Suppose you would want to buy a Louis Vuitton bag in Shanghai. You could go to the Xiangyang Market where you can buy a fake one for less than RMB 100. But if you want to buy a real product you’d better go to an international chain store, to make sure you get the real thing. Carrefour for example. And what does the bag cost there? Only RMB 49.90 (less than EUR 5) as employees of LV found out! Because the retail price is normally around RMB 9000 this did not smell right. And indeed, the bags were as fake as they could be.

LV is now taking its fellow-French company to court in Shanghai. Carrefour defended itself yesterday by saying that they stock 36000 different items, so things can go wrong sometimes. OK, but selling fake LV bags for half the standard Xiangyang market price? Well, Carrefour said, the problem was with their bag supplier. A representative of this company was also in court, and he explained what happened. They were not able to deliver enough goods, so they went to a roadside vendor, bought 40 bags and delivered them to Carrefour as their own products. This little mistake might cost Carrefour RMB 500,000 in damages plus RMB 100,000 in investigative costs. But it’s nice free publicity for them, and Chinese don’t care about IP infringements anyway.
(Source: Shanghai Daily)