BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
RAPHA
Simon Mottram, CEO and founder
"Faked products is a growing issue for lots of brands and Rapha is no exception. We have seen a growing number of Rapha fakes.
"There are a lot of factories, especially in the Far East, who will copy any graphic design onto a sublimated polyester jersey almost as soon as it is launched.
"Copying is theft. Our brand marks (logos and some design elements) are our property, and we have spent years building them. We will fight to protect them whenever they are infringed.
"We spend a lot of time and money developing our products. The copycats spend none.
"Copies of colours and graphics don’t mean that the jerseys are the same as the original thing. We use better fabrics, trims and manufacturing quality and fit than any fake.
"Cycling is a tough, demanding sport. We need kit that really performs; fakes rarely do.
"Rapha offers free returns and a free repairs service, plus extended guarantees. Suppliers of fakes do not."
ENDURA
"Yes we experience problems in this area, especially with our Movistar Team Replica clothing as replica clothing is traditionally prone to counterfeiting.
"As with many premium and progressive brands, Endura’s products are all too regularly targeted by fraudsters selling counterfeit items. The first thing to note is that if a deal seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
"Check the images of the products carefully to confirm that they match with the items shown on Endura’s website – you might be surprised to see significant differences in logo sizes and positions or mismatched colour panels, as often happens with counterfeit products."
Faking it – Inside the shady world of counterfeit bikes, clothing and parts is a series of 20 articles. For offline reading convenience, the 25,000 words can be found on an illustration-rich PDF, a Kindle file, an eBook and a Word document.
