Dupes took over the world
vox.com
vox.com
> The bid failed, confirming that “dupes” and “dupe culture” — a commercial ecosystem built around providing consumers cheaper alternatives to name-brand products — are cultural phenomena here to stay.
> The trial focused on whether Quince’s shearling boots that really, really look like UGGs violated the existing patent for the design. And in a twist, the jury ruled that yes, Quince had copied the UGG design — but the patent over the UGG boot should not have been issued in the first place because the design was too generic to protect. The ruling opened the door for Quince and any other brand to make a similar-looking boot, opening up a new frontier for “dupe culture.”
UGG itself is a company that operates by abusing intellectual property laws.
https://www.elle.com/uk/fashion/what-to-wear/a69924640/how-t...
I didn't realise the trademark holder is a US company.
While some California wines were and still are sold as "California Champagne", there was a court decision back in 2006 which affirmed the same protected trademark for Champagne as in the rest of the world, with the caveat that wineries already using the "Champagne" name would be grandfathered in and permitted to continue doing so.
A bottle of Champagne made in the US will be labeled with its origin, and no one can start a winery and start selling Champagne in the US. That's not the same thing as "generic".
https://www.ttb.gov/system/files/images/pdfs/rulings/2008-1....
And no, "trademark" definition aside, it's not "generic" in the US by any definition of "generic" commonly used in the US, legal or otherwise.
But yeah calling anything Champagne apart from stuff coming from Champagne is a bad form and looked down upon a bit. Small kids do such mistakes and thats fine, adults shouldn't.
You will get an entirely different style of wine.
The origin location is really secondary. “Franciacorta” gets you something like Champagne, “sparkling wine” does not.
It would be like if a US company registered Champagne as a trademark then enforced it against French companies selling it.
Does non-PDO Parmesan exist in Italy? In the US, "Parmesan" is usually some kind of domestic hard cheese that lacks maturity. The genuine Parmigiano Reggiano costs around 3x.
But yeah, when Deckers bought the Ugg brand name the quality went down. Similar to Dunlop Volleys which are now crappy quality too. I don't buy either now.
Might as well get any other brands version of the same thing - the quality is unlikely to be any worse. Hell, my kid opted for fluffy crocs instead even though they are yet to truly know the word bogan...
Maybe R.M.Williams boots if your wallet is tolerant to something way overpriced.
But they seem to be targeting the exec crowd who want dress-boots-with-aussie-country-cred while this exact marketing ploy is causing the loss of that credibility.
Again with the brand abuse. But the brand wants to exude quality, even if it is way over priced for what you get, so that's something.
This is expected IMHO, given that name brand product do nothing more than raise and raise prices, with varying list of ~excuses~ reasons such as "war here or there", "material/labor costs", "crisis", etc... But consumers' salaries are the same than before price raises of the last 7~10 years, so the new prices are unjustified (no better quality, no better products) and so people will keep expecting that a boot (or anything else) costs today the same as it cost in 2019.
(Is Hacker News even the right place to be asking fashion and fashion brand questions?)
Some people say brands like Gucci became more famous because of the number copies made.
I really do wonder if MBA == evil.
> Fanatics, Inc. is an American sports platform that consists of several businesses, including licensed sports merchandise, trading cards and collectibles, sports betting, special events, and live commerce.
--Wikipedia
So cheaper, better quality, and I'm not a walking advert!
I’ve also started to pick up ceramics from local makers as there are a lot of potters lurking around. Often the prices are good, certainly comparable to the luxury consumer brands like Wedgewood.
Also we’re a Makita household, not because the usual options are insufficient for home use, but they’re one of the only independent power tool makers left. Most other hand tools I try and buy vintage/restored when I’m in Europe as they’re much cheaper than in the US.
Point6 as a successor to IceBreaker I didn’t know about. There are very few good merino companies and apparently their conglomerate also owns Smartwool.
Made in Japan: Gangy 300 can opener. No moving parts, just a handle of heavy stamped steel, with a stainless claw blade riveted on. Last opener I'll ever need. $12 online from the usual suspect.
If the dupe market isn't doing it the wonks inside are busy selling off the brand name as fast as they can.
So the "dupe" non-branded version is actually the original, and much, much better quality than the branded official version of the product.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovair [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Martens
Also if you want legit ones, including vintage, check out the UK Boot Company in Camden Town.
So far this is just a tiny 200 year abberation.
The most bizarre thing about the economical systems is that there indeed were cases where former workers of the industries that collapsed/disappeared indeed went the way of the dodo.
BTW see also https://www.edge.org/conversation/gin-television-and-cogniti...
Ultimately the manufacturer wins the horse-shoe battle because they are cheaper. And the consumers in the village prefer cheap shoes to locally made (expensive) ones.
Fundamentally consumers like cheap stuff. Manufacturing shifts happen because as soon as there's a cheaper output, you've won. Consumers will reliably switch to cheap. At the start there may be some brand loyalty, there may even be a quality difference, but both those erode quickly.
Lots of people promote the idea of buying locally, even if it's more expensive. But it's a hard message to sell, and a tough one to buy. I'm sorry for the blacksmith, but times are hard and I need my horses shod.
It's easy to blame capitalism or factory owners or foreign cheap labor or any other convenient political scapegoat. But the root of the problem is consumer preference for cheap (even if inferior) to the exclusion of everything else.
This is perhaps culturally most evident where the premise above is false. In the US for example food is low quality, but plentiful. In Europe food generally costs more, but is of a much higher standard. Portions are smaller. Quality is more important than quantity.
This is not by accident. Europe has deliberately fostered local food markets, local food production, and promoted a narrative around history and good production. Cheap food is available, but quality food has a strong foothold.
There is difference between the political power and the economical power. The economical power of the aggregate consumer is vast, but it's unconsolidated, and doesn't usually translate into the political power. The economical power of several centralized/monopolized producers is also vast, but it's consolidated and usually does translate into the political power. Plus, you know, class consciousness and all that — the gentlemen and the nobles in the Parliament may bicker and backstab each other, but the moment the peasants revolt against the Enclosure Acts, they put their differences behind them and start the hangings.
> Ultimately the manufacturer wins the horse-shoe battle because they are cheaper.
Yeah, but they can speed their victory up by paying the legislature (or straight up being a large part of that legislature) to crack down on those small-scale manufacturers. License the blacksmithing itself, require obtaining certificates of quality for horseshoes for sale, and tax shoe-fitting unless it's done with the authorized horseshoes — and that's only barely scratching the surface.
Is this actually true?
As to your general point, I don't think the blame can lie with the consumer as the consumer almost always does not have the expertise to recognize quality and understand the consequences of buying lower quality. Nor can you expect everyone to be an expert in everything. Without that expertise, buying a more expensive product is a gamble while a lower priced one is at least a known quantity even if it isn't the theoretically best deal.
That reduction happened over a long period but it wasn't without its problems. Even now there are old coal mining villages that have never really recovered economically.
Are villages the correct unit to look at there though? Do individuals from these villages now have worse opportunities than they had before?
More people can afford to buy a toilet than ever before. The same may not be true of affording a plumber to install it.
And the idea that one location making all the horseshoes means each village is minus one living is ignoring the other effects.
Now, all the villagers can get cheaper horseshoes, so they don’t have to spend as many resources on shoes for their horses, and can now invest more into what their village is best at, and sell those goods to other villages.
Basic Ricardian Economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_economics
Of course, that doesn’t mean the blacksmith isn’t out of a job, but I always hate that so many people think the solution to that problem is to just give up the economic benefits of specialization instead of working to improve the distribution of the gains.
You are probably right that we need to have less stuff, but if we are going to have less, I would rather work less, too.
Ignoring all the possitive other effects as well.
And for a village that had 50 such specialties... they can make do with 49 specialties. Then with 48. And 45 as well. 25 eventually. But some day in the future, their great-grandchildren wake up, and there are no jobs. That Korean factory even ships in tractors, so there's no farm labor work to be had for the 200 who didn't have a specialty. But the food still costs money. And it doesn't matter if the village is gone because those people moved to the city, there's not much work there either. And maybe there are even fewer people to worry about this, because when the moved to the city, those people stopped having children.
Who is this good for? Is it good for you?
> Who is this good for? Is it good for you?
Well, as a global population reduction is sorely needed, this is good for pretty much everybody. There's absolutely no way we can keep extracting resources and polluting at the rate demanded by our current enormous population (which has more than doubled in my life time).
Unfortunately, your theory isn't working, as the population still grows.
Retards in the 1960s believed such. But the reality is that it's not even needed a little. And subreplacement fertility isn't "population reduces for a bit, then stabilizes"... subreplacement fertility is actually "the population continues to shrink, accelerating and shrinking faster until extinction inevitably ensues".
So you're not really a "I want a lower population", you're part of a death cult that wants humans gone. Forever.
>this is good for pretty much everybody.
It hasn't been good for anyone, except some tiny minority that is measured as much less than 1%.
>There's absolutely no way we can keep extracting resources and polluting at the rate demanded by our current enormous population (which has more than doubled in my life time).
Already shrinking. Visibly, indisputably shrinking. And the western world isn't doing the polluting.
>Unfortunately, your theory isn't working, as the population still grows.
No, it already stopped growing. Ran out of gas, but as the car coasts to a stop you can delusionally pretend that the engine's still on, and that we aren't coasting up the hill. If somehow I were wrong, it wouldn't be unfortunate at all, it'd be a wondrous miracle.
The factory is now all robots, and only 3 people have a job there.
Dupe might affect the seller, but customer doesn't care much. In the past, people had to go by brand name as an assurance of quality. We have other means now. Reviews from other buyers, detailed specifications, return policies - all reduced the moat of branding. People can now buy any brand that has specifications they want, use reviews for quality assurance and it's easy to return the product if required. Brand is not playing the same role it used to.
Most reviews that aren't fake are useless and written within the first few days of ownership anyway .
Like stock mixing.
Yeah, brand reputation doesn't work as a guide to quality any more.
But I don't think we have any other means of reliably identifying quality yet.
Most counterfeits goods skimp on manufacturing quality. Like instead of very detailed stitching with intricate design they might just skip that altogether. For instance one of the easiest ways to identify dupes is if the brand name and design on a bag 'flows' to the other side. Obv counterfeits dont really care because they want to save money
For counterfeit goods that are so high quality 1) they would only show pictures of it, not the real thing and 2) only cost like 1/3 of the brand price.
Aka that $600 bag would still cost $200 if it had identical quality. This is all based on what business owners told me from when I visited counterfeit markets in China
£15K rolex for £2k, yeah no thanks.
Usually, dupe's sacrifice quality for price. The fact that a market exists for this at all indicates a strong consumer acceptance of lower quality items.
I do wonder, if the "premium" option were to never exist, would these "dupes" even exist in the first place as they seem to enjoy an "implied" quality that the premium option pays for, whilst cannibalizing sales.
I think it is the other way around, too many brands lowered their quality enough that general consumers no longer believe (or perceive) the "premium" options to be worth it.
Might as well gamble and get the cheapest option that does not hurt the wallet too much, when high-quality is so rare these days.
Violins are basically ancient and evolved gradually over huge time spans, yes.
But saxophones -- invented by a guy named Adolph Sax and patented in France in 1846! It really was a kind of new thing, combining aspects of brass and woodwind instruments in ways that hadn't been done before. I think it's fair to say he invented it as a new instrument. (What legal protection that should get how is another story, I don't know that I like patents honestly). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxophone
Sax was really mad about manufacturers reverse engineering and copying his saxophone without a license and tried suing them etc, for the period before his patent expired, but it was still being copied a lot -- it was a new thing people were excited about. Once the patent expired, it was definitely a free for all.
Hey! I understand your point and you are completely right about violins and saxophones being completely different, but it is simply not right to use the word "ancient" with violins.
We know pretty much exactly how and when the violin evolved. If you found a viola or another instrument from the 1500s you would perhaps say that it's violin-like, but it's clearly not a violin. The Stradivarius is from the 1600s, the modern concert form is from the 1800s. Any which way it is far from being ancient.
A better example of ancient instruments is the flute and the drum. They are truly ancient, have existed in many cultures, and we do not know when they were first built.