I was in Hong Kong yesterday and visited New Vision2, one of my former customers and one of the largerest chain of Apple retail stores. In the past I had many conversations with the owner and he told me that the major of his profit came from selling iPod and iPhone accessories because there was so little profit selling Apple hardware. New Vision2 shelves used to be filled with Griffin, Belkin, Incase, Xtreme, Casemate, iSkin and other majore brands. They would make 100% on each sales which was a nice return. That has changed, now I see the China cases such as bumper, crystal shells, TPU iPhone 4 cases selling for the same price as they used to sell the major brands which is 150HK to 200+HK but now their cost is 6HK. I saw the same situation with other stores with the occasional brand name. I can only wonder what will happen when the Hong Kong consumers catch on and start buying directly from the source?
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Hong Kong Apple Retail Stores Dropping Brand Name iPhone 4 Accessory Companies Fast.!
- Thread starter ChinaAzzi
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They all sold there before because Hong Kong is a must have international market. I will tell you why. Whenever I go to Hong Kong I see loads of tourists from all over the world and if the brands they hear so much about in their countries are not sold in Hong Kong Apple stores it is big lose of profit but more than that, face. The problem is the Apple stores can only make a maximum of 100% profit on brand product if they sell them for full pop. On the other hand if they buy China products they can make as much as 2,000 percent profit. Plus cases like bumper from the right source are nearly if not totally impossible to tell the original from the China product. I heard something very interesting on BBC news. They reported that copying was going on a long time ago. Americans copied Europeans and Japan copied Americans but none of these countries ever did it as fast as the Chinese. When Vapor was hitting the market Element Case was taking pre-orders because they did not have the case but while they were doing this the Chinese where selling the originals. The question is how can they beat this? I believe it comes down to greed. If the originals where priced with the same profit margins as Apple charges then it would not be worth while for resellers to buy anything else other than the originals from the designers. This would mean a big change in their selling models. That is why I am so interested to see how all of this plays out.
Have you ever been to Hong Kong?
So following your line of reasoning, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Gucci et al shouldn't bother opening stores there either.
Truth is though, there is a ****** load of money and people do buy the genuine article.
The ones buying the faked crap are the tourists.
Have you ever been to Hong Kong?
So following your line of reasoning, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Gucci et al shouldn't bother opening stores there either.
Truth is though, there is a ****** load of money and people do buy the genuine article.
The ones buying the faked crap are the tourists.
All the major brands are opening stores in China and had stores in Hong Kong for years and doing very well and yes some tourists buy fakes but they don't compare with the quality of the original so that is why many tourists also buy the originals and these stores continue to prosper.
iPhone 4 cases by Otter Box, Griffin, Incase, More, Xtreme, iSkin and a host of others are not that difficult to duplicate. Put both the original and the look alike side by side most people would not be able to tell the difference. Post the price beside each of the cases and many people woould select the lower price. You have to ask yourself if you want to buy a case and you saw 2 cases that looked the same and the quality was the same, would you select the higher priced case if that case was 1000% more expensive? Your answer is the reason why these businesses will fail or succeed.