US$ 88 to US$ 395)– not an easy sum to cough up for most people, but they’re still considered a fraction of the price compared to Chanel bags that one can buy directly at authorized Chanel boutiques worldwide. Because Chanel beauty products that come with GWP, always have Chanel beauty samples included in them. So to reiterate, that “Chanel VIP Gift Bag” being offered by the Philippine- based Instagram reseller (whose photo from IG is published above), is the exact same “Chanel Bucket Bag” as the one offered by Xiaofangmei (the account with the current Chanel lawsuit). If the information above is still not enough to convince you that these are not authentic Chanel “VIP Gift Bags,” nor are they authentic Chanel GWP merchandise that came directly from authorized Chanel beauty counters, it should at least already convince you that the products being hawked as such have questionable authenticity. Going back to Chanel, I had the fortune of attending the maison’s fashion shows in the Grand Palais in Paris during Karl Lagerfeld’s time. Once they’ve created their counterfeit bags, they use marketplace platforms to advertise their products and supply capacity. Chanel will not allow their brand reputation to be tarnished by sub-standard quality products that bear their logo or name. As a buyer, that information on its own should have already been a red flag to you. But the manufacturers left the word “Paris” on it so their potential clients specifically looking for their products would make the association and understand the inference. They already managed to have plan Bs, Cs, and Ds in place. Exclusions apply. At the time, I didn’t think to ask them. These resellers are not authorized by Chanel to engage in the bulk resale or distribution of merchandise bearing their logo. Beaute of Line Chanel Bag Case Cosmetic Makeup Purchase NEW with Gift GWP GWP NEW Gift with Beaute Cosmetic Makeup Case of Purchase Chanel Line Bag These bags are being hawked by resellers as “authentic Chanel” and are priced anywhere between PhP 4,500 to PhP 23,000 (approx. Elegant designer totes, laptop cases or duffel bags are also some of the great gifts with purchase you could get when you buy products like designer and celebrity fragrances. Many (mostly women) today feel the pressure (especially heightened by their social media exposure) of wanting to “belong” and to be part of a special group of individuals who “can afford” luxury goods. Let me reiterate that this reseller has been named in a trademark lawsuit (for selling counterfeit goods) by Chanel. Lips. Some of these resellers have disclaimers like this: So, exactly what are these “Chanel VIP Gift Bags” that these resellers are hawking? Many today feel that there is a “need” to “keep up with the Joneses.”  While many consumers who cannot afford the real deal knowingly turn to fakes because of the price disparity (and because of their thinking that not everyone in their circle can tell if their bag is fake anyway), there is a significant number of that population who get duped into buying a fake, thinking it is authentic. If this were a Chanel beauty GWP, it would not have been placed in a rather awkward position, covering the other products. Came as a gift when you purchased one of their perfumes one year. I was also not entitled to more than one GWP at that time. You'll want to hurry, these are only available while supplies last!. This particular tote in black fabric with chain straps is being sold between PhP 10,000 to PhP 12,000 (equivalent to US$ 192- $ 230). I would like to note that Xiaofangmei’s account has actually been legally named by CHANEL, INC.  in a recent lawsuit filed in the District of Florida., with Case no. Facing criticism from global markets, China- based online marketplaces like Alibaba, Taobao, Pinduoduo, DH Gate (among the others) are already working to crack down on counterfeit designer merchandise manufacturers. When approached by Caixin, merchants selling ‘Hermes’ scarves for 250 yuan apiece suggested moving the discussion to WeChat, a messaging app, where they felt they could freely chat about the craftsmanship of their high- grade copies.”  I can corroborate this claim because the manufacturer of the bucket bag above had cautiously asked me if we can take our conversation to WeChat. Sadly though, these businesses have gotten smarter over time. And while the manufacturer had removed the brand name of the bag on his post, his online buyers posted photo reviews of their purchase– and in those photos, the full name of the brand is printed. To reproduce them separate from the contract and resell them would be a breach of  a legally- binding contract, and is unauthorized and strictly prohibited. And some of them leave that disclaimer that the items are not comparable to the ones bought in actual Chanel boutiques. Feb 6, 2018 - Shop Women's Black size OS Crossbody Bags at a discounted price at Poshmark. Browse all our free gifts with purchase from beloved brands including Estee Lauder, Clinique, La Mer, SK-11 and Bobbi Brown. Alas, the supermarket merchandise was not meant to be given away as Chanel “VIP gifts” lol. A Chanel bag purchased directly from the French fashion house can cost in the upward amount of PhP 100,000 (approx US$ 2,000). These are unscrupulous sellers and distributors who are getting their inventory from counterfeit manufacturers at a low price, and selling them with big profit margins. A gift with purchase helps to boost sales as customers are much more likely to purchase your products if there is a free gift offered. And yet they hawk them to innocent buyers as “authentic” Chanel merchandise, with the difference that these are “VIP items” given to clients who buy beauty products. Fast delivery, full service customer support. Designer Bag Tic- Tac- Toe: What Happened to Originality Today. We have been focusing efforts to specialize in the respective areas, instead of pursuing them as side businesses of the fashion segment.” Chanel executives leave no stone unturned when it comes to the operations in each of these business areas. Those repeat offenders who get caught for violating intellectual property and trademark policies get their accounts suspended, resulting in immediate loss of income. All rights reserved, Fake or Real? According to the manufacturer, their minimum order for the double C customized logo is between 20- 25 pieces per transaction, for a cost of under PhP 1,100/ bag. 18-63046-CIV-SCOLA, against 94 online entities last December 2018. Some manufacturers though, simply rely on photos to produce these counterfeit bags. Shop for gift with purchase at Dillard's. Chanel Gift box with applied white flower 11x15x2quot; Authentic CHANEL GIFT bag 8.5x5.5x3quot; plus small satin drawstring dust bag, Authentic Chanel Gift Box and paperwork 9x13x3, Chanel Gift Box Authentic with Signature Tissue Paper and ribbon, NEW White CHANEL Gift Box W RibbonTissue PaperCard amp; Envelope, Authentic CHANEL gift Sticker Pink Flower LE 2016 Rare set 10, Authentic Empty Chanel Gift Box Gold Ribbon. VIP guests also get flown out on exclusive trips to see runway shows, while also being granted backstage access with the designer (Karl Lagerfeld in the past, and now Virginie Viard). Shop Dior Gift With Purchase at Bloomingdales.com. Explore the entire collection of beauty gifts with purchase from Neiman Marcus. Chanel Beauty would NEVER give away a trolley like the one from their main Chanel FW 2014- 2015 leather goods collection. These are usually company- branded products that are given away as a form of advertisement. This photo could have been produced and distributed by anyone who brought that bag over to that counter, left it beside the chair, and photographed it just to use as “proof.”  Perhaps the producer of this photo forgot one thing– Chanel is very particular and so meticulous when it comes to visual merchandising. The Style of Your Life. The very same plush logo bags above are manufactured by this company based in China, and the company is on the Chinese marketplace platform, advertising that same product (but with altered text in place of the logo). The brand’s spokesperson mentioned that they have “careful processes to minimise the amount of excess stock we produce.” The report also mentioned that “fashion firms… destroy unwanted items to prevent them being stolen or sold cheaply.” For premium labels like Chanel, they would have easily done the same thing, although they would not have been obliged to disclose that information since the French fashion house remains a wholly private company (unlike LV, Burberry, Gucci, which are/ belong to publicly- traded companies in the global stock exchange). Ends Sunday. Filbert has been a professional photographer for over 14 years, and is very knowledgeable in photo- manipulating apps like Photoshop and Lightroom. I found this manufacturer’s listing in one of the leading wholesale marketplace platforms from China. These gifts usually come in the form of a small fabric or faux patent leather pouch, and come with beauty samples too. A recent feature in Asia Tatler  noted that Chanel VIP clients like Lianne Lam from Hong Kong, get spoiled by the French fashion house on her birthday. $35.00 CHANEL. Face. These methods allow the manufacturers to sneak past the detection filters. With any $85 purchase you will receive free shipping and you can choose a free full size mask: Enter code RESCUE for an Evercalm Ultra Comforting Rescue Mask ($48 value); or code DETOX for a Clarimatte Invisible Pores Detox Mask ($42 value); or code GLOW for a Glycol Lactic Radiance Renewal Mask ($58 value). But in all my years of living in the U.S. and traveling throughout Europe and Asia, I had personally never seen large leather bags with the double C logo given as GWP in Chanel beauty counters. December 29, 2020 . We feature daily all Chanel Gift listings. The GWP are indeed, not for commercial sale, and you cannot buy $1,000 worth of beauty products just so you can get 10 of those bags. These are called “gifts with purchase” or GWP. If you are interested in the exact details of this case, you can search for the docket number indicated below in the U.S. District Court in Florida because this is public record, and this is also an ongoing case. Many of these online resellers and distributors who claim knowledge on these GWP bags as “authentic” Chanel, are procuring them in large quantities (wholesale), and are selling them with the absence of any Chanel beauty products and samples (which, if these GWP were legitimately procured, would’ve come with them). At wholesale price, the duffle costs about PhP 1,207 (approx. When is the Harvey Nichols Gift With Purchase Autumn 2020? US$ 24). I hope that sheds some light on what “VIP Gifts” mean. A recent story on the South China Morning Post stressed that Chanel is extremely protective of its brand image, and has in recent years, even taken legal action against second hand marketplaces like The Real Real and What Goes Around Comes Around, both based in the U.S. Chanel’s president of fashion and of Chanel SAS, Bruce Pavlovsky, noted that “what’s not acceptable is the counterfeits and we see a lot of counterfeits in these marketplaces, including the ones focusing on the second- hand market. Many manufacturers also wised up and would make one- off product samples with similar logos– but not the exact double C/ Chanel ones. Online resellers on both Facebook and Instagram claim that these merchandise are “gifts given to VIP clients.” I have mentioned above what Chanel normally gives to their VIP clients, and these pieces that are being hawked online by these resellers, are NOT the kind of gifts the fashion house gives. Harvey Nichols Gift With Purchase September 2020. All those fake “Chanel VIP gift” plush bags being resold on Instagram and Facebook came from the same manufacturer below. All the information I have collected and put together into this super loooooong post, should already be enough for you to make a wise decision. With any $75 purchase you will receive free shipping and this free six piece gift (a white pouch, a full size lip conditioner, a deluxe My 5th Avenue fragrance mini, and three capsules deluxe samples). See Chanel Gift description for details. Here’s another bag photo “on the Chanel counter” which resellers claimed is proof that leather bags like this are given away as GWP. Louis Vuitton Employee Alleged to have Sold Unreleased Bags to Counterfeiters, Breaking News: Ex- Employees of Hermes Sued for Forgery of Birkins and Kellys. The logo once again, conspicuously absent and photoshopped out. Here are more examples of online resellers/ distributors on Instagram who have labelled these fake Chanel bags as “Chanel VIP gifts.”, Photo #1: “Chanel” black fabric tote with chain straps, Photo #2: “Chanel” black fabric tote with chain straps. Luxury brands like Chanel are highly protective of their reputation. Instagram: @thebaghag// @shopthebaghag // @thebaghagtravels, Copyright © 2016 The bag hag diaries. Richard Collasse, the new head of travel retail for Chanel and former president of Chanel’s subsidiary in Japan for over 30 years, summed up Chanel’s corporate philosophy: “Chanel has 3 business areas: fashion, fragrance and beauty products, watches and jewellery under the single brand name. I’ve also been given snow globes and miniature versions of a certain brand’s signature trunk during Christmas. Many factories normally operate on 2 shifts (within official operating hours), and what these unscrupulous factories do is, they open a 3rd shift for production. Funny, because some bags end up with logos looking like a cross- breed between Chanel’s double C and Gucci’s double G. Many also photoshop their pictures by erasing or manipulating the logos to showcase their product in a more”legitimate” manner that adheres to the marketplace platform’s rules. REN Skincare has a new full size mask free gift offer available now! Shop fragrance gifts, bath & body, & more. Some even sell it for PhP 10,000. Has names of perfumes all over. The first photographer I consulted was Filbert Kung, a Los Angeles- based top commercial and fashion photographer who has photographed countless international fashion covers and editorials, has shot for Coca Cola and other beverage campaigns, photographed Miss Universe beauties, and had also recently covered the red carpet fashion during the Golden Globe Awards last March. After being confronted with questions about the origin of these GWP (I asked them on my Instagram stories where the bags came from, and that they should provide photos of the beauty counters that had these bags), I was sent these photos by Instagram contributors who mentioned that the resellers posted them on their pages (to show that indeed, these bags were “on the Chanel beauty counters”). The reflections on the sides of the bag indicate light sources from the side, which is impossible because there are no visible light sources coming from the sides, within the glass case. So let me clarify and confirm this– yes, Chanel Beauty does have promotional GWP items to go with some of their beauty lines. Wouldn’t Chanel Fashion customers just flock to Chanel Beauty counters to buy $500 worth of products to get that trolley, instead of spend over $5,000 for that trolley at the Chanel boutique? The news of this lawsuit was disclosed on this website. The Chanel leather bags (with unique own hologram stickers) that are being sold in Chanel boutiques for thousands of dollars are not manufactured by OEMs but are made by the brand’s in- house factories. Both are fake, are available to be bulk- ordered through a manufacturer in China. Illuminating Makeup Base. Another thorough search on one of the Chinese marketplace platforms has yielded this result. One of the Philippine resellers was offering that same bag (and calling it a “Chanel VIP bag”) for PhP 10,000– an over 800% markup on what is in reality, a counterfeit Chanel bag that was made in China by an unauthorized manufacturer– “unauthorized” because that manufacturer was never authorized to use the double C logo. The bag was definitely photoshopped into that case.”, Commercial photographer and cinematographer Wesley Villarica who has shot celebrities and celeb- athletes like boxer Floyd Mayweather for Frontrow ads, and has also shot the latest Gatorade campaigns, had this to say about the photo: “Yes, the bag was photoshopped in. They are lured in by sweet “marketing” deals that are too good to be true. At some point in time, designer brands might outsource production to OEMs in a bid to meet the production demands or to lower costs. In other words, there was nothing “cheap” about the gifts. I have also asked fashion friends and industry colleagues from Thailand, Germany, Singapore, France, Italy, Taiwan, Hong Kong, UAE, and China, and they have also never seen these GWP Chanel leather bags in question (I showed them the leather bags that are being sold by IG resellers as “Chanel VIP gift bags”), TRADEMARK LAWSUIT of CHANEL vs. 94 ONLINE SELLERS. Unscrupulous OEMs will take this opportunity to produce more than the authorized volume. The bag I received as a GWP was actually very well made, and was made of canvas on its exterior and of white, waterproof (like that of a raincoat) fabric on the inside. One common way to avoid being flagged down is for these sellers to redirect their inquiries to a separate site or a separate platform. The amount varies and is subjective to each brand and boutique, but they all do have their VIP clients, and these clients are usually invited to very special events (not just to product launches or special sales), and sometimes they are also flown to different countries to attend brand launches/ shows. Upon close inspection of all those special gifts that I have received from these premium luxury brands, one thing I can say with absolute certainty is this– each item’s quality is 100% reflective of the brand’s reputation for excellent quality. Decoding the Chanel “VIP Gift” Bag Issue. After a year, they’ll have the option to add their own payment details and continue their subscription. They do not hesitate to spend millions of dollars each year to ensure proper control and distribution of their products. “We have to sign a contract of confidentiality, then the factory, the manager, and every worker has to sign it.” In each individual contract are very detailed clauses which state that no one can take photos, they cannot take the designs or anything to do with the products. One of his best shows in terms of visual engagement (in my opinion), is the Chanel supermarket. After consulting with 2 of the country’s leading commercial photographers on the photo’s authenticity, they unanimously agreed that the bag was in fact, photoshopped into that glass case. Whoever took this photo and captioned the photo as a ” ‘Chanel’  bag (take note, with quotation marks because this is a counterfeit Chanel item) on the beauty counter” is actually correct in a way– because this was a bag that is literally sitting on the beauty counter at Chanel. That’s indeed a very profitable sale for a COUNTERFEIT/ FAKE “Chanel VIP” bag. Another story which came out in the BBC about designer bag manufacturers two years ago quoted Juan Antonio Sanchez, manager for Ranchel (a leather goods manufacturer) on the very stringent demands of big designer brands that subcontract them for manufacturing work. The issue in question right now (hence the first of a series of blog posts), is the Chanel “VIP Gift Bags” that are being sold online which come not just in the form of fabric bags with double C logos, but also come in the form of caviar- like and calfskin- like leather bags (with some styles similar to the pieces being sold in Chanel boutiques). 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