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The exterior of the fake Apple store on Zhengyi Road in Kunming, China that BirdAbroad blogged about.
By Adrienne Mong
KUNMING, YUNNAN PROVINCE, CHINA – It’s hard to imagine an American expatriate more unpopular in Kunming right now than the woman who runs the blogsite BirdAbroad.
Last week, she chanced upon not one but three knock-off Apple shops near the heart of the southwestern city’s shopping district. The main one on Zhengyi Road, she wrote, “was a total Apple store rip-off. A beautiful rip-off.”
This week, local authorities in the Yunnan capital began shutting them down. However, the “fake” Apple shop so thoroughly described by BirdAbroad remains open.
Its saving grace?
Their Apple products – iPhones, iPads, iPods, Shuffles, and a variety of computers – are genuine.
The real thing?
“All our products are real,” said Yang Jie, the store manager, when we visited over the weekend. Yang also hastened to tell us they come with a guarantee although no refunds are offered. “Stores don’t return money in China.”
Even though the products looked authentic – we did a series of tests on iPads and desktop computers playing “Angry Birds” – none of the staff said they knew how they’d obtained the goods.
Yang said the shop’s owner, whom he refused to identify, was responsible for organizing the supply. (The staff were later quoted in news reports saying they planned to apply for a license to sell their products).
If the goods are real, some customers said, there was no problem with the shop not being a “real” Apple store or even a licensed reseller.
Adrienne Mong / NBC NewsOne of the displays inside the fake Apple store on Zhengyi Road in Kunming, China that BirdAbroad blogged about.
But Wang Haijun, a lawyer in Beijing, said if the shop on Zhengyi Road isn’t authorized to sell Apple products, then their origins pose complications and the retailer could still be in breach of Chinese law. Particularly if they might be goods brought in from overseas, he said, then it raises import duty considerations.
Even the knock-off store’s design is problematic, according to Wang.
“If the whole store’s decoration, design, product display, and staff’s outfits – if these in general are the same as that of an authorized Apple store, it’s copyright infringement,” he said. “It’s an infringement of Apple.”
Indeed, the shop did get many of the details right: the bright interiors, the long wooden tables, and the matching blue t-shirts with the Apple logo in the front. Even the crowds that crowded around the displays lent it an authentic feel.
Adrienne Mong / NBC NewsCustomers examine the real Apple products in the fake Kunming, China store BirdAbroad blogged about on July 23.
Practically the only thing missing was security.
When we took a spin through the flagship store in Beijing’s Sanlitun neighborhood this week, we counted 22 men in black uniforms with “RiskControl” written on their sleeve.
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