EXCLUSIVE: A Chinese factory owner claims young Brits are buying thousands of fake Adidas, Nike, Balenciaga, Dior and Gucci trainers from him because they cannot afford the real deal
Image: HBO)
An illegal Chinese factory has revealed how it is selling thousands of fake trainers to Brits.
Chan Sneakers, based in Putian city, China, has shipped at least 4,000 pairs of counterfeit shoes to the UK over the past two years.
The company sells copies of trainers made by major brands such as Adidas, Nike, Balenciaga, Dior and Gucci.
Its owner, Chan, who did not want to give his full name, said young Brits come to him because they want fashionable shoes at prices they can afford.
His shop charges £71 for copies of the wildly popular Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 trainers, which are designed by rapper-turned-fashion-designer Kanye West.
This is a fifth of the price of the real trainers which are only available on the ‘resale’ market, where customers face paying more than £500 for a pair.
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Chan told The Mirror: “The Yeezy Boost 350 V2s are our most popular shoes. We make them look almost exactly like the real thing. It wouldn’t strike someone as fake in the street.
“Our customers refuse to pay the outrageous prices that shoes sell for. They can be thousands of pounds on the resale market.
“As a student you don’t have the luxury of buying a pair of shoes for thousands so they come to us.
“The resale price (for genuine Yeezys) is £500 or more for some. We sell them for £71 excluding shipping.”
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Chan revealed that while his industry is ‘technically illegal’ in China the authorities are willing to turn a blind eye as long as he brands the trainers as ‘replicas’.
He said: “Intellectual Property is not really respected or strictly enforced in China compared to the West.
“Customers have threatened us saying ‘if you don’t send me a new pair of shoes I will report you to the police’. We aren’t worried about that though as what is Scotland Yard going to do?”
His factory is based in Putian city, which has become so synonymous with knock-off trainers that it has been dubbed the ‘fake sneaker capital of China’.
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The industry sprung up in the coastal city after major footwear brands decided to move their factories from Taiwan to Putian, which is around 100 miles away, due to rising labour costs.
Chinese workers soon learned how to create the shoes and set up their own factories, offering replicas of genuine trainers for rock-bottom prices.
Although Chan was vaguely aware of fake products being made in China, it was only when he looked into buying a pair of Adidas shoes in 2016 that he really explored the counterfeit market.
He was studying medicine at a UK university at the time and could not afford to buy a genuine pair of the trainers.
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Chan said: “It was around 2016 and the shoes were sold out. I went on Gumtree and they were like £600 a pair. I couldn’t afford it so I thought I would get a counterfeit instead.
“The fake ones cost anywhere from £15 to £100. I decided to buy all of them. When they shipped I realised what the difference was.
“Some of them were manufactured haphazardly (while) the more expensive ones looked similar to what you would expect from Adidas.
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“I realised I could pay £100 and get something similar to the £600 shoe.”
Chan spotted an opportunity to make money by selling the fake products to a dedicated group of footwear fanatics who review knock-off trainers on the social media platform Reddit.
Members of this community review their purchases on specific Reddit forums such as Fashionreps and Repsneakers, where Chan was able to market his products.
He dropped out of university in 2016 and moved back to China, where he set up his factory.
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“My parents were not initially happy that someone they had sent overseas had come back without the end result of being a doctor,” he said.
“(But) now I’m making more than doctors in China or the UK. My parents are glad that things have worked out.”
The 30-year-old added that his factory workers are also well paid for their work, earning around £550 a month, which is higher than the average wage.
In the past two years he has shipped a total of 1,545 orders to the UK, although his main market is actually the US, he told The Mirror.
However, Chan expects his luck will eventually run out as he believes the authorities will one day shut down the counterfeit footwear industry.
He said: “We don’t know when the Chinese Government will put us on their hit list. We are just doing what we can until the light goes off for us.”
