On May 5, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily visited and found that a new business - old package renovation has emerged in some luxury repair and care shops, with some merchants arranging more than 18 orders a month, and some recontracting cycles as long as 100 months. However, with the hot business, the chaos in the market has also surfaced, and the facelift package may not only have problems such as "fake at a glance", but also have the risk of trademark infringement. The relevant lawyers pointed out that whether infringement is involved mainly depends on whether the merchant sells recontracted services or goods, and if the luxury package is changed to other styles according to the customer's requirements and ultimately used by the consumer, it is not trademark infringement; If the merchant sells the goods that retain the original package brand logo or impersonate the original package brand LOGO, it is a trademark infringement.
The recontracting business is booming
Recently, the business of luxury bag transformation is particularly hot. An investigation by a reporter from Beijing Business Daily found that there are two main types of old package transformation services commonly found on the market. One is that consumers provide old luxury bags that are idle at home as material bags, and transform them into new or customized models in the season, and the charges generally range from 1000-3000 yuan according to different styles and processes; The other is that when the customer does not have the old bag, the merchant provides the service of selling luxury genuine leather, and then transforms or directly sells the transformed bag, and the price of the finished product is generally about one-fifth of the counter price.
According to Mr. Zhang, the person in charge of an offline bag shop in Beijing, taking the NANO SPEEDY of LV handbags as an example, the processing fee for changing to this style is about 2000,12800 yuan, while the NANO SPEEDY handbags sold at the counter are priced at <>,<> yuan, which means that you can buy the "same model" at less than one-sixth of the price. The cost-effective price has also moved many consumers, "In the past two years, the wind of repackaging has been very strong, there is an idle LV vintage travel bag at home, watching the video of online package rebooking seems to be good, the price is much cheaper than going to the counter to buy a new bag, and it can also be recycled, so I plan to try," said consumer Wu Wu (pseudonym).
Mr. Zhang also told the Beijing Business Daily reporter, "There are many customers who have come to change the package recently, and some of them are used by the vintage store to unpack and remodel, an average of more than 100 bags can be changed a month, and the current cycle of changing a bag is about 15 days, in fact, the construction period is about 4 days, but there are more orders, so you need to wait at least one or two weeks." Another recontracting business in Guangzhou is even more popular, "At present, the cycle of recontracting is as long as 4 months, firstly, because of the need to arrange orders, there are many customers on our side who repackage, and manual transformation also takes time, which itself is relatively slow." And the materials, hardware and leather of each bag are different, and it takes time to customize." Business Xiaoting said.
She further explained, "Many Chinese women now have several idle luxury bags in their hands, so the demand for repackaging has increased significantly in the past two years." According to Bain & Company, in 2021, the size of China's domestic personal luxury goods market was 4710 billion yuan, twice that of 2019, and it is expected that by 2025, China will become the world's largest personal luxury goods consumer market.
The real package becomes a fake package
More and more consumers have joined the contract team, and this seemingly cost-effective business has also become a "hard-hit area" for complaints. Ms. Chen, a consumer, told the Beijing Business Daily reporter about the "history of blood and tears" of her repackage: "Last year, I spent 1880 yuan to change a LV NANO medium size that has been used for many years to 'fries bag'. But after getting it, it was found that the position of the presbyopia was not the same as the original at all, which can be said to be a fake. The store explained that the size of the NANO medium was not enough to make a pair of flowers, but these questions were not raised during the early communication."
Xiaoyan, who has ten years of luxury repair experience, said, "Whether the bag in the hands of consumers can be changed to the desired style depends on many factors. For example, the package provided by the consumer has several consecutive LV letter old flowers, if it is smaller than the bag you want to modify, you cannot do the right version; Although the overall size of some bags is large enough, there will be many pinholes and fragments on the leather after dismantling, so the utilization rate is not high, and it is impossible to change a large bag into multiple small bags like some promotional videos."
Not only that, after spending thousands of yuan, the real bag in the hands of consumers has become a fake bag that cannot be recycled. Mr. Zhang told the Beijing Business Daily reporter frankly that whether consumers provide their own packaging materials or merchants provide them, they can only ensure that the presbyopia part is genuine, "but the corresponding hardware needs to be back-matched, such as a complete set of hardware from NANO SPEEDY, the cost price of the high-end version is within 100 yuan, if you want genuine hardware, the price is as high as more than 700 yuan, and now the market is basically unable to buy." The leather matching also cannot use genuine leather, generally choose close leather, and the process cannot be completely replicated."
From the perspective of consumer reactions, consumers are gradually aware of the risks of recontracting. In the relevant blog posts on social media, many consumers commented, "In regret, the real bag for the fake bag also lost thousands of manual costs" and "I changed it once and did not back it, and I spent money to buy a change package that is more fake than the fake bag".
The remodeled bag generally no longer has recycling value, and Haiyang, the owner of a second-hand store in Beijing, told the Beijing Business Daily reporter bluntly, "The modified bag is far from the genuine product in terms of identification points, material hardware and other aspects." Although the original bag is old, it still has recycling value, and it does not have recycling value after adding money to change the model, which is a fake bag from the perspective of our recycling appraisal."
There is a risk of infringement
Obviously, the modified luxury bag cannot be equated with the genuine product, which means that the recontractor may be suspected of infringement.
According to Shanghai Radio and Television, at the end of 2022, Changning police and Songjiang police cracked the country's first case involving the dismantling and modification of luxury bags, and carried out a full-chain crackdown on criminal gangs selling counterfeit luxury leather bags for profit under the guise of "old renovation". At present, more than 30 people such as Yan Moumou have been taken criminal compulsory measures by the Changning police in accordance with the law for suspected crimes of counterfeiting registered trademarks.
Zhao Zhanzhan of Beijing Jiawei Law Firm said that whether the so-called recontracting act is infringing mainly depends on whether the merchant sells the recontracted service or the modified goods, "For the processing of the contract, that is, changing the luxury package into the desired style according to the consumer's requirements, and finally providing it for the consumer's own use, for the brand owner, the principle of exhaustion of rights should be applied, that is, the consumer's request for the recontract is not infringing." The recontracted shop does not provide goods such as luxury bags, but recontracted services, and the services provided by the recontracted store are not the same or similar goods as the approved registered goods of the brand owner, and are not trademark infringements."
He further pointed out, "However, for the purchase of material processing and sales, that is, the store buys second-hand luxury bags, changes them to new bags and sells them, this production method will retain the original bag brand LOGO, and may also directly impersonate the trademark of the original bag brand when selling." This is an act that infringes the trademark rights of others. In addition, whether the use of the leather of a certain bag to make another brand of bag, or directly imitating the bag type of a certain brand, only imitates the bag type and does not use the leather bearing the trademark of the brand owner, depends on whether the brand owner has a design patent or copyright for the bag type, and if so, it constitutes infringement."
Zhou Ting, president of the VIP Research Institute, believes that the hot business of recontracting is the manifestation of consumers' personalized needs, and it is also a certain form of customized services, which can not only turn waste into treasure, but also reduce the cost of repeated purchases, but also give fake goods an excuse and opportunity. "At present, there is still a certain chaos in the industry, and the operators are mainly maintenance institutions, second-hand businesses or individuals, and the development is still very rudimentary. In the future, if we can do it together with joint brands, there will be good development prospects and excellent head companies. ”
Beijing Business Daily Inequality Investigation Team