Fashion victim fights back

By Alice Rawsthorn

Walk into a street market anywhere from Manila to Manchester, and someone will be selling T shirts branded with the distinctive CK logo of Calvin Klein, the New York fashion designer.

If the price is very low, the T- shirts are probably fakes. Calvin Klein has, for a long time, had problems with counterfeiters selling poor- quality merchandise bearing his brand name. Now he is doing something about it. In the past Calvin Klein took a relatively passive approach to the counterfeit problem. The company has now got tougher by establishing a network of employees and external specialists to uncover copyright abuse. The move began with a general change in corporate strategy whereby Calvin Klein has aggressively expanded its interests outside North America. Calvin Klein has been one of the leading fashion designers in the North American market since the mid- 1970s. Now Calvin Klein is building up its fashion business in other countries. It has increased its investment in advertising, and restructured its licensing arrangements by signing long- term deals with partners for entire regions such as Europe and Asia, rather than giving licensing rights to individual countries. But as sales and brand awareness have risen, Calvin Klein has become an increasingly popular target for Asian and European counterfeiters, alongside other luxury brands such as Gicci, Chanel and Ralph Lauren. The fake goods, mostly T-shirts, jeans and baseball caps, not only reduce the company’s own sales but damage its brand image by linking it to poor quality merchandise.

Vocabulary:

Fake- a copy of an original document, valuable object etc that is intended to deceive people into believing it is the real document, object etc

To counterfeit- to make something that it looks like something else, usually illegally

Fashion- the way of dressing or doing some thing that is liked by many people at a particular time

To license- to give official permission to own or to do something

Luxury- very expensive and of very good quality

Merchandise- goods that are produced in order to be sold, especially goods that are sold in a store