြားလို့ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီပစၥည္းေတြကိုလည္း အရမ္းဝင္ေငြနည္းတဲ့ အလုပ္သမား ေတြက ေဘးအႏၱရာယ္ ရွိတဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းခြင္ေတြမွာ ခ်ဳပ္ရတာပါ။ တကယ့္ပိုင္႐ွင္အစစ္ေတြအတြက္လည္း ဝင္ေငြ ဆံုး႐ံႈးေစပါတယ္။
Leeds University က Criminology Professor David Wall ကေတာ့ ဒုစ႐ိုက္ဂိုဏ္းေတြဆီကို ဝင္ေငြေရာက္တယ္ဆိုတာက သက္ေသသိပ္မရွိဘူးလို႔ေျပာပါတယ္။ Highstreet Brand ေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ Primark တို႔လည္း လုပ္အားအရမ္းနည္းတဲ့ လုပ္သားေတြသံုးတယ္လို႔ BBC ကိုေျပာျပပါတယ္။
Open University က Dr Haider ကေတာ့ “အတုဝယ္ယူသူေတြက ဥပေဒကို အေလးမထားတဲ့သူ၊ လုပ္ငန္းႀကီးေတြကို မေကာင္းျမင္သူေတြ မ်ားတယ္”လို႔ဆိုပါတယ္။ “ဒီလူေတြက ဒီဇိုင္နာ brand ေတြဆိုတာ မတရား ေဈးတင္တယ္လို႔ ခံယူထားၿပီး သူတို႔ကိုယ္သူတို႔ ေဈးဝယ္တာအရမ္းလည္တဲ့လို႔ထင္တဲ့ သူေတြမ်ိဳးမ်ားတယ္။”
BBC က Prada အိတ္အတုကို သိသိႀကီးဝယ္ထားသူတစ္ေယာက္ကို ေမးတဲ့ အခါမွာေတာ့ “ဒီကုမၸဏီအႀကီးေတြ ဝင္ေငြရံႈးတာကိုမသနားပါဘူး။ Prada တို႔ Louis Viutton တို႔က အတုေတြေၾကာင့္ ဆိုင္ပိတ္ရမွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးေလ။ အခုအိတ္ကိုအတုျဖစ္ျဖစ္ အစစ္ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ျကိုက္မွာပဲ” လို႔ျပန္ေျပာပါတယ္။
အိတ္တစ္လံုးေဒၚလာ ၅ေထာင္ဆိုတာ ယုတိၱမရွိဘူးလို႔ ထင္ခြင့္ရွိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒီ Luxury brand ေတြက branding ပိုင္းမွာ ေဒၚလာသန္းေက်ာ္ အကုန္ခံထားၾကတာပါ။ ပစၥည္းေတြကိုအရည္အေသြးဒီဇိုင္းေကာင္း တာေတြနဲ႔ပဲ ေဈးႀကီးေတာင္းလို႔မရပါဘူး။ brand ရဲ႕ ရာဇဝင္နဲ႔ အိမ္မက္ေတြကို ဝယ္ယူသူေတြစီေရာင္းခ်ၿပီး အိတ္လို ပစၥည္းေတြကို investment တစ္ခုျဖစ္တဲ့ အဆင့္ထိေရာက္ေအာင္တြန္းပို႔ရပါတယ္။ လူေတြက ခ်မ္းသာသည္ျဖစ္ေစ ဆင္းရဲသည္ျဖစ္ေစ ညာေရာင္းလို႔ရေအာင္ေတာ့ အရမ္းမအၾကပါဘူး။
ပစၥည္းအတုေတြကို ဒီဇိုင္းႀကိဳက္လို႔ဝယ္တယ္ဆိုရင္ Logo မပါပဲဆင္တူေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးရွိပါတယ္။ ဒီဇိုင္းအတုနဲ႔ ဒီဇိုင္းခိုးခ်ထားတဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြရဲ႕ေဈးကြက္က အရမ္းက်ယ္ေတာ့ LV ရဲ႕ အပြင့္ပံုနဲ႔ LV အတုမဟုတ္တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြ Louboutin အတုမဟုတ္တဲ့ ဆင္တူ႐ိုးမွာ ဖေနာင့္အနီေရာင္ေဒါက္ဖိနပ္ေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးရွိပါတယ္။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ တံဆိပ္အတုကို သိသိႀကီးဝယ္သူေတြက လူအထင္ႀကီး ခံခ်င္ၿပီးသူမ်ား သိသြားမွာကို အျမဲစိတ္ပူေနရပါတယ္။ သိသြားရင္လည္း ရြဲ့ျပီးဝယ္ထားတယ္လို့ထင္ေအာင္ ရယ္စရာ လုပ္ေနရေသးတယ္။ ဘာလို႔ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို စိတ္ဒုကၡခံၾကတာလည္းေနာ္။
(English Version)
Some Luxury Brands refuse to allow shoppers to take photos of their products inside their shops. This is not just snobbishness but to prevent counterfeiters from getting their detail design of their latest products. It made some people laugh because some counterfeiters would buy a real Hermes’ bag and would dissect it to copy it down to the last details.
Counterfeit designer goods are said to be billion dollar business and some of the fakes actually use good quality material and are not cheap as well. According to investigation by BBC: Research suggests about three million consumers every year buy counterfeit goods carrying one of the top designer labels, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Burberry or Gucci. Nearly a third of the sales are over the internet.
Some of the outrages for buying fake goods are that the earnings of these are to fund drug dealers and organized crime. Many use cheap labours in horrific working conditions and also genuine manufacturers are deprived of any profit.
However, David Wall, professor of criminology at Leeds University, told BBC that there is little evidence provided that profits are used to fund organized criminal gangs. Many High street fashion stores like Primarks are known for using sweat shops to product their clothes.
According to Dr Haider Ali from the Open University, he explained to BCC that “people who have relatively little regard for the law” and “people who have negative attitudes towards big business” are the ones who buy counterfeit products. “This may be because they feel that genuine brands charge unfair prices. Those people who see themselves as being shrewd shoppers willing and able to beat the system may also be more likely to buy counterfeits.
BBC questioned one shopper who knowing bought a fake Prada backpack with no qualms about it.
“I have little pity for the multinational companies that lose a minimal amount of profit. You’re surely not expecting me to believe Prada or Louis Vuitton are going to go out of business because of replicas.”
“Of course they’re not. Besides, I love my bag – fake or not.”
Lush’s stance on counterfeit fashion bags are like they are a no-go. You have the right to believe that a bag that costs $5000 is ridiculous. However, these luxury brands spend millions of dollars on branding to get to that elevated state. You cannot charge an insane amount of money and expect people to buy it just because it’s a good quality and design. You need to sell the story and make your products still valuable that something like a bag could be an investment product. At the end of the day, people are, whether rich or poor, are not that stupid.
If you are saying you buy fake products because you just like the designs, there are knock-offs with no logo but retain the design esthetics. The knock-off world is so extensive that you could easily buy a LV looking print without it saying LV or a red sole high heels which is exactly like a louboutin but without the fake logo. Therefore, to knowingly buy a counterfeit when there are other similar knock-offs, it shows that the buyer wants others to think he/she could spend a lot of money on luxury brands but constantly feared of being find out or pretend they are being ironic. Why would you want to do that to yourself though?
