Any magic store not having a name on it's website I automatically label as untrustworthy fucker. Approachchina is such a website. And if you take a look at the website you know why. Rip offs of magic stuff. Real good copies. I know that some Chinese companies have specialized in doing that. Magic items are no different.
Stuff you can buy. The Joe Porper Card Clip, including the signature on the back of course. Using the standard whois-method the almighty Internet spit out the name of "Dekui Fan". I'm not sure if this is a Chinese name. I'm not even sure if they guy you see on the left actually is Dekui Fan. So if I'm wrong here please correct me.
Approachingchina does several things which are unholy in the magic community. They put no thought in creating magic. They just sell it. But not creations for which they have bought the rights to do so. (The Joe Porper Card Clip is a big give away here.) They use the likeness of famous magicians like Cyril. They sell rip offs and not the original prop. Thereby no money goes to the creator. (John Sheets Quantum Bender for 50 bucks, yeah right!)
The products probably are of really bad quality. Check out this interesting photo of a coin. Subtle. I see no gimmickery.This is usually the case with most China knock offs. Simple reason. Production cost. In order to make money by selling it a lot cheaper they have to cut the cost. And that usually means they save by choosing cheaper material and/or having no quality control.
The legal situation about this is often very blurry. China is far away, yet their copy cat behavior does have real impact here. Any money spent on the knock off is not going to the creator who has come up with the idea in the first place. And to quote a magic buddy: "If the people buying it KNOW they're knock offs then obviously any moral debate is out the window."
So in addition to blaming Dekui Fan, I also award this weeks failure trophy to all the costumers.
Roland, it is just sad to see that.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you the actual situation on the other side of the planet ‘cause I am living there.
In Hong Kong, most magic shops sell these rip offs from China and those who still carry original items have little or no support from customers. Those shop that sell rip offs treat those products as toys for kids and see no value besides selling them as much as they can.
Besides without monetary return to creators, my hatred goes to those shop without being responsible to carry out the responsibility of a magic shop, that is, to help the growth of magic ability of their customers and ultimately another Magic Champion might come up in one of their shop, who knows?
Declaration conflict of interest: I am one of those who suffered from those rip offs and closed my magic shop in late 2008.
Am I angry? Hell yeah!
Anything I can do? Not much.
Are those kids using rip off will grow in their level of magic? I hardly see another kid with sufficient skill in the last 5 years in my city.
Besides my loss of the shop, did I get bad during my performance? Absolutely not, because I use genuine product + pure sleight of hand, even a simple Ambitious Card with perfect execution audience still feel amazing, no matter how bad magic they saw previous.
That’s life on the other side of the globe.
Did I tell you that magic instructional DVDs here sold for US$3 each with most lastest release? 7 years ago these rip off shop still hold something back and sell them at US$35 and now since every kid can open a magic shop who will think of proper profit margin in magic retailing these days.
Just wanna pop in and comment:
ReplyDeleteMy folding half looks just like the one in the picture, but I didn't get it from this China store thingy. I got it from a Brick-And-Morter shop. So maybe the coin gimmick isn't an accurate representation. Could ya get another picture or is that the only case?
Internet shops aren't the only ones selling dodgy knock offs, brick and mortar shops do it as well.
ReplyDeleteThe real question I see is, if it looked like that in a brick and mortar store why on earth did you buy it?
It didn't when I got it. Now that I think about it, I might just need to change the band. That must be it.
ReplyDelete