Reuters reports that Williams-Sonoma recently sued "dupe" producer, Quince, for an unfair comparison. Dupe producers include online retailers who make copies of popular high-end items that often include high margins.
"By brand-washing its ads, Quince creates the false impression that consumers will receive comparable quality and design, when in reality they may be purchasing unrelated items of often inferior quality," Williams-Sonoma said.
Quince seems to have struck a nerve. It mostly sells apparel targeted to women aged 25 to 55 and women’s business accounts for about 80% of its sales and uses data analytics to determine what is hot at other retailers. It then scours the customer reviews for areas of improvements. “Things like, where are the pockets, what zipper, quality of the hardware,” And, of course, it is implementing AI to speed up production of its dupes. Fashion is especially vulnerable to this sort of arbitrage because the IP protections generally do not apply.
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