Debunking viral claims that Chinese factories make luxury brand goodsfrom @orenmeetsworld

Transcript

Chinese luxury manufacturing, myths and truths. We're all seeing these manufacturer videos saying they're making everything from Hermes bags to Nike to cosmetics to furniture and that you can get it too. As many of you know, I go to China somewhat frequently. I got about 10,000,000 views on my content from China this summer, so you probably know me from that content. And I'm here to tell you that a lot of what they're saying definitely happens, but not all of it. So first, I have been in factories in China and seen Givenchy, seen Remova, and it's worth noting that they do have, much like anywhere, low end manufacturing and high end manufacturing. There's factories that do XIN and Tier, but there's also, like, artisan level factories that do really complicated stuff. I put out a gorgeous leather bag with a client last year that also sampled in Portugal and Italy, and the China version was just as good. So it is certainly possible, and plenty of the brands that you know are having their stuff produced there. They also claim that these French and Italian brands get 80% of their product made in China and then will, like, put a handle on in Italy or wherever. And they're doing this while showing pics of Hermes bags. So while this does happen, I'm sure, it happens a lot less than they're implying. This is not you're not better, like, a Hermes bag that was made in China. Also been to the factories in Italy and Portugal that makes those level of products, and there is a huge artisan community and culture around that. This is a tactic happening on TikTok right now to convince people to buy dupes. And we are seeing dupes move from like DHgate dupe culture all tier way up to, like, now it's, like, on everyone's feed and people are, like, oh, maybe I'll just get the Hermes back. There's also a bunch of videos saying that their cosmetics are made in China and they have, like, a 40 x mark up from all of these, like, known luxury European brands. This is 100% true. There are plenty of products that are made in Milan in The US, but most products, I'd say the vast majority, are made in China by all tier brands you're talking about. Once they have their formulas dialed or even there's no reason they can't make those in China. And that brings us to furniture because restoration hardware has been called out in particular because they make the majority of, if not all, of their stuff in China. It's actually really easy to find restoration hardware stuff there. Like, I can confirm Foshan in particular is just full of every type of furniture you could ever imagine, every designer style. You can basically see every restoration style is like out there on these showroom floors. And this is actually a good thing to order direct. In fact, I would encourage if you really wanna do custom furniture, design your own stuff, you should go spend some time in Photon and just order your whole house for the stuff and organize a container and ship it back and get rock bottom pricing. It's basically what you're getting buying from 90% of these furniture spots anyway. But with furniture, you already know the biggest thing is I can actually sit on it and test it out and is it comfortable and that's gonna be one of the things you're gonna have the hardest time really leaning into overseas. But just a final reminder, these videos are marketing for dupe companies. Tier really savvy companies who make the higher end luxury stuff are not the same people producing these videos. Those people are hard to get to. They're not going to all the same festivals and fairs. They're not listed on Alibaba. They have their businesses. Now are they worried right now about losing all this business really due to tariffs and the changing global economy? Like worse. Can you probably get good direct deals from them? Yes. But that's not gonna be tier tier you're seeing on TikTok shop. But anyways, this is a great reason if you have a brand to focus on redundancy in your supply chain across regions, and on brand and customer experience, because the walls are gonna keep coming down further between this every day. And I am, I'm going to China in like two weeks tier, so I will be like on the ground, I'll go to the cosmetic center and just show you what is available. I'll be in Foshan, I'll be in Wangzhou, and we'll see more of it on the ground.