Counterfeit Products

There are two places where you can find fashionable products: the expensive, designer boutiques and on the streets and certain marketplaces. On boulevards or around regular market places, but often also inside marketplaces, you can find stacks of bags, shoes, electronical devices, toys and whatnots. Either these counterfeit products show brands similar to the authentic goods, or they show the same name. People often buy the counterfeit products because they want to access the status those who buy the authentic product have - but with much less money - and others buy these because they find it pretty or simply can't find anything else to their liking. This segment of the counterfeit-buying market isn't normally considered: indeed the counterfeit products can flood the markets so much that people with limited resources have no other choice but to buy fake stuff.

To prove this point all you have to do is to take a walk to markets and stores known for selling all sorts of things at cheap prices. The products hanging from the cluttered ceiling and walls are mostly fake, but for someone who don't have enough money to buy fashion magazines and pay for cable TV, is likely to buy a counterfeit Gucci bag without having ever heard about Gucci, or get a fake iPad without having ever heard about Apple.

Big companies are hard on the fight againts counterfeit products, and often Governments also take their share in this fight. In certain countries even buying counterfeit products is a crime. Counterfeit products are always taken away upon discovery. Information is shared with the population letting them know that counterfeit products are everywhere - even in medicines, cleaning products and food - and that these can be dangerous for their health, and by buying these products they are not only favoring tax avoiding industries, but are also giving that money to terrorist and organized crime.

I'm not saying this isn't the case, but if you want to end the counterfeit market - be it conscious or unconscious - the first thing you need to kill is the need for the product, and that can be done in a way that no Government and no company will be willing to follow: by reducing the need to follow fashion. 

If you are not bombarded at every step of the way that you need to get a Prada bag unless you are not cool, or that you have to have Swarovski jewelry, then you wouldn't feel bad for not belonging to a big spending group. It would be nice if we could go back to think of our things in a more fuctional way. Yes, you want pretty things, but pretty doesn't need to mean "expensive". Currently our societies give more value to the brand than the functionality of the goods. Thanks to this we can find 500 € scarfs (really, and that's the "duty free" price!) or 2000 € bags.

I admit to have brand-addictions. My love for Benetton and Swatch is already well know among the people who know me. I'll still buy from them when I have the money (I recently bought myself a beautiful orange summerdress and a raw coloured long, Greek-Goddess-like summerdress), but as I started making my own jewelry, I started wondering about why shouldn't I try making more things on my own. This is certainly one way to see things, and if we have the skill, or are willing to practice enough to get skilled, but we don't have to retreat from commerce and make everything for ourselves. We should learn to see things for what they are, learn to recognize our real needs, recognize the extent of our resources and act accordingly. It is a hard decision, and its hard to get through with it - like leaving an addiction or trying to loose weight - but step by step, we might be able to wash the glitter out of our eyes, and learn to see a bag in a bag, and not a desired status that not even a 2000 € piece can give us.

The feat is too big to fit it in a List of 13... or maybe not, but I want to try it. Would anybody else try it out with me?