Bucksstar? Pizza Huh? McDnonald's? Oh, knock it off

A new mall has opened in China, and for those complaining that every mall in the world now houses the same combination of Abecrombie & Fitch, Crate & Barrel, and Sephora, well, this one offers something a bit different.

According to an article I saw in the Mirror online - an article that, if this were the first of April, I might well have doubted - a shopping center in Nanjing is full of imposters. As in Bucksstar, Pizza Huh, McDnonald's....

Like the CVS generic brands, which you have to look twice at if you want the real thing, and A&P's "Ann Page" products of yore that looked an awful lot like Hellman's mayo and Del Monte fruit cocktail, the knock-off outfits use color schemes and logos that closely imitate the real thing.

City bosses are under pressure to ban the soon-to-be opened mall after pictures of the fake stores were leaked, causing uproar amongst angry consumers who feared they'd be ripped off.

This is one of those articles that takes on a life of its own, and I've been trying to track down a list of the all the real fake stores that are located there.

Alas, the Mirror article appears to be the ur source, and the few store fronts they show are all fast food joints.

They do have some pics of knock-off consumer goods: Adidos, being my favorite.

There's also a picture of a truly low end knock-off of some LaCoste after shave or whatever. It's called LaKosta and the image they use for the logo is a squirrel, not an alligator. (See ya later!)

Fake brands are, of course, a big and serious business, but - perhaps because I have absolutely nothing to do with consumer brands except for the occasional consumption of them - I find it hard to get really exercised about this.

Yes, I think we should crack down on dollar stores that are selling fake tubes of Crest that contain poison to unsuspecting poor people, but do I really think that some guy on a NYC street corner selling fake Vuitton bags and Rolex watches is cutting into Vuitton and Rolex business, as I saw someone claim on a news program I watched recently. (Sorry, I was on the StairMaster at the time, so I was only half paying attention. Plus I didn't have my bloggers notepad and pen nearby to capture source information. I was at the gym, and I think they usually have CNN on, but I can't really say for sure.)

Anyway, the luxury goods spokeswoman was ranting about how Coach, and Versace, and Vuitton were losing kabillions of dollars worth of sales each year because of counterfeiters. But am I missing something here, or is the person who's willing to pay $3K for a Vuitton bag not the same person who's going to pay $30 for a Vuitton knock-off that will look good for a couple of weeks, then fall apart?

("Oh, my, I was headed to the Vuitton store to buy a bag, when I saw an industrious young merchant on the corner selling the very same back for 1/100th the price. And I thought, in the current climate, what with Bernie Madoff and everything, I would buy directly from the industrious young merchant, rather than go to the Vuitton store.")

It's really only a problem if their selling the fakes for the same price, isn't it? Which I guess happens more than we might think. Or if they're selling fakes that present a clear danger. Which may happen more than we might think,, too. Although I doubt it. ("Stand back, that fake Rolex watch is going to explode!")

Look, companies pay lots of money to build and maintain their brands, and, in a perfect world, no one would rip off their hard-earned (or hard-bought) pizzazz, goodwill, and cachet. Companies have a right to protect themselves. And these counterfeiters really should knock it off.

But with everything else there is to worry about these days, somebody in Nanjing buying a fake Quarter Pounder at McDnonald's, or sporting a fake pair of Adidos, is not something I'm going to lose much sleep on my Tempur-Pedic bed over. (Or is it a real Tempur-Pedic? We bought it at Brookstone's, not at Bob's Discount Furniture, and we paid enough for it to be a real Tempur-Pedic. But how can I know for sure? How can I possibly know for sure?)