/ Rob Beschizza / 10:09 am Thu Apr 14, 2011

Counterfeit gadget trade surges

Gizmodo's Brian Gardiner checks out the epic-scale market for counterfeit audio gear.
Early on the morning of October 28, 2010 a massive strike force assembled outside the Meipai Electronic Audio Factory and three other storage facilities in and around Southern China's Enping City. What had started out as a tip from a handful of major audio equipment makers led to a months-long investigation by Guangdong Public Security Department and Jiangmen City police. By day's end, four people were in jail and 1,200 counterfeit audio items were in police hands, and the so-called "New Dynamics Audio Equipment Factory" was effectively shut down. It was the first salvo in a new war against fake wares, lead by an unlikely coalition of audio companies who, though fierce competitors in stores, are closely allied against a common enemy.
And it's not just in Asia: a recent raid in the UK netted $500k worth of fakes, the largest ever there. One driving force is the increasing quality of knock-offs and their easy availability online: fakes so good that they sell for only slightly less than real ones.

8

  1. Is the other driving force the decreasing level of quality from all the big vendors that use to make really reputable products from the late 90’s, and thus leading to razor thin margins.

    I’m not sure the knock offs have gotten substantially better (well thanks to better IC stuff they have), but I know a lot of name brand audio equipment has went from nicer to mediocre over the last decade.

  2. @bcsizemo

    Had a friend who was a loyal sony fan back in the day when that meant something.. I saw what he saw in them I just couldn’t afford sony.

    suddenly one day I could afford sony and it wasn’t worth buying it.

    just wait till the 3D printers become common..

  3. 1,200 items? I’ve seen more than that at a single vendor stall in Shanghai. Sounds like window dressing to me.

  5. Does this really matter? I mean, you can’t stop this, so why even try? All you do is inconvenience people around the factory with the police raid. And there might be people using the factory for legal stuff – maybe they just came in to use the bathroom. That’s a lot of rights being broken to no real good end. Because that’s what’s important – rights. And me getting dirt cheap Blu-Ray players. But mostly rights if anyone asks.

    Material wants to be free. We should prepare for the new economy. Product designers will be funded by charity or wacky tee-shirts or something. I don’t know. I’ll leave the details to those that need money. All I do know is that we should destroy the old material economy first.

    Or better yet, why don’t we start a free-products movement. We could get all the best designers in the world and have them work without pay on making a free 70’s era VCR. But it will be, like, cool.

    1. As a product designer, I can tell you with some certainty that most of the worthless junk being “designed” today relies upon hype and image more than superior form or function. It’s only the expendable companies that aren’t contributing much to the marketplace that really have something to worry about with counterfeiting.

  6. While I’m not going to defend Monster Cables, for any piece of audio gear that has actual electronic components inside there can be a big (and audible) difference between the quality of a fake and genuine item. For example, there is a booming business right now in China in counterfeit electrolytic capacitors. (See http://diy-fever.com/misc/fake-capacitors/ for a typical photo. These were first discovered by electronics hobbyists tracking down reliability problems in their gear.)

Comments are closed.