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October 21, 2007
Fakes on the Streets, and Where the Money Might Go
I've always found peddlers on the streets of New York aggravating. Now they are proliferating, with racks of fake bags sprouting all over Midtown with franchised similarity. Scarves, sunglasses, and fake high-end watches are also part of the mix.
Benign efforts of struggling illegal aliens to grab the gold ring to hoist themselves up to credit card and mortgage scams? Or something more ominous. This CNBC article makes me wonder about the distribution pipeline for fake goods. They come from someplace, and somebody makes money off the morons who get a thrill from buhying cheap fake goods.
While the CNBC story focuses on counterfeiting in the Tri-Border area of South America, instinct tells me that fakes are a seamless web and dollars spent on Madison Avenue go to the same place as in the Tri-Border area. Do Americans really want to finance their killers via a bargain?
Van | 10/21/07 at 08:01 PM | Categories: WWIV
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Comments
Many years ago, overseas, I spoke to a woman who made sneakers for a major western firm. She was paid by the piece, pennies for a product that would be marked up 1000% when it hit New York.
I didn't understand how she could live on those earnings until I learned the dirty little secret of the factory. They paid her pennies each on the sneakers she made for the factory. As a bonus, she could hang around and make some sneakers for herself. Those got sold on the black market. When they got to New York, instead of 1000%, maybe only 200% markup. Illegal, bad, evil, black market goods (technically not counterfeit)- yet made in the same factory, same materials, same labor!
There are shades of gray between legitimate and illegitimate sometimes. In a sense, the money from some of those black market goods goes to underwriting the extremely cheap labor used for the regular goods. Ironically, if that flow of black market goods were to be shut, the workers might demand more money to make up for the sudden loss of their black market income, causing the manufacturer to have LESS profit, not more!
Now, clearly all black market goods do not have this origin. But I know for a fact that some do.
Ben
Ben | October 22, 2007 03:07 PM
