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As any luxury fashion brand will attest, when you achieve phenomenal success, along come the inevitable party-crashers, the counterfeiters.

Canada Goose, purveyors of highly covetable down-filled coats that are sold around the world, have found themselves in the position of having to fight off fake goods parading as their famous coats.

Puffy coats in identical styles and bearing strikingly good copies of the iconic circular patch logo are being sold online at deep discounts. Even more deceptive are websites posing as the official Canada Goose site. If you Google ‘Canada Goose,’ the first site that pops up is not the official site, despite bearing the logo.

So what is the down low on these doppelgangers and how can you avoid being duped?

The safest way is to check the official web page, www.canada-goose.com, says Spencer Orr, director of design and merchandising at Canada Goose.

“It lists all the authorized dealers plus websites to stay away from,” he says. “The authorized dealer is really the only way to go.”

Another obvious giveaway is the price. Canada Goose coats never go on sale. You’ll never find a bargain puffy from this brand.

“If it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not a real jacket,” says Orr. The company has also noticed that savvy counterfeiters are cluing into this giveaway factor and are jacking up prices to give their fakes the air of authenticity.

“Not only is the consumer losing out on a bad jacket, but they are being had for much more money,” he says.

As for those buyers who claim their fake jacket is just as warm as the real thing, brace yourself for the results of tests Canada Goose has conducted on some of the fake coats.

“We found bacteria and mould — it’s mulch,” says Orr. “They take remnants, which includes feathers, beak, feces, and ground it all up and call it ‘down fill.’ Sometimes they sweep the factory floor and they will take thread and leftover fabrics and use it as filling. You’re not getting warmth out of that and you can also get sick.”

The other thing to look for is a hologram tag inside the coats on the content labels. The shiny silver holographic logo — which is made from the same technology used in currency — is difficult to duplicate.

Article source: http://www.thestar.com/living/fashion/article/1121911--canada-goose-counterfeiters-a-sign-of-luxury-brand-s-success

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