Don’t waste your hard earned money on a fake counterfeit designer handbag or
purse! That hefty investment you make $200-$800 in a fake designer handbag or
purse can end up being worthless. If you are going to buy a new purse, invest in
something of value, not cheap imitations. ALWAYS insist on a money back
guarantee!

Why in the world would anyone want to buy a fake designer handbag or poor
quality? I just can’t comprehend spending good money purchasing a fake designer
purse. It doesn’t even begin to make sense to me, even if the purse looks like the
real thing. When you know it’s not authentic - why bother?

Above all else, be aware that buying a counterfeit item is illegal, period.

Counterfeit designer merchandise has a sub-culture all its own. I’m not sure if
people enjoy the fact they are getting something resembling the real thing at lower
cost, or if they just don’t understand the quality, durability and value of authentic
designer handbags in the first place.

I find humor in it now, but pre-internet, the counterfeit handbag purchasing
process seemed mysterious and intriguing. It felt as though you were somehow
privileged to know how to buy these uncommon goods. Pre-internet, the only way
to locate a fake bag was through word of mouth. Wholesalers of counterfeit bags
still make sales by appointment only. There are signs throughout the store
reminding you “ALL SALES FINAL.”

It involved a sort of cloak and dagger approach when walking into wholesale stores,
asking to talk to the manager and introducing yourself as a friend of a friend.
Introductions were all made through word of mouth referrals. There’s no advertising
at all. Unlike online purchases, where everyone boldly claims their goods are
authentic.

The counterfeit shopping experience is intriguing. You can almost feel the illicit
connection made with the handbag underground. All you want is a new purse, a
designer copycat, something that looks like the real thing without the hefty price
tag. The irony in all of this is the reality of the experience. They are NOT
inexpensive.

In reality, you pay a lot of money for junk. Maybe the leather is good, and maybe it
is not. How would you know? Have you seen the real thing to compare? If you did,
you certainly wouldn’t be investing in a fake after handling the real thing! Solid
metal hardware, rich sumptuous leather and finely crafted details trump the plastic
& vinyl attachments, poorly stitched linings and knock-off logo’s cheaply glued to
counterfeit designer purses and handbags.

We know the best designer handbags and leather goods are made in Italy and
France. No need to drop names here, we all know the top sellers. Fakes might be
made in Italy or France, and they may not. You never know. Most of the people you
are dealing with are hustling you to make a big profit on something of little worth
and definitely of no real value.

The evolution of designer handbags has made its mark world wide. Every woman
with fashion sense wants to carry a new, hot, high-end designer handbag, and the
price is not cheap. On an average, the retail boutique price for a new designer purse
starts at about $1000. That’s a hefty price to pay to feel good when you leave the
house. I know some women who carry bags costing more than their cars! The
Hermes handbag collection of some of my clients’ totals more than the initial cost of
my first home!

The Internet has opened a flood gate of ecommerce sites for handbags. There are
more than enough websites selling purses these days. And, the best stores sell
authentic designer merchandise, not fakes. The difficulty comes in trying to
determine the real from the fake and make the distinction clear.

Here are a few tips for identifying a website selling fake counterfeit designer
handbags and purses:

1. A new store comes online just in time for holiday shopping.

2. The new website’s contact information is missing or obscure.
3. The new website’s registration information (Whois.com) is “private.”
4. You can’t locate the owners.
5. The same style or design of a bag is available in many colors.
6. The website sells only three or four designer brands.
7. The handbags look like items you’ve seen on many other websites,
8. Prices are too good to be true less than half of retail.
9. There are page after page of similar items.
10. There’s one page of authentic-looking bags, but the rest of the website
    contains the same bag in every color under the sun!

I’ve seen websites come and go over the past ten years online. First, the sites selling
fakes offered Gucci, Fendi and Prada. Then, there were the ones selling strictly Louis
Vuitton and Chanel. The Hermes Birkin and Kelly bag are still prolific in the
counterfeit world, but they are not as commonly seen online as the other Designers.

The most commonly counterfeited handbags today are: BALENCIAGA, TODS, CELINE,
and CHLOE. Plus, the old-time favorites are still hotter than ever in the counterfeit
market: GUCCI, LOUIS VUITTON, HERMES, FENDI and PRADA. I recently saw even
LAMBERTSON TRUEX smooth calf leather fake bags, too.

With all the choices out there, how can you tell if you are buying a genuine product?
Well, in reality you just don’t know unless you really know the product well. I am a
purse expert, but sometimes I’ve been fooled, too. Most of the time, I know what
I’m doing, and I buy the right thing.

Three rules I use to make a handbag purchases online:

1. Ask before you buy.

2. Talk with the owner of the site ONLY!
3. Obtain a full money-back guarantee for authenticity.

I asked a wholesaler if his bags were guaranteed authentic, and I was told, “Yes,
they are gauranteed to be 100% made in Italy.” Another wholesaler told me, “Our
bags are the best quality.” Yes, but are they authentic designer goods? I’ve also
heard, “The man who made this bag worked for the Design House for over 20 years.
Of course, it’s authentic!” Wrong. If you don’t get a straight answer, pass on the
purchase.

Please don’t blindly believe everything you see and especially not what you are told.
I arranged a meeting with a wholesaler at a well-known annual conference. The
bags I pre-ordered were authentic items, yet when the order arrived, they were
obviously not exactly like those styles shown at the pre-order sale. Be careful. Buy
from a website or seller who has been online for a very long time. Over the past ten
years selling online, I can honestly say that the best lessons I’ve learned were from
customers who did their homework. Talk to people, share your insights, and please
… let’s all stamp out fakes online!

About the author.

Anna Miller is the President of i-GlobalMall.com, Inc. She has been buying and
selling Designer Handbags and purses of all price ranges online for over ten years.
She’s been around the handbag block, and she’s heard and seen it all! Anna
operates an ecommerce site at http://www.efashionhouse.com/designerhandbag.html Guaranteed authentic or your money back Designer
Handbags and Accessories.

http://www.efashionhouse.com/
Designer_Handbags.html should not be confused with any other website
selling purses. This site is the home of five stores: BrandsBoutique, ValueBags,
ItalysOutlet, DesignersLA and LuxuryVintage. The prices found at
eFashionHouse.com are the best online for authentic designer purses and
accessories. EfashionHouse.com keeps their operating overhead low so they can
pass the savings onto their customers.

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If you have your heart set on the latest Fendi bag or Gucci sunglasses — but these luxury items aren’t in your monthly budget — you may consider going online to find bargains on these hot items. While the majority of online sellers are honest and reliable, the sale of counterfeit items on the Web has been dramatically increasing the past few years. Unfortunately, luxury goods providers cannot authenticate items unless they were purchased from their own store, Web site or authorized dealer, so it is up to the buyer to choose wisely when purchasing higher-end items online.

Here are some great tips to protect you from online fakes:

Chocolate purses? Did I read that correctly? Back alley bags?
Terrorism funding with fake couture? Designer purse riots?
They can’t be true! But wait, the news is true, it absolutely
is! And what is this? A diamond thief snatches a designer
handbag from a sexy starlet! And then comes a story about
designer cell phones to carry in that fashionable handbag!
This is what I love about web marketing and my work as a
search engine optimization specialist - the fun and novelty
of research.

Let’s take a step back here and clarify. Why would a web site
owner seeking increased search engine visibility care about
news related to their products? In a word, CONTENT. I always
recommend to new clients that they start a blog discussing
their industry and their products and post to it several
times a week. Post what? Anything and everything about their
product or service belongs in their blog. Content is king and
blogs are a great place to routinely add relevant,
interesting, search engine friendly content.

But my clients wonder where I come up with this stuff - It’s
in the news.

The day I signed on to increase the search visibility of an
online retailer of designer handbags and fashion accessories,
I went to Google news http://news.google.com and typed
“Designer Handbags” into the search box. As I scrolled down
the page of resulting stories, I saw a link to a press
release discussing the new pink Juicy Couture Sidekick phone
and PDA from T-Mobile. Bingo! First blog entry at the client
blog http://Valuebags.com (recommended to the client that
day) where I recapped the story and posted a photo.

Then I scrolled to the bottom of that Google News page to
look for the link that says, “New! Track new stories about
designer handbags & create an email alert” I clicked the link
under “create an email alert” and entered my email address
for this “Designer Handbags” news search, just like I do with
each new client and their product. Every day I receive a list
of news stories that turned up in a news search for “Designer
Handbags” to discuss on the client blog.

Within a few days I got my daily email alert from Google News
that talked about, I kid you not, Chocolate Designer
Handbags! So I clicked the link in the email to land on a
news story about a high end chocolatier that makes tiny
little replicas of designer purses in rich, flavored
chocolate, complete with tiny bows and straps! There’s the
next post to the client designer handbag blog. What fun! But
this can’t go on, really - how much news can there be about
trendy, high priced purses?

Next comes an email news alert about sexy starlet Tara Reid,
who was robbed in a Spain airport of her Balenciaga designer
handbag filled with over $180,000 in jewels! The news seems
filled with stories about haute couture bags, but really, can
this continue at this rate? Yes, indeed it can. Next day
brings news of a shop proprietor on the lamb after he is
caught running a fake designer handbag boutique in
Brownsville, Texas. He disappeared after his wife died, on
the run to avoid prison time.

Just incredible, there really can’t be more, can there? Yes,
it seemingly never ends, as I got a news alert in the email
the next morning about a RIOT by ravenous customers hungry
for limited numbers of designer handbags on steep discount at
a Maryland boutique! Police had to stop as many as 1000 women
fighting over the bags when the boutique owner couldn’t stop
them from wrecking the store.

There’s more! Here’s a story about the size of the fake
couture market, currently estimated to be approximately $450
BILLION yearly! That is some sizable change carried by a lot
of fake purses. It is estimated that in New York alone,
losses run $500 million a year to designer knockoffs. This
booty attracts organized crime and it is suspected that
substantial terrorism funding is raised by designer handbag
counterfeiting.

Clearly I’ve made my point here. If you seek higher search
engine ranking for your products and services and are willing
to post some comments regularly to your company blog on news
in your industry, there are no shortage of topics to discuss.
A headline like “$1.4 Million Designer Handbag Counterfeit
Scam - Four Arrested” doesn’t appear every single day does
it? That one ran recently at Boston.com and was in an email
alert.

But what if it’s a slow news day and there are no headlines
on your product today to discuss on your blog? OK, it does
happen, especially if you are in the software industry or
industrial supply or if you deal in some other esoteric
minutia. Then what to blog about? Your clients, vendors,
suppliers or customers make for excellent content and in some
cases may happily provide you with their latest news release
to post on your blog. You can detail business or sales trips,
discuss jobs in your industry, or even put up copies of your
own latest email promotions, press releases, or even your
office decorating plans.

Sale promotions, coupon codes, and specials for blog readers
only - all contribute to a popular and visible blog in your
industry. If you post often, use keyword phrases liberally in
your text and hyperlink that keyword text to relevant
information or sales pages of your products from the blog,
you will increase the search engine ranking of your main site
over time.

As a male with little interest in designer purses and
handbags, I knew I could effectively market this client
simply by signing up for “Designer Handbags” Google News
alerts and gathering those news headlines and commenting on
the client blog. I never thought that Gucci, Prada, Hermes,
Vuitton, Furla, Fendi and Ferragamo handbags would become an
item of interest to me - and they’re still not - so Google
News alerts comes to the rescue.

Clients however, often find that they become extremely
interested in those news alerts, have no trouble commenting
about them on their blog, and soon come to enjoy the process
and happily take it on as a regular task in their web
marketing. They are already experts on their product and
hearing more about their industry in daily news stories and
commenting about it in their blog becomes a pleasant daily
task.

Did you know you could buy designer handbags at Walmart’s
Sam’s Club stores? “Regional Manager Matt Lindsey said “They
don’t come into Sam’s Club looking for affordable luxuries,
but once they see it and they can afford it, they’re happy
with it.” Coach, Prada, Kate Spade, and Fendi handbags are
available in (Sam’s Club) stores.”

From Rochester, NY TV news station WHAM channel 13 web site.
Truth is stranger than fiction. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

Copyright Mike Banks Valentine © December 2005

Mike Banks Valentine is a search engine optimization
specialist increasing the visibility of
http://www.efashionhouse.com through article marketing, press
releases, and blogging. He also runs http://WebSite101.com
Small Business Ecommerece Tutorial - Contact Mike at
http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm

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