Handbag authenticators (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions)

I've posted about many new jobs like this. See related posts below. 

Also, this post is based on yesterday's post You Spent $6,000 on a Secondhand Chanel Bag. Now Find Out if It Is Real. It had excerpts from an article by Chavie Lieber of The WSJ. Here are excerpts related to today's post:

"Many secondhand luxury shoppers say [Zekrayat] Husein, a 43-year-old Palestinian mother of three and a former aesthetician who goes by the nickname Zeko, is the Coco Chanel of authentication. She has evaluated over 25,000 Chanel bags since she started her business in 2019, she said. She authenticates hundreds of bags a week." 

"Most of her clients, who are buying used Chanel bags from boutiques or online resellers, will email Husein photos of their purchase, taking close-ups of stitching, hardware, and interiors. Husein charges $50 for her authenticity certificate based on photos and also does in-person inspections for $100."

There "is a cottage industry of independent authenticators who can easily tell a counterfeit from the real McCoy."

Related posts: 

Who wrote your potential love's online dating profile? (maybe they outsourced it to a professional who specializes in that) (2016)

New Profession Of "Wedding Hashtag Helper" Might Be An Example Of Creative Destruction At Work (2022)

Are dating coaches who help you with texting modern Cyrano de Bergeracs? (2023)

Do You Need a Fixer for Your Disney Vacation? Third-party companies tout advanced knowledge for private tours of complex amusement parks that can cost $1,000 and up (2023)

Parents Hire $4,000 Sorority Consultants to Help Daughters Dress and Impress During Rush (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2023)

Prompt engineers chat with generative-AI chatbots (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2023)

"Wedding content creators" curate the perfect social-media-ready images of the nuptials and celebration (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2023)

 

"Independent education consultants" help high school students and their parents navigate the competitive college-admissions process (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2024)

"Robot Wranglers" help lost and confused automatons (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2024)

Professional Bridesmaids (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions)  (2024)

 

Creative Destruction

See Creative Destruction by Richard Alm and W. Michael Cox. Excerpt:

"Joseph Schumpeter
(1883–1950) coined the seemingly paradoxical term “creative destruction,” and generations of economists have adopted it as a shorthand description of the free market’s messy way of delivering progress. In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), the Austrian economist wrote:

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. (p. 83)

Although Schumpeter devoted a mere six-page chapter to “The Process of Creative Destruction,” in which he described capitalism as “the perennial gale of creative destruction,” it has become the centerpiece for modern thinking on how economies evolve."

But also see this link which suggests that the idea goes back even before Schumpeter to other scholars: Creative Destruction in Economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter by Hugo Reinert and Erik S. Reinert.

"Abstract

This paper argues that the idea of ‘creative destruction’ enters the social sciences by way of Friedrich Nietzsche. The term itself is first used by German economist Werner Sombart, who openly acknowledges the influence of Nietzsche on his own economic theory. The roots of creative destruction are traced back to Indian philosophy, from where the idea entered the German literary and philosophical tradition. Understanding the origins and evolution of this key concept in evolutionary economics helps clarifying the contrasts between today’s standard mainstream economics and the Schumpeterian and evolutionary alternative."

You Spent $6,000 on a Secondhand Chanel Bag. Now Find Out if It Is Real.

Handbag authenticators are cashing in on buyers’ anxieties about fakes; hardware must be champagne not bronze; that pink leather is only made in France.

By Chavie Lieber of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Many secondhand luxury shoppers say [Zekrayat] Husein, a 43-year-old Palestinian mother of three and a former aesthetician who goes by the nickname Zeko, is the Coco Chanel of authentication. She has evaluated over 25,000 Chanel bags since she started her business in 2019, she said. She authenticates hundreds of bags a week." 

"Chanel bags sold in Japan from 1985 through 2016 have the bag’s date of purchase and boutique initials inside; that Chanel’s MSHLG (metal shiny light gold) hardware is closer to champagne than bronze, while its MPY (or metal pale yellow) has a darker tone of yellow; that Chanel classic medium flap bags in colors other than black are exclusively made in France and never in Italy; that 10218184 is the serial number counterfeiters use the most."

"Most of her clients, who are buying used Chanel bags from boutiques or online resellers, will email Husein photos of their purchase, taking close-ups of stitching, hardware, and interiors. Husein charges $50 for her authenticity certificate based on photos and also does in-person inspections for $100."

There "is a cottage industry of independent authenticators who can easily tell a counterfeit from the real McCoy. But their jobs have gotten harder as the quality of fakes has reached new heights, so even high-end consignees may end up unwittingly selling knockoffs. Return fraud, where customers buy real luxury goods, then get refunds by returning fake ones, also plagues the primary market."

"Husein sometimes works as an intermediary between a buyer and seller, verifying the authenticity of a bag before a purchase. She said she’s gone head-to-head with banks, insurance companies and resale marketplaces to help customers who were sold counterfeits get their money back."

"Of the average 50 bags she reviews a day, around 10 are counterfeits"

"“They [master fakes] use the exact same leather as Chanel,” she said of the brand’s high-quality lambskin materials."

"Others who have turned their love of luxury into a marketable skill include Paola Tapia, 35, an Atlanta-based authenticator who checks Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Gucci goods for boutiques in the area and for shoppers online. Michelle Peeters, a 38-year-old reseller and authenticator in Brooklyn, N.Y., said she examines around 30 Chanel bags a week.

There are tools of the trade for verifying the authenticity of a handbag. Tapia authenticates with Entrupy, a piece of software that compares photos taken with a micro-lens gadget to those in a database. Laura Chavez-Sainz, senior authentication manager of Fashionphile, a luxury-resale site, said she likes to use a jeweler’s loupe, flashlight and dental tools."

"'Like Husein, [Michelle ] Peeters also entered the authentication world as a reseller in 2009. Touching and seeing bags helped her become well versed in Chanel’s language. She co-moderates a Chanel Facebook group with over 130,000 members and began authenticating Chanel bags in 2020. She charges $35 for certificates."

"Chanel is cracking down on the secondary market, alleging that vintage dealers are engaging in counterfeit sales. In February, Chanel won a lawsuit against the website and New York boutique What Goes Around Comes Around; a jury ruled Chanel was owed $4 million in damages related to counterfeiting."

"Megs Mahoney Dusil, co-founder of the handbag site PurseBlog, said she’s noticed more Chanel fans gravitating to smaller, independent resellers, making services from Husein or Peeters more in demand. Shoppers feverishly swap stories on blogs and social media about counterfeits sold on big sites." 

"Authenticators are also on the lookout for return fraud. There are some telltale signs, like sellers listing multiples of the same bag or items with tags. When Fashionphile noticed that a seller was doing this with Gucci bags, it flagged the seller internally and rejected her sales, said Chavez-Sainz. Fashionphile also contacted the store whose receipts the seller had shared as proof of authenticity. The store said it was building a case against the seller because she was bait-and-switching the bags."

Related posts:

Fake Books Are a Real Trend (and people pay money for them) (2023)

Job Listings Abound, but Many Are Fake (2023)

You can hire someone to do the job interview for you (2022)

How to Spot Fake Reviews and Shady Ratings on Amazon (2022)

Making Money Off of Fake ATM Receipts (2021)

People are hiring out their faces to become deepfake-style marketing clones (2021)

Why would men bring fake cell phones to bars? (2021)

Are sellers paying Amazon customers to delete negative reviews? (2021)

Fake Reviews and Inflated Ratings Are Still a Problem for Amazon  (2021)

Photos show China's most surreal tourist spot— a fake Instagram-worthy town full of pretend farmers and phony fishermen (2021)

The Myth of Authenticity Or The Story Behind Products (2010)

Fake Authenticity (2011)

Students: Make a mistake on purpose, its good for you! (2007)

A fake job reference can be just a few clicks away (2015)

Fake Economist Fools Portugal (2013)

Slave Redemption in Sudan (2007) (Fake slaves are sold to those who buy slaves and then give them their freedom)

Can A Product Work Just Because It's Expensive? (2008) (fake medicine)

If It Pays To Have Friends, Can You Pay To Have Friends? (2013) (you can hire fake boyfriends)

Study: Half of American Doctors Give Patients Placebos Without Telling Them (2008)

Saudis grapple with fake street sweepers (2017)

Rent a White Guy: Confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing (2010) (by Mitch Moxley in The Atlantic Monthly, excerpts below)

Can adding a phantom third story to their homes help families find a wife for their son? (2018)

Why do employers pay extra money to people who study a bunch of subjects in college that they don’t actually need you to know? Signaling (2018)

Mexicans buy fake cellphones to hand over in muggings (2019)
 
Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Virtue, Thorstein Veblen (and Adam Smith, too!) (2007)

How does a company selling used luxury goods spot fakes? (signalling and conspicuous consumption) (2019).

Why do stores sometimes pay people to be fake shoppers?  (2019)

What if companies can't afford real models for their ads? Use AI generated fake pictures  (2020)

Excerpts from "Rent a White Guy"

"NOT LONG AGO I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.

“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”

I was.

And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: “Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.”

Six of us met at the Beijing airport, where Jake briefed us on the details. We were supposedly representing a California-based company that was building a facility in Dongying. Our responsibilities would include making daily trips to the construction site, attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and hobnobbing. During the ceremony, one of us would have to give a speech as the company’s director. That duty fell to my friend Ernie, who, in his late 30s, was the oldest of our group. His business cards had already been made."

"For the next few days, we sat in the office swatting flies and reading magazines, purportedly high-level employees of a U.S. company that, I later discovered, didn’t really exist."