Why Buy Quality, When I Can Go for Cheap?
Several people with a taste for quality fashion products would have had the heading questions crossing their mind at a point in time, but without the financial wherewithal. Fortunately for such individuals, and unfortunately for the famous brands, there is a daily increase in look-alike imitations of genuine products flooding the back-alley markets across the world.
Bags of different sizes and uses shall be our focus in this article. I have been mostly ignorant of how to assess leather products before now, until some months ago. It was my wife’s birthday, and I was thinking of getting her something cute and classy. I read about stores where I could get quality pre-used bags online; that does not cost much. To have a sense of what I was looking for, a visit to the website of major brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermes shows a new female leather piece sells in the range of $1000 and $6000. Those prices happen to be several times the multiple of my budget for one year’s birthday gift.
After celebrating the high-end leather pieces displayed on the online platform of top-notch brands, I went ahead to look for sites selling pre-used bags from these same brands, but at a price which a medium-income earner like myself could afford. Before long, leads started popping up on my search engine with price tags as low as $55 for pre-used leather pieces that look quite similar (in the display picture) to what I saw on the sites of the luxury brands I had earlier visited.
Before placing an order, it was only reasonable for me to consult with someone more familiar with the dynamics of buying such fashion products. So, I chatted with a female colleague at my office about my intentions to get my wife a quality leather bag for my wife; I equally went ahead to inform her about the online stores which I visited. My colleague then did me the favor of educating my ignorance by informing me that the ridiculously cheap offers I saw online are all counterfeits. She told me about Kipling and showed me pictures of a leather bag she has plans to order from them.
How to distinguish quality bags
Many people have fallen prey to peddlers of counterfeit products; in the guise of buying the genuine item. Making merchandise of a product that looks just like an item by a luxury brand, either by using the brand’s name or trademark, is a criminal offense according to American legislation.
Now, how can you differentiate imitation from the real deal? Just as has been indicated by my experience, the first visible litmus test is the price of the leather bag; replicas are ridiculously cheap relative to the cost of the genuine item. By direct correlation, the high cost of items from luxurious brands is due to the craftsmanship, and the attention paid to every minute detail while producing the leather bag. Without being told the price of two similar leather bags (with one being genuine and the other being a counterfeit), you can quickly identify which of the two is the quality bag by checking for premium finishing peculiar to luxury brands.
How embarrassing would it have been, had I ordered the cheap Gucci bag online, and one of my wife’s friends told her off for using a fake fashion product; that would have been embarrassing. It would be best if you avoid embarrassment, go for the quality products.