From Lululemon to Birkenstock, duplicate styles lure holiday shoppers
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[November 20, 2023] By
Katherine Masters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lauren Maginness is a fan of Lululemon. But the
31-year-old product marketer in New York City is increasingly
supplementing her activewear with less-pricey brand duplicates she picks
up through e-commerce site Amazon.com.
One of her favorites: CRZ Yoga's $32 high-waisted yoga pants, resembling
Lululemon’s popular $98 Align leggings. Maginness learned about CRZ from
an influencer on short-video platform TikTok who describes herself as a
former Lululemon employee.
As the holiday shopping season gets under way, top-sellers from
Lululemon, Abercrombie & Fitch, Birkenstock and Estee Lauder's Tom Ford
perfume are competing for shoppers like Maginness and their growing love
affair with TikTok-popularized "dupes" - sufficiently similar replicas
of higher-priced products.
CRZ Yoga is doing brisk business, selling an average 88,633 pairs of the
leggings a month and earning around $2.84 million in average monthly
revenue, according to data from e-commerce analytics firm Jungle Scout.
CRZ, which according to its website is owned by a Hong Kong trading
company, did not respond to a request for comment.
Growing demand for lookalike products, coupled with a pullback in
spending due to inflation, is cutting in to sales of some trendy,
big-name products. “Dupes” have become so widely accepted, particularly
among younger consumers, that Maginness said she would consider gifting
a faux-Lululemon activewear set to a friend. “After all, you do have
more room in the budget with the dupe,” she said.
Hashtag searches for dupes of major brands - including Skims underwear
and Deckers' Ugg boots - have been viewed millions of times on TikTok.
Influencers accepting commissions regularly tout similar, alternate
products from value retailers such as Walmart, Target and fragrance e-tailer
Dossier.
Last week, "Passionate Penny Pincher," a discount blog that accepts
commissions for sales, touted $29.99 Dearfoam shearling "Ugg dupe
slippers" as holiday gifts in an email to followers. Department store
chain Nordstrom pitched original "Ugg slippers on everyone's gift list"
for $115.
Dupes have become so widely available from such a broad range of sellers
that experts say it is difficult to quantify how much market share they
may steal from the original products this holiday season. Most at risk
are brand-name perfumes, cosmetics and mid-tier clothing and footwear,
particularly those "commodity" products that are easy to replicate, said
Leslie Ghize, executive vice president of retail consulting firm Doneger
Tobe.
Twenty-eight percent of U.S. consumers said they plan to give a beauty
product such as perfume as a holiday gift and 55% plan to give clothing,
shoes or accessories, according to a survey of 3,429 people by Circana
Inc.
Lululemon, whose revenue rose 18% in the second quarter compared with a
year earlier, launched a two-day “dupe swap” promotion in Los Angeles in
May where shoppers could trade lookalikes for Align leggings. Lululemon
declined to comment. Chief Executive Officer Calvin McDonald told
investors in June that roughly half of shoppers who attended the dupe
swap were under 30 and new to Lululemon.
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Lauren Maginness poses wearing Dupes, short for duplicate, at her
apartment in New York City, U.S., November 10, 2023. REUTERS/Shannon
Stapleton
FROM FAST FASHION TO E-COMMERCE
Experts say the current excitement over dupes traces back to the
start of fast fashion. Inditex-owned Zara, which opened its first
store in 1975, made a business of replicating luxury designs. Its
shorter production cycles allowed more styles to enter the market
quickly, sparking "the habit of shopping more frequently," said Ian
Taplin, a professor at Wake Forest University.
E-commerce platforms Amazon, eBay, Shopify and Etsy helped dupe
sales accelerate, by making it easy to compare prices on similar
goods. Newer technologies like the Google Lens app allow people to
take photos of items they like and find similar products for sale.
For prospective dupe-makers, the Chinese marketplace Alibaba makes
it simple to find and hire manufacturers. Some manufacturers use the
same materials and fabrics as big-name brands, said Juozas
Kaziukenas, founder of e-commerce analytics firm Marketplace Pulse.
In other cases, dupe sellers opt to replicate the look of
higher-priced originals with cheaper materials to maximize profit.
Either way, sellers on shopping platforms like Amazon typically do
not have the same overhead costs as retailers with brick-and-mortar
locations, allowing them to bring goods to shoppers more cheaply.
"They might not be exactly the same, but they're much cheaper,"
Kaziukenas said.
Thirty to 49% of shoppers have been disappointed with "dupes"
purchased online, according to a survey of 3,000 millennial and
Gen-Z consumers conducted by consumer review platform Trustpilot
across the U.S., UK and Italy.
Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti said the company does not allow
its sellers to use the words “dupe,” “fake” or “faux” connected to a
brand name when describing their products on the site. However, it
cannot always keep up with sellers who violate the rule, according
to Mike Scheschuk, president of small and medium business at Jungle
Scout.
As of last Wednesday, multiple products available on Amazon appeared
to violate the policy, including a pair of clogs listed as "dupes"
of a popular style by Birkenstock and priced more than $100 below
than the original.
A spokesperson for Birkenstock said it "takes the issue of brand and
product piracy very seriously" and takes a "rigorous approach" to
defending its intellectual property. However, experts say dupe
sellers have grown increasingly skilled at avoiding brand logos and
other design features that could infringe existing patents or
copyrights.
(Reporting by Katherine Masters in New York Additional reporting by
Dorothy Kam in Hong Kong; Editing by Vanessa O'Connell, Rod Nickel
and Matthew Lewis)
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