For style minded women everywhere in the world, owning a Gucci purse, Gucci wallet, or a pair of Gucci sunglasses is the ultimate pize in the fashion industry. Gucci has been the leading designer and the "holy grail" of handbag collectors since 1921 in Florence, Italy. So why would you not trust Gucci over any other handbag designer, to make your fashion statements?

They have so many wonderfully made bags to choose from. But with the height of all of Gucci`s sales, comes knock-off handbags, or Gucci replicas. Be sure you are getting an authentic Gucci purse and not an imposter. There are many replica purse dealers that use "crappy" materials and quick shortcuts, leaving you in the dust with a fake bag, that will last you about as long as your drive home from the crook that sold it to you. Read the rest of this entry »

Fakes, knock-offs, replicas, counterfeits...they go by many names, but they're all the same thing. They're fake versions of the real thing, made to pass as the real thing to dupe consumers into buying them, believing them to be authentic. Often, they don't pretend to be authentic and use terms like “inspired by” and “similar to.”

Everything from Gucci handbags to Gucci shoes and more has many false equivalents. So what's the big deal? What's the difference?

The biggest difference is value, then quality, and finally just plain honesty. If you want to dazzle your friends with a Gucci handbag, but don't want to pay the price for the real thing, then you might be tempted to buy a knock-off. When you do this, though, who are you kidding? There's a good chance that your friends will know you didn't buy the real thing and will laugh behind your back.

For true collectors and aficionados, though, counterfeits are a real problem. It's not always easy to tell whether what you're looking at is real or not. Especially when it's been listed online. So what do you do? There are a few clues that can tip you off right away. In the next couple of posts here, we'll be looking at how to spot a fake Gucci and how to authenticate a real one so you can buy with confidence or instill that confidence in your prospective customers.

For the record, it is not a crime to purchase counterfeit goods in the United States. It is, however, a crime to sell them. Even unknowingly. In my next post, we'll talk about some of the ways you can spot a fake.