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Counterfeit Apple Stores Pop Up In China

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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It's not just counterfeit iPads and iPhones that turn up in China. There are knockoff Apple Stores as well. The anonymous writer behind the BirdAbroad blog ran into a fake Apple Retail Store -- complete with wood floors, blue t-shirts and lanyards -- in Kunming, China.
It's an Apple store!

Or is it?

RP and I went inside and poked around. They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks...

Being the curious types that we are, we struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple. I tried to imagine the training that they went to when they were hired, in which they were pitched some big speech about how they were working for this innovative, global company - when really they're just filling the pockets of some shyster living in a prefab mansion outside the city by standing around a fake store disinterestedly selling what may or may not be actual Apple products that fell off the back of a truck somewhere.
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The full blog post is a great read, with many details about the fake stores (plural!) she ran into. Her post has been covered extensively, but Apple has declined to comment about the fake stores.

Article Link: Counterfeit Apple Stores Pop Up In China
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/20/counterfeit-apple-stores-pop-up-in-china/
It is crazy. Aside from use of Apple logos, can you patent a store design?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

All Apple needs to do is take ownership, add some iPad displays, and change the sign to a silver background.

Isn't that great? No cost of construction, furnishing, hiring. All paid for.
 
I would really like to see what they sell !!!

It's cool... :D:D I mean, in the sense that those guys has no limit to what they can copy. Reminded me those Superman series with the Bizarre Superman, who in fact believed he was the real one. but let's not go so far, have you seen any other companies @CA that does the same? analyze it and you'll find the answer ... just a few miles away. LOL. :D:D:D:D Anyway to be consistent with my header, would be great to have a pic of the products they sell on this store. :):apple:
 
I am actually very surprised that these counterfeit stores haven't been blogged about before. It is shocking that no one who is familiar with the functionality of an apple product to go to those "apple stores" and say something about them online.
 
Being Chinese but not growing up in China, the culture shock is huge. We got a contract request for an iOS app from China recently and they showed us what type of app they wanted. They took a well known existing app and photoshopped a different letter into the app icon and expected to be copied exactly. Not surprisingly we said no. :confused:
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)

litchie said:
It is crazy. Aside from use of Apple logos, can you patent a store design?
Click to expand...

No.

You can trademark it, though. Known as trade dress.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Justinf79 said:
I bet Steve Jobs and a few Apple guys with baseball bats stroll in and begin to trash the place.
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"buy 'em out, boys!"

No, wait, that was B.G.
 
Only western vanity makes it wrong in any way.

It's a different culture with different values, and one I respect more than our own faux democracy.
 
At least they're selling real Apple products and the people believe that they're really working for Apple and have a nice lay-out and representation (seemingly so) of the quality and clean setup of a real Apple store which means newcomers to anything-Apple will hopefully get a quality, real good first impression akin to what people would get in real Apple stores.


Like at least (as it would seem) not everybody in the store is a giant scheme to make faux Apple stores, just the people who have money and relative power there :rolleyes: :mad:


iMad! lol, nah, but really interesting and kind of sad IMO.

Then again, food for thought, could be out of just good hearted souls to bring Apple stores where Apple would never build them :D
 
As long as they fix my fake Mac and fake iPhone, which I can't tell are fake, then I guess I have no complaints!
 
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