Grey market discussion thread (Let's keep the discussion mature) Rules on pg 1 please read before yo

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green rhino123 said:
so the pizza was free?
your friend didn't ask for a couple bucks? you didn't give him a few bucks?
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it was over retail

should pay with unauthorized GM money too lol
nflowshoe said:
LMAO, my friend works at Pizza Hut and told me to come up there and get a free Pizza right before they close. If I get the pizza after it closes does it mean I got a GM pizza?

That's how some of these scenario are sounding in this thread.SMH
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if I try hard enough I'm sure I can copy & reproduce their patented pizzas if I wanted to, maybe hire an old or current employee & find similar close enough ingredients... but 99% close at best though. I'll sell it under the same name, with a replica box & everything, but charge $5 more & tell people it came from their store not my mines (psst. when they stop making some of their seasonal pizzas, i will keep making those & still say it came from them, people are so hungry those they won't even ask or find out).
 
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Gry60 said:
If you want proof that Nike GM pairs are made in the same factories as authorized shoes, YOU WON'T GET IT BECAUSE NIKE HAS CHOSEN TO NOT PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE ISSUE.

I repeat, YOU WON'T GET IT BECAUSE NIKE HAS CHOSEN TO NOT PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE ISSUE.

However, there are news articles from reputable organizations that describe how other clothing and footwear brands have faced the same challenges that Nike is facing with regard to counterfeiting.

I posted many pages back an article about New Balance taking a Chinese manufacturer to court because he was willingly producing more shoes than the number ordered by NB, which he made money off of by flooding the local market.

The same article mentioned how TJ Maxx received and sold clothing that turned out to be factory overruns that were unauthorized by the brand that placed the order.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/05/01/8375455/

http://cf.rims.org/Magazine/PrintTemplate.cfm?AID=3376

Given these verifiable facts, why would you doubt the possibility that your non-retail Jordans could be factory overruns?

It also helps to realize that when it comes to manufacturing countries (especially China), IP protection is not given the same consideration as in the USA. The article above touches on that issue by looking at how the Chinese courts stalled NB's case against their producer while he selling directly shoes that weren't supposed to be produced in the first place.
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PERFECT articles describing da issue...
 
jyung101 said:
That article did nothing but prove what I was saying earlier on.....once again air randy has been the only proven dealer of GM shoes....this kinstor and rstor some fuggazi joints. I think GM does exist but the scale you guys like to put it on is marginal at best. Quality shouldn't very to the point of miss printed boxes and wrong tags etc......
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In June 1999, Chang stunned New Balance executives at a meeting in Boston by announcing that he was projecting sales of 250,000 pairs that year - quadruple what he'd sold the year before.

"We were amazed," recalls Haddad. But not pleased. New Balance executives feared that the company's name was becoming associated in China with a fashion shoe, jeopardizing its reputation as a performance brand. They told Chang to pull back from selling classics.

"He was dumbfounded," Haddad recalls. "He came here thinking he was doing a great thing - like the cat that brings you the dead mouse - and we slapped him on the hand."

Chang didn't pull back. Rather, he ordered materials to produce 450,000 pairs, as the New Balance sourcing department reported to its alarmed management later that year. Soon Chang's inexpensive shoe was seeping out of China into premium markets like Japan. Licensed New Balance distributors there were furious.

In August 1999, New Balance notified Chang that it was terminating his license to make and distribute classics, effective Dec. 31, 1999.

"What happened then is when everything went crazy," Haddad recounts. Upon termination, the contract called for Chang to return to New Balance all its confidential technical, production, sales, and marketing information, including molds, specifications, signs, labels, packages, wrappers, and ads. He didn't.

"He continued to sell," says Haddad, "and was actively trying to sell product outside the country: in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany." (It's unclear whether Chang continued to make classics after 1999 or sold stockpiled inventory. Chang told the Wall Street Journal in late 2002, when it wrote about the situation, that he still considered himself entitled to make New Balance shoes.)
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read da article.....you are completely out da loop when it comes to this grey market business.
 
Fighting brand ripoffs

New Balance's case shows how hard it can be to protect your intellectual property when your products are made by subcontractors overseas.



By Roger Parloff, FORTUNE senior writer

April 27, 2006: 11:33 AM EDT


NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Late last month, a remarkable, seven-year-old dispute between New Balance Athletic Shoe and a former overseas contractor unexpectedly sprang back to life.

The case began in 1999 when the Boston-based shoe company tried to terminate one of its Chinese outsourcers, Horace Chang - and Chang refused to be terminated. The Chinese courts have consistently sided with Chang in the suit - one in which, according to a New Balance attorney, an appeals judge unsuccessfully sought a payoff from the company.
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[/td][/tr][tr][td]New Balance ordered Chang to stop selling the "classic" shoe, shown on the left above. He refused, and it's still on sale in Shanghai. The Henkee shoe, on the right, is a competing brand that Chang launched when relations with New Balance soured.[/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][tr][td][table][tr][td]
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[/td][/tr][tr][td]In Shanghai real New Balance shoes are sold alongside Henkees, a lawful knockoff made by a former supplier.[/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][tr][td]
[table][tr][td]More from Fortune[/td][/tr][tr][td]
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[table][tr][td]
FORTUNE 500

Current Issue

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[/td][/tr][/table]
[/td][/tr][tr][td][table][tr][td]
[table][tr][td]
Brand ripoffs: A user's guide
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Counterfeit

A product that bears a trademark that its maker had no authority to use.

Knockoff

A broad term encompassing both counterfeits and items that look like branded products though they don't actually bear forged trademarks.

Third Shift

An unauthorized product made by an authorized contractor.
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[/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][/table]
But on March 28, the High Court for Guangdong province unexpectedly granted a hearing to reconsider a decision it had rendered more than a year earlier, resuscitating a case New Balance had assumed to be over. (This is an excerpt from a story that ran in the May 1, 2006 issue of FORTUNE. To read the entire article, click here or go to www.fortune.com.)

The litigation stems from an embarrassing problem that brandowners often encounter but seldom acknowledge: unauthorized production by authorized overseas contractors. Beginning in the early 1990s, Taiwanese contractor Horace Chang was licensed to manufacture New Balance shoes for export at his factory in Guangdong Province in mainland China, near Hong Kong. In 1995 New Balance also licensed Chang to distribute a line of New Balance shoes in mainland China. But in 1999, New Balance decided to phase out that line. It terminated Chang's contracts as of the end of 1999 - or so it thought.

"He continued to sell," says Ed Haddad, New Balance's vice president for intellectual property, "and was actively trying to sell product outside the country: in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany." (Chang declined to be interviewed by Fortune, citing the ongoing litigation.)

To stop Chang, New Balance sued him in the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court for Guangdong Province. But in February 2002, New Balance lost. The court ruled that while New Balance had terminated its licenses with Chang's Hong Kong operating company, it had failed to do so with respect to Chang's Guangdong factory. And though that factory was never licensed to distribute New Balance shoes, the court found that its license to make shoes carried an implied license to distribute - and even a right to do so without paying any royalties.

New Balance appealed to the Guangdong Province High Court, which held oral argument that same summer. Then New Balance heard nothing for many months. Eventually New Balance attorney Harley Lewin, of New York's Greenberg Traurig, hired an investigator to make inquiries. Finally, word came back through two intermediaries, Lewin recounts: "For $300,000, we could have our decision."

"We were on the head of a pin," he recalls. "Clearly, we weren't going to do it. But you're being asked directly by the tribunal hearing your case." As politely as he could, he responded that, no, New Balance really couldn't do anything like that.

More weeks passed. Lewin made more inquiries. Word came back again. "The price was down to a hundred grand," he says. New Balance again refused.

In September 2003, the lead judge on the three-judge panel contacted New Balance through a different intermediary. He asked for $100,000 again, and then came down to $50,000, according to Lewin. This time, New Balance reported the request to the provincial supervisory bureau for courts. In April 2004, after no action had been taken, New Balance petitioned the court to replace the judge. The judge was then removed from the case (without explanation), but not from the bench.

Asked about Lewin's allegations by phone, the replaced judge told FORTUNE, "That's impossible. Are you interviewing me? You cannot interview me like this," and hung up. In response to a letter outlining the accusations, a court public affairs staffer said foreign media had to direct inquiries to the Foreign Ministry.

In January 2005, the High Court finally ruled: It affirmed Chang's victory. In late spring 2005, New Balance petitioned for a rehearing. It heard nothing for almost a year. Then on March 28, 2006, out of the blue, the court granted a hearing on the petition. Lewin, who had previously assumed the case was over, says he has no idea what prompted the court to act. Originally the court set the hearing for April 24, but the court has subsequently postponed it indefinitely, Lewin says.

The case is almost moot at this point, as there are only small quantities of Chang's New Balance shoes still on sale in Shanghai today. Today, New Balance has a more pressing concern, according to Haddad: a competitor that launched in 2005 under the brandname New Barlun.

New Barlun uses packaging, logos, store displays, and slick advertising brochures that are, by Western standards, audacious ripoffs of New Balance's. New Balance has sued New Barlun in the local court for Fujian province, and is awaiting a decision.

Notwithstanding all the challenges, New Balance has never considered withdrawing its factories from China. The economic allure is too compelling and, as Haddad points out, its products would've been counterfeited in China to some degree no matter where the company made them.

Haddad does advise Western companies to monitor their supply chains as closely as they can, however. "If you don't do your up-front due diligence in managing the supply chain," he says, "you're just going to be subject to problems." But after a pause, he adds a weary coda: "Not that you won't be even then."

This is an excerpt from a story that ran in the May 1, 2006 issue of FORTUNE. To read the entire article, click here or go to www.fortune.com.  
 
Very informative, but you know we dont listen to facts in this thread!
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but seriously that actually describes the entire greymarket system pretty accurately. The illegal distribution of legal (but unauthorized goods).

But I'm waiting for someone to say "That only proves that New Balance's Grey Market Shoes are legit, Nike/JB Greymarket shoes are still fugazzi"
 
Lol, I'm worried about the GM pizza. It didn't come with the right amount of napkins and crushed red peppers. Also don't think the amount of toppings was spread over the pizza up to pizza hunt standards. You can't really tell from looking or taste a diffrence but its bothering me..
 
jdfrenchbread23 said:
Delivery guys be like "VVVVVVVVVNDS"
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LMAO


Mods please let me know if this is a violation, below is the site where I get all my GM pics from that I uploaded in this thread. Once someone uses them to ship thier shoes, they post a pic of the package. I never used the company before but look at the pics weekly to see what is out there and how the quality is. They even tell you the prices.

http://eagentship.imgur.com/
 
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