Shameful Korean fashion business
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Exactly like the original - Shameful Korean fashion business
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| Popular loni bag of "jinyoo 103684"(left) and the copy product in the internet shopping mall(right) |
[Seoul Shinmun]
Song Hye-jin, an office worker (28) was going to buy one pair of shoes recently, but fell into agony. She discovered the favorite shoes of the black-dyed leather in internet shopping mall, but they were the products which copied Isabella Marant, the French famous brand. She said, “The genuine price is 800,000 won, but the copy product is 140,000 won. I like the design and the price, but buying the imitation makes me negative.”
If you input "Isabella Marant" into an Internet portal search window, you can find the information about the false products endlessly. There are a lot of shameless business practices that are proud of technique, that perfectly copied the collection of photographs of the Isabella Marant official web site without permission. It is not a story limited to shops selling clothing of the no-brand.
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LG Fashion's Lafuma's shoes have been accused by French outdoor brand Salomon for copying the design of its soles. The LG Fashion said “Salomon added a false charge against the design element which Lafuma used for nearly ten years” and rejected the imitation discussion, but received a blow in brand image. In last winter, when Canadian Goose over 1 million won became popular, the false products with the genuine logo and design were made and overflowed from the casual clothes brands such as Empolham, DOHC, CLRIDE, JACK&JILL. Netizens sneered these with “Korea Goose”.
The copy frigidity of the Korean fashion business is an old one. It is from a nearsighted way of thinking that rooted in the whole industry deeply. They are bent on the present sales and profits. Korean business temper to copy the famous import brands that are already spread and to sell them off at a stretch throws its weight around. A person concerned with fashion business said, “It needs a lot of research and development expenses and personnel expenses to develop a creative design, and to bring up competitiveness of the house brand. Large-scale investment is more difficult for the recession period that clothes do not sell like this time and we will choose the easy shortcut called copy.”
Some say this is reality of inferior domestic fashion business. The person concerned with fashion business confided, "It is physically difficult for a certain brand to make all original clothes with 200 sets of designs every season. I suggest unrecognizable copying in my company without expecting a creative design.” The designer goes to Italy and France for a degree business trip twice a year. The main purpose is to buy the new products of the famous brands. The person who were formerly designer concerned with industry said, “I tear off the clothes that I bought one by one, and use the designs of patterns that appear as references. There are words ‘Imitation is the mother of creation' and I think that it is also a creative action to interpret original products again.”
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Isabel Marant "August Patent Loafer"(Made in France, top) and Korean imitation (bottom)
The supplier who copied the design boasts saying “I completely copied the genuine product” in the product introduction column. The regular product costs 754 dollars (approximately 800,000 won) and the imitation costs 148,000 won. |
The border of the imitation and the trend (the fashion) are vague, and there are a lot of phenomena to copy each other. Last year women clothes company A asked a department store for telling the business Corporation B that sold clothes in the department store to stop the products display and the sale, because B plagiarized A's coat designs. A person concerned with the department store said, “It was same that both products copied the specific clothes of the overseas brand. Only the number of wrinkles of clothes and material were different. It was difficult to arbitrate them”.
The copy custom spreading over the industry may disturb the growth of the rising designers. Brand name "JinYoo103684" by Yoo Jin-hwa, a designer became famous for the Lonny bag with the original design. However, the bags that copied the design completely with only the different material have been sold in over 200,000 won that was the half price of the genuine in internet shopping mall since 2011. The designer suffered damage. The person concerned with the industry said, “Rising designers are hard to survive if the imitation goods would walk about in the situation that brand recognition is not certain”.
From such a reason, the demand for protection of the design increases day by day. According to the Patent Office, the design registration number such as clothes increased from 2,802 in 2009 to 6,618 in 2012, more than double. Chu Ho-jeong, a professor of clothes studies at Seoul university said, “Instead of bringing up ability for design and developing the differentiated brands led by the big companies, the fashion business has imported overseas brands and imitated them, and it has tried to increase sales easily. From a long-term point of view, it is the only way to grow naturally for fashion business to manage the original brands.”
Italian Burberry (left) and Underwear for men of Korean Ssangbangwool TRY (right)
Burberry Wins ‘Tartan Pattern’ Lawsuit, But Loses Out To Buburi
Shoes of "Salomon" in France(left) and shoes of "Rafuma" in Korean LG fashion(right)
LG Fashion’s Lafuma’s shoes have been accused by French outdoor brand Salomon
Canada Goose(left) and Korea Goose(right)