Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

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> but I haven't heard of counterfeit goods.

If you peruse some of the sneakerhead forums, you'll see a lot of complaints about counterfeit dealers on Amazon. Nike used to partner with Amazon so you were assured your Nike's were coming directly from Nike. Nike killed the deal in 2019 and so now you have no idea where those Nike's and other sneaker companies products are coming from:

And the Wall Street Journal reported this week that Nike was “disappointed the deal with Amazon didn’t eliminate counterfeits and give the brand more control over gray-market goods,” which are legitimate items that Amazon sellers buy from distributors or retailers, rather than from Nike itself.

The problem for Nike is, removing itself from the Amazon platform won’t fix that problem. In fact, it’s likely to get worse. Amazon will now look to acquire more “gray market” Nike products to fill in the inventory gaps Nike’s departure will leave behind.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/14/20965434/nike-amazon-p...

Now Chinese Nike knockoffs are showing up under dubious brands like "fashion" or "Vitike":

https://sneakerhistory.com/2019/11/14/8-unbelievably-fake-sn...

You're replying to a question about Amazon in Europe with stories about Amazon in America.

The question wasn't whether it happens in America. The question was whether it also happens in Europe (personally I've always assumed it does but my point is your articles don't address that despite being in response to that question).

Is it typical to refer to legitimate third-party sale of goods as "gray-market?" If I buy a used pair of Nikes from the person that owned them, or a third-party consignment organization, or Nike themselves, they're still the same pair of Nikes and their legitimacy doesn't change one way or the other. Gray-market to me implies you can't be 100% sure if they're counterfeit or not.

I don’t know too much about sneakers, but that is how the nomenclature is used with watches, at least. There, a gray-market purchase is a purchase of a legitimate item from somewhere other than the manufacturer or an authorized retailer. Notably, gray-market goods are sold at a discount but lack the OEM’s warranty.

Nike wants to make sure that if a shoe store goes out of business, they can only throw out any Nike shoes they had, rather than sell their inventory to another retailer.

Similarly if you bought a pair and they didn't fit, your only option is to throw them out and buy a new pair. No reselling.

Gray market is very far from chinese knockoffs though.

This is not what gray market is. The issue is with distributors in low price markets braking their contracts by exporting products to high price markets. This hurts the manufacturer as well as customers in low price markets.

> gray-market goods, which are legitimate items that Amazon sellers buy from distributors or retailers, rather than from Nike itself.

Nike trying to cast distributors and retailers as "gray market" is a little gross.

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