Knock-off brands in China.
Anyone who has ventured behind the great wall of China will be able to confirm that this ancient nation has two faces.
If you’re staring at your iPhone or iPad, you’re looking at China’s #1 face: productive, affordable, innovative.
The other face of China is preoccupied with cheap knock-offs of American and European fashion brands, of sub-par quality.
Those imitation or “monkey” products are produced by the millions and sold via thousands of online outlets that may or may not claim to be legitimate providers of major brands.
Ji Bai, Chinese replica fashion entrepreneur.
Ji Bai, is a Chinese entrepreneur from the Zázhǒng province of China; at only 24 years of age, he is responsible for a respectable 2.5% of all online knock-off trafficking.
“I sell gucci, dolce, boss, armani from web site, many thousand order every day,” says Ji Bai from behind an array of computers, smoking non-stop.
“On day make 30000 – 35000 yuan, easy money when system work”, says Ji Bai, who boasts a daily revenue of more than $5,000.
The numbers are shocking: Ji Bai utilizes an ever-growing network of domain names in every TLD; from .com, .net and .org to .info, .biz, .me and .co. Currently, Ji Bai’s domain network currently comprises of 8,422 domain names and growing.
“Registrar domain every day, keep growing from take-down notice receive, but when remove one domain I register five,” says Ji Bai, describing how he evades take-down actions by the American authorities that battle counterfeit goods and services on the Internet.
Ji Bai uses mostly US-based domain registrars, as the Chinese ones in Hong Kong charge too much per domain. He takes his losses whenever the domains get confiscated, and moves on rapidly; his daily revenue of more than $5,000 allows for a massive expansion of the knock-off brand network.
“Many order come from America and Europe, peoples know what buy, I tell them it’s faithful replica not expensive and cheap,” says Ji Bai. “Those that say after it’s replica fraud and want back money, I point term conditions on web site, cào nǐ mā!” exclaims Ji Bai.
Overall, the Chinese knock-off brand network is expected to bring in more than $8.4 billion dollars in 2014.
