Thursday, August 18, 2011

WATCH REPLICAS (part1)


Todays article is dedicated to a subject that affects us all as consumers, brands representatives, brand owners and any person related to the serious and authentic watch business, the watch replicas, clones, or any name that can be placed for this disgraceful business.



Doing a bit of a research we have found pages on the web that advertise themselves as official replicas and clones distributors, can you believe that? I honestly didn`t know that you can get an official license for that!!

One of the most impressive things is that some of this watches actually have the logos, engravings and even the weight of the original ones, this is important to know because when you are looking to buy a watch the most important thing is to buy it form an official distributor that usually can be found it the official pages of the brands, some copies can not be identified as forgeries by a regular customer since they look very much the same and you should need to open the watch or check the serial number with the official house to be sure it is not authentic.

Here is something interesting for you to know, there are some replica watches called AAA-Swiss quality that according to our research can be bought  for around 500-700 USD, this watches actually have an ETZ, Valjoux (these are the most common) movements and they are used to replicate usually a very expensive watch, most of this brands usually have manufactured movements, this means that they are made by them and only for their pieces, an example of this would be Zenith, Glashutte, Patek Philippe, etc.



But what with the law against this kind of business, well for example in California someone that manufactures, sells or posses this kind of items can be found guilty and face a $5000.00 USD penalty and face up to 1 year in prison but only if you get caught with more than 1000 pieces, so basically the thing is that every brand should be responsible to initiate a legal process against this company’s and in the meantime the market and the consumers are the ones that get affected by this matters, so disappointing…

That’s why we want to warn you all about the risk of buying a fake watch, in the meantime here we give you some advises when you want to buy a watch to be safer with your purchase:

1.     Buy only in established stores that have the certification of being an official distributor of the brand.
2.     Always ask for the original documents and warranty of the watch you are buying, check that the serial numbers and the information printed on the watch is the same that in the documents you are receiving.
3.     Be sure that the warranty is printed and stamped for you in your presence.
4.     When you find a real bargain and you think that is “too good to be true” usually is not that good.
5.     Is not common to find very expensive watches in stores where don’t sell those kind of watches.
6.     Don`t ever buy an exclusive watch online, there are some serious pages to do that but even those pages don’t take responsibility for the watches sold in their pages, the just check the legal status of the seller but they don`t ever loo physically the watches that are being sold.
7.     If you have any doubt about the piece you are buying contact the official distributor to be sure that you buy on a safe place.

In the second part or this article we will be writing about witch brands are the more replicated in the market and the economic impact that this has being doing in the market for the past years.

We hope you enjoy this one and feel free to send us your suggestions, questions and comments.




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