An American living in Kunming, China has discovered a fake apple store in the city. Pictures of the store, their staff and a description of a stroll around them was posted on the BirdAbroad blog.
In her blogpost, she describes conversations with staff, many of whom were convinced that they were employed by the US electronics firm. Apple has said it has no comment to make on the discovery of the counterfeit shops. BirdAbroad described the stores as a "beautiful ripoff - a brilliant one - the best ripoff store we had ever seen". At first glance, the store is indistinguishable due to the effort had been taken to copy key elements of a real Apple store. For instance, it has a winding staircase, upstairs lounge with sofas and employees wearing blue T-shirts and chunky ID lanyards.
Poor Construction
However, on closer inspection, the store did not seem to be constructed to a particularly high standard. The stairs appeared to be flimsy, the walls were shoddily painted and, most glaringly, it had the words "Apple store" written on the shop front. "Apple never writes 'Apple Store' on its signs - it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit," wrote BirdAbroad. Research by the blogger revealed that the only official Apple stores in China are in Beijing and Shanghai.
A further check revealed that none of the three stores she found are mentioned on Apple's list of official resellers known to be trading in Kunming. It was also unclear where the fake store had obtained the Apple products - whether they had come from an Apple distributor or a grey market source.
The blog entry revealing the fake store has proved hugely popular and has gathered more than 500,000 visits in less than 48 hours.
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