I was reading a business report this AM....talking over Europe-China trade. So this odd story came up....from the high bag line of Gucci...analysts now believe around 80-percent of what Gucci sells...is made in China, and then shipped off to Italy/France....where it's 'branded', with the label showing 'made in Milan' or 'made in France'.
Analysts suggest Prada has a similar issue....maybe 60-percent of their stuff...made in China. Same story for Hermes and Louis Vuitton.
The idea that it's not all high-quality European leather? Well...it just begs questions. Maybe if you bought your bag twenty-to-forty years ago....it's the real thing.
My wife (German in nature) has a friend who saw this remarkable deal (back around 2017) in Dubai....where they offered 50-percent off deal of a second high-value bag....if you paid full-price on bag number one. I asked my wife how you could sell such a bag, with half-off, and she had no answer.
Looking back....bag number one was probably a authentic Milan-made bag, and bag number two....the Chinese-made one. It would make sense then how you could heavily discount the second bag.
Legal? Well....if it came into the EU with NO label....yeah, it'd be legal to import a pallet of no-name bags. Then you take it into a Milan factory.....to put the 'label' on the bag, and put into a nice box....to ship out to the world as their product. Nothing illegal in doing this.
To be honest....if you laid out the top 500 labels across the globe (including the US)....it wouldn't shock me if 90-percent of the labels all do the same thing, and have some path going back to China.
2 comments:
Seriously??? There's a lot that's illegal about it. Just because they haven't been caught yet doesn't make it legal. It's called fraud.
If some cheapo brand were to import what appeared to be quality L-V purses...I'd agree that the customs folks would react in Italy/France, and arrest folks. However, if the mother-company itself has forty crates of the ultra-brand, without a label....I doubt that charges would occur. And after you brand it....put it into a nice box, then ship out to the world as X-brand....no one says a word. You and I would both agree....these probably were never worth 2k Euro....except for the brand having status. (Note, I would never spend that kind of money for status)
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