Beijing market known for fakes launches own brand name, warns counterfeiters

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING - A Beijing clothing market famous for selling fakes has started its own line of brand-name products - with a warning to counterfeiters to stay away.

The Beijing Silk Street Co. Ltd., which owns a multistorey market that is filled with hundreds of clothing shops - many of which sell Burberry and Ralph Lauren fakes - has launched its own SILKSTREET line of shirts, ties, scarves, teacups and other goods, the general manager of the market said Friday.

"For over 30 years we've always been selling other people's clothes," George Wang said.

"We've never sold our own."

He hopes to capitalize on the influx of foreign visitors for the Olympics.

Wang said the move is a way to start to enforce intellectual property rights and show better quality comes with real goods.

But he warned if anyone tries to sell fake SILKSTREET goods, they will be dealt with "according to the law." Counterfeit goods remain widespread in China, despite occasional crackdowns, because laws against the practice are rarely enforced.

The market has a program to crack down on fake goods, Wang said, such as giving a 20-per-cent discount on rent for stalls that sell real goods.

But many of the shops in the market still sell fake good.

"The quality and look is good," shopkeeper Xu Meiling said of SILKSTREET shirts, comparing them favourably to fake foreign-brand shirts hanging in dozens of stalls.

The new SILKSTREET brand shirts go for $25. Fake Paul Smith and other name-brand shirts cost $21, she said.

Wang said he wants big-name brands like U.S. apparel maker North Face, who recently won a lawsuit against the market for infringement, to open stalls in the market. So far, they are "hesitant," he said, fearing their brand name will be tainted by association with the market.

In September 2006, five global luxury brand names - Burberry, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada - won $1,387 in compensation from a joint lawsuit against Silk Street and five of its tenants, the first case in China to end in such a settlement.

© The Canadian Press, 2008