What is the cost of being fake?

Image courtesy of fashiontelevision.com

Last night, I watched America’s Next Top Model and was inspired by something that Jay Manuel said to the ladies.  They had taken a trip to Canal Street in NYC to talk about fashion, and more importantly fake fashion. For those who don’t know NY, Canal Street is the center for all designer knockoffs – every designer under the sun, every style ripped off and turned into a fake. Jay explained that knockoff designer fashion (clothing, belts, shoes, purses, etc) cost the design industry over $9.2 BILLION per year, not to mention the number of jobs lost! Personally, I was shocked. I never realized how many people actually bought knockoff’s. I have always found them to look cheap, feel cheap and worse, make the person carrying it look as fake as the fashion they bought.

So what then is the appeal of fake fashion? For starters, those who buy fake fashion are people who want to feel important. They want people to want to be them. They achieve this through showing off what they have – and when they can’t afford the real best, they buy the fake best. Unfortunately, since most people can’t recognize a good knockoff as a fake, many of these people get away with it and then it just perpetuates the situation. It takes a well trained eye and knowing the designer to be able to tell a fake if the fake is done well. Which means that to most everyone, that fake will look real, and that person will be thought of as being able to afford designer…accomplishing their goal. These type of people live by the walk the walk motto, unfortunately they don’t talk the talk too. They are halfway there – they understand why designer fashion has value, but they are not willing to spend the money on that value. We all know these people, and most of us try to avoid them because their personality and ‘friendship’ is as fake as the bag they carry.

So how does this translate into the business world? We all want to get the best – the best website, the best employees, the best contacts, the best results, the best…(you get my point). But having the best means working the hardest, spending some money for quality and making sure that everything is done right every time. Enter the fake companies…we’ve all met them and many of us have had the frustration of working with them.  In the beginning, they look great, they seem great and they have all the outward appearances of being great. They promise results, a great product and a great service. Everything about them to the untrained eye is real. But when you really look behind the stitching and analyze the fabric, you’ll realize they are as fake as the fashion we’ve been discussing.

Fake’s cost the fashion industry $9.2 Billion… What is the cost of being fake in business?

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