From the WSJ China Real-Time Report:
A blogger in Kunming posted photos on Wednesday of a local store which, from a distance, looked just like one of the consumer electronics giants’ iconic full-service retail stores. It featured a glass exterior, pale wood display tables, a winding staircase and giant posters displaying the iPad 2 and other Apple products, plus a neatly organized accessories wall.
“This was a total Apple store ripoff—a brilliant one,” the blogger, BirdAbroad, wrote. She called it “the best ripoff store we had ever seen.” Photos show employees in blue shirts and Apple-emblazoned name tags similar to those worn by Apple Store employees in Beijing and Shanghai.
No surprise here. But I admit to blogger envy. Would that I could roam China looking for stories like this — of which hundreds exist — oh, the fun we would have!
[UPDATE: July 25, 2011]
Yu Cheng, who owns three stores selling authentic Apple products in Kunming without the company’s permission, isn’t violating any Chinese laws and is actually “doing Apple a favor,” Deng Hai, a lawyer with the Sichuan Law Offices representing the businessman, said in an interview. Yu’s stores haven’t been ordered to shut, Deng said.
Read about the government order to shut down some of these stores here. Wonder how much it cost to keep the other three open…
The Entire Kunming （昆明） Apple Store: Fake (With Photos) by AsiaBizBlog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
