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My eyes were opened to this when I was hanging out with a group of Russian foreign exchange students in college.

They spent collectively north of over $20,000 USD on Levi's, iStuff, Nikes, etc.

Packed it all up into 10-15 suitcases for transit back to their home towns.

The same thought crossed my mind years ago when I was in a shopping mall in Prague. There was a Wrangler store selling Wrangler jeans — you know, buy-them-for-cheap-at-Walmart Wrangler jeans — for something like $170 a pair. I couldn’t believe it.

That's not really arbitrage.

It's more comparable to the unlicensed Pirate Joe's of Canada stockpiling goods by driving across the border and buying them manually in Trader Joe's stores and selling for a premium.

No it’s really arbitrage. This was a store with wall-to-wall Wrangler branding and product. If it was unlicensed (I doubt it, this was a very high end mall), it was very convincing.

I suspect that the quality was substantially higher than the Wrangler jeans you would find at a US Walmart, despite having the same branding. Other brands like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein have products ranging from budget to ultra high-end, all of which bear the respective brands.

Nope. Wrangler, Levi, all made in Poland (for central/eastern market) :)

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