The Brand Man Speaks

Chinese retail pursues new level of brand and trademark piracy: This time its ripping off IKEA

Just a couple of weeks after it was discovered that in a remote Chinese city a group of "entrepreneurs" had created "fake" Apple Stores, (most of which have been shut down once world wide news of this piracy was exposed), now comes news that another highly successful Western retailer has been "faked".

IKEA, the Swedish based world leader in low cost, high design, instantly available furnishings and accessories sold in huge warehouse stores now has a fake version in Southwest China. Also in a remote town. The store called 11 Furniture looks and feels like IKEA down to the color schemes used in the store and how the product is merchandised.

It is abundantly clear that despite the Chinese government saying it is opposed to such blatant disregard for trademarked and protected concepts respected around the rest of the world, they turn a blind eye to such retail rip offs UNTIL someone exposes the fraud in the Western Media.

The does not look like a problem that is going to be handled properly anytime soon and yet given the power of the Chinese empire to ignore what they do not want to deal with, it may be very difficult to stop this piracy from expanding across their vast country.

Watching out for you everyday.

Eli

 

Fake Apple Store in China launched hoping to get Apple's approval to be the real thing? What were they thinking?

SEE UPDATE at end of original post for more details

I tweeted about this story shortly after it hit the wires last week. An "Apple" retail store in China ( not located in a major city or even an affluent suburb area) was "outed" by a blogger. The store looked every bit the real McCoy down to the employees wearing the trademark blue apple shirt and ID tags. However, the keen eyed blogger noticed the store used the words "Apple Store" on its signage and real Apple stores do not. They only use the bitten Apple logo to identify themselves.

The products apparently look and function like the real thing too and store personnel were absolutely sure they were employed by Apple as well. Wow amazing, huh?

The truth has now surfaced. The store is a phony and not even created by approved third party Apple re-sellers. It was a store built to "hope" that Apple would approve the owners as a legitimate Apple products store (NOT!).

The store's manager says he is aware the store is not real but claims the products are all legit Apple products. How can that be? Apparently they buy the products from other Apple stores in China or authentic re-sellers and use those purchases as inventory for the phony store. Not sure how they planned to make a profit since they were buying and selling at the same price.

Wacky story but shows how strong the Apple brand is in China with only four stores in the entire country so far. Two in Beijing and two in Shanghai.

Watching out for you every day.

Eli

UPDATE

It appears there were five (5) fake Apple stores in one small town. Given the media attention one of the stores that was publicly outed received, the Chinese government investigated. They have determined two of the stores must close not because they infringe on Apple's trademarks, but rather because they failed to obtain a business license prior to opening. China now says they are not sure that Apple has correctly applied for trademark and copyright protection of their name, logo and products and thus they have not closed the remaining three stores that have valid business licenses.

China has the worse record for trademark and copyright violations in the world. By far.