If you type “Gucci Bag” into Amazon’s search bar, you can see a selection of handbags that look an awful lot like what you might find at a Gucci store, but at $40 or less. Some are adorned with bees and beetles, which Gucci is famous for. One features Gucci’s interlocked double G logo. Of course, if you take a closer look, you’ll realize they’re fakes. One bag has misspelled the name: Gugci. And the bags are made of plastic, rather than leather.
Counterfeiting is so rampant on the site that it can be hard to tell what is real and what is fake. If you’re looking for a more modestly priced bag, for instance, like one by Kate Spade, you can’t tell whether an $80 cross-body tote is the real deal or a knockoff.
When I reached out to Amazon, a spokesperson said, “Amazon strictly prohibits the sale of counterfeit products. We invest heavily in prevention and take proactive steps to drive counterfeits in our stores to zero. In 2018 alone, we invested over $400 million in personnel and tools built on machine learning and data science to protect our customers from fraud and abuse in our stores.” The spokesperson added that the company stopped a million suspected bad actors from opening Amazon selling accounts and blocked more than 3 billion suspected bad listings.
But these measures may not be enough, at least according to many brands whose products have been counterfeited and posted on Amazon. And from a quick search of the Amazon website, it’s easy to see why… Fast Company
