After Being Italian Company'S Shanzhai, Supreme Founder Made His First Voice.

In March this year, the Italy police released a video in a Golden Brand operation.

In the video, police found a large number of clothing products wrapped in clean plastic bags in a warehouse filled with large cartons.

Most of them, such as T-shirts, sandals or even skateboards, are playing the "Supreme" square Logo.

But of course, none of them was made by the famous New York Street clothing brand.

The Italy authorities said in a statement that they seized 700 thousand pieces of counterfeit goods worth 10 million euros in the "tide card fraud" operation and considered it a "hidden new threat".

From T-shirts to lighters, Supreme's counterfeit goods are numerous and everywhere in the world, whether it is Canal Street in New York or the Marrakech fair in Morocco.

The reason why such counterfeiting market is so prosperous is partly because the genuine Supreme has strict control over the distribution of its products only through the sale of 11 Direct stores, brand official websites and boutique retail stores Dover Street Market, and is usually sold in small quantities in the form of "Drop" (drip irrigation type) on a weekly basis.

This means that demand is often far more than supply, and most commodities can be sold out online in less than 10 seconds.

This man-made scarcity is also a key part of Supreme's success story.

In the past 25 years, Supreme has grown from a small store in New York's Lafayette Street (actually a local skateboard Paradise) to a $1 billion Street dress magnate.

In 2017, the brand attracted private equity fund Carlyle Group to invest.

Carlyle Group spent about $500 million to buy about 50% of Supreme shares.

Originally inspired by Barbara Kruger's signature style Supreme Red Square Logo, Barbara Kruger's inspiration has now become a world-renowned brand logo.

However, Supreme's global reputation and product scarcity also make itself a target for speculators.

The most difficult part is the International Brand Firm (IBF) from Italy and up to 8 subsidiaries. Some consumers are familiar with the brand names of "Italy Supreme" (Supreme Italia) and "Spanish Supreme" (Supreme Supreme), Brand.

IBF is brazenly founded in Italy, Spain and China. It seems to be a real Supreme brand store and website. In Spain, Portugal, Israel and other more than 50 countries, it has submitted a trademark registration application using the word "Supreme" and its brand identity.

IBF in many countries court directly challenged the brand Supreme, and promised to open 70 more stores to sell products similar to Supreme.

In short, IBF seems to have done business quickly in the so-called "legal counterfeit" way.

According to Susan Scafidi, founder and director of the fashion Law Institute at Fordham University School of law, this kind of merchandise has just entered the legal loopholes of trademark rush registration.

Even before being eyed by IBF, the issue of registered trademark has always been a headache for Supreme. Some courts think that its brand name is too general and lacks description.

In 2017, according to the public declaration document of some of its businesses, IBF created a revenue of 514 thousand pounds.

But as IBF said, the new distribution channel will continue to develop in the future, and this revenue figure will also achieve substantial growth.

IBF has become the headline news of international media, and it must be traced back to last December when Samsung held a news release in China and announced that it would cooperate with Supreme.

At the event, the Korean giant invited a figure who they thought was the CEO of Supreme.

The character, who stood with Feng En, the digital marketing director of Samsung's Greater China at the same time, announced at the scene: "today is the first appearance of Supreme in the Chinese market."

He also promised to open several stores in China, including a 7 storey flagship store in Beijing.

However, after receiving a strong attack from the Internet, Samsung seemed to realize that it had not done business with the brand Supreme of New York. Instead, it had dealings with the "Italy Supreme" under the control of IBF. Finally, Samsung announced that it would terminate the cooperation between the two sides.

Also in March, Huaihai Road, one of the busiest commercial blocks in Shanghai, opened a store called Supreme, attracting many curious consumers to queue up to see if the world's most popular street trend card finally came to China.

In this store, customers can buy T-Shirts and hooded sweater with large Logo and "Supreme Spain" logo, priced between 599 yuan and 1599 yuan, and skateboards, shoulder bags and other accessories.

"I don't think there will be other companies like us and have to deal with such a thing," Supreme founder James Jebbia said in a rare interview. "The company's evils have risen to a whole new level. They are all liars and counterfeit goods.

They have also convinced Samsung, one of the largest companies in the world, to believe that.

"If the new generation of consumers think this is legal, it's too sad."

"People should understand that the idea of" legal fake "is ridiculous," he said. "If the new generation of consumers think this is legal, it's too sad," Jebbia added. "IBF's ability to disseminate false information is compared with Fake News, which is now flooding the Internet world.

"We usually do not have a lot of media publicity, we can be quiet.

These guys are taking full advantage of this.

At that time, we basically did not have time to make such a long statement or fight back to such a large amount of false information as other people did.

Some people blame the phenomenon of Supreme being counterfeited, because the brand did not rush to register trademarks in the global market in front of the "cottage brand" (trademark is usually attributable to the first registered, rather than the first enterprise), while the speed of Supreme brand growth has far exceeded the speed of team specialization.

Others believe that Supreme has no choice but to accept the status quo.

But things are actually much more complicated.

For more than two years, the Supreme brand has been running a lawsuit in different courts and counterfeiters, hoping to win trademark registration in China and the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union, and no other company has seized any relevant rights in the jurisdiction of the two countries (Supreme is currently registered in several European countries, some Asian countries and regions, and the United States).

Specifically, Supreme applied for trademark registration in China five years ago, but it is still under examination and approval.

Supreme Italia and its company IBF also submitted their applications as early as March 2018, and are still waiting.

For Supreme, this is not only a very big headache, but also a high cost to solve.

Although Supreme is temporarily unable to estimate losses in US dollars, it certainly includes sales losses, legal fees and brand reputation.

All this happened just after Supreme's harvest of Carlyle's investment. The market thinks that the brand is about to expand to the world's largest fashion market. China, like Carlyle, usually does not hold assets indefinitely, but aims to expand investment in a short time or resell shares in 5 to 7 years.

In 2017, when Carlyle reached a deal, Supreme hired their first general corporate counsel.

This is part of the company's overall professionalization process. In addition, they have taken away the former chief marketing officer of CONVERSE (Converse) and hired the Boston Consulting Group (Boston Consulting Group) to evaluate its supply chain.

Darci J. Bailey, general counsel of Supreme, is currently supervising the "multi pronged" trademark registration and anti-counterfeiting strategy of the company.

Supreme said they have submitted more than 350 trademark applications worldwide.

"There will be no jurisdiction in the world, and it will be considered legal (IBF) to do it now," Bailey said. "As long as we can start shutting down these stores and shop ourselves, we will only become more successful."

She also said that in addition to copying Supreme products, opening fake brand stores and posing as Supreme executives, IBF also duplicated Supreme invoices, shopping bags and brand image labels.

Bailey: "they are really catching up with our DNA."

She also added that IBF also asked them to "sell us the trademarks that belong to us," but Supreme will not consider this way to solve the trademark problem.

She said, "we will not stop and relax."

Now, Supreme has made the biggest progress in Italy, the home country of IBF. The courts in Italy and San Marino prohibit IBF and its Affiliated Companies from using Supreme trademarks. The police have seized more than 100 Supreme counterfeit goods.

IBF and its legal team have repeatedly declined BoF's request for comment.

Supreme's lawyer team produced this illustration showing that Supreme Spain's brand identification (right) will easily be confused with Supreme's brand logo (left).

Over the years, from Nike to CHANEL, many brands are facing the problem of being counterfeited or stolen trademarks.

But the strategy adopted by IBF has raised the complexity of the problem to a higher level.

"I have never seen any brand, and asked a fake CEO to attend a press conference," Bailey said. "This market is too chaotic."

This confusion is particularly evident in the Spanish and Chinese markets. IBF has shops in Spain and China, but the real Supreme is not.

Supreme, headquartered in New York, has been very cautious about brand expansion. This is in line with its reputation for cultivating street culture and is an important element to attract consumers.

But Supreme's customer base is also expanding. It is no longer the only long-term fans of Supreme who are eager to study message boards and know how to buy products. If new customers are deceived by companies like IBF, the real Supreme will only become a victim quietly.

Or, if the "copycat brand" purposely imitate the classic Supreme products (such as T-shirts and hoodies with Supreme brand logo), consumers who are not yet familiar with brand names are hard to see the fundamental difference from genuine products.

Bailey said, "I think it's not difficult for us to communicate with our core customers. They know how to get real information, but if we want to expand elsewhere, we will have a hard time."

Street dress and youth culture platform Highsnobiety have great influence, its founder and chief executive officer David Fisher believes that those who only regard Supreme as a popular weathervane in recent years know little about the history of the brand, so it is difficult to tell the true and false products.

"They may only buy a T-shirt or Hoodie," he said. "I'm sure thousands of people will remain at the level of brand awareness."

At present, the Supreme website provides business services to customers in the United States, Britain, Japan, most of Europe and Russia and Iceland. If you are visiting the Supreme website for the first time, you can check the location of the retail outlets under the brand line, but you will not know that the new products will release such specific information every Thursday.

You wouldn't know that now, in order to make the queues of the long queues outside the shop more orderly, Supreme is now distributing the shoppers' random 15 minutes in the way of "SMS".

The Supreme website has not warned consumers about the problem of counterfeit products that are currently rampant.

Although Supreme intends to lay more retail outlets in the new market, in fact, most consumers can't buy products, including the classic brand with Logo, especially in places such as Spain, Italy and China, where Supreme has not yet opened. IBF has taken root.

According to British public documents, in the 13 months ended January 2018, sales of Supreme in the UK, Europe and other regions outside the US market amounted to 63 million, an increase of 156% over the same period last year.

"These fake Supreme (the emergence of commodities) has made the brand Supreme less popular than before." Beltrand Montauzon, a Madrid university student who buys Supreme genuine goods in a second-hand market when traveling abroad, said, "for those who can't buy the authentic products, (Spain Supreme) provides a more convenient purchase channel, and some of these people may have accounted for 99%."

Supreme is considered to be considering opening new stores in Milan, Berlin and San Francisco, but Jebbia refused to confirm the authenticity of such a plan.

There are 2 brands of existing stores in New York (the first one in Lafayette's store is now closed for decoration, the other is in the vicinity of poly Street), 1 are in Losangeles, 1 are in London, 1 are in Paris, and 6 are in Japan.

"We certainly will not say," these counterfeiters have opened shop in Spain. We have opened shop in the past, "he said." we will consider it, but we will not be very anxious to do it. "

It may take years to find the right place to open a shop. "

Supreme's documents submitted to the EU Intellectual Property Office showed that Supremez's online sales in the Spanish market were 1 million 800 thousand pounds between 2013 and 2018.

"We certainly will not say," these counterfeiters set up shop in Spain. Let's go shop in the past. "

In November 2015, the Michele di Pierro of the Bartha people in Italy founded IBF company, which previously belonged to Grew Sport, a clothing dealer.

Di Pierro's personal profile in twitter (Twitter) reads, "everyone on earth turns around as usual." in Pinterest's profile, "desire for innovation" is written.

IBF claims to have registered "Supreme" trademark in Italy before New York Supreme.

But the fact is that IBF submitted its application in November 2015, a month later than the real Supreme.

Later, in January 2016, Italy Supreme was considered to be the first appearance during the Pitti Uomo Florence men's Wear Exhibition. Exhibitors said Italy Supreme had set up a booth at the exhibition.

The real Supreme began to fight back in July 2016 and filed a lawsuit in several courts in Italy.

In 2017, after a series of civil and criminal proceedings, Italy and San Marino court announced the prohibition of IBF's use of the name "Supreme" or "Supreme Italia". In the same year, the police began to seal off counterfeit products.

To deal with this, IBF began to pfer its business to Spain, and in April 2017, it registered the "Supreme" brand, five days earlier than the real Supreme.

IBF also opened stores in Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Ibiza and fumtra the following summer.

Supreme also submitted an application to the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union, and the "Supreme" trademark is still in the registration process.

In 2017 and 2018, IBF submitted two brand records to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

At the same time, IBF also got a first in the media.

In July 2018, although IBF was still prohibited from producing and selling any product with the "Supreme" logo, a court in Trani had thawed the IBF website.

In October 2018, the EU Intellectual Property Office said it would continue to consider Supreme's trademark application. IBF also questioned this.

These two developments of IBF are mainly attributed to the local street wear blog in Italy, especially NSS and TheStreetwearMagazine.com, and Bailey pointed out that the latter was published by IBF.

But Supreme did not shrink back, but instead focused on getting approval from the European Union.

Bailey said, "we are confident that we will finally achieve the registered trademark in the EU."

At the same time, Supreme has completed a number of trademark registration in Spain. IBF objected, but before the final ruling of the EU Intellectual Property Office, the relevant procedures have also been suspended.

Supreme also tried to get the Spanish court to close the IBF store, but the relevant government departments also refused the request, and Supreme was also appealing.

Bailey said that Supreme still stuck to the defensive battle in the Chinese market, and said that Supreme worked closely with the government departments. Now it is only a few months from the completion of the trademark registration, which is 4 years since the first application of the brand.

"Next, Supreme is likely to create difficulties for Italy Supreme and win the battle," Scafidi said. "Trademarks exist all over the world, and customs can not intercept a trademark across the border. It is not easy to protect a trademark globally."

"We are making every effort to stop (IBF), and I think we will gain the advantage," Jebbia said.

He said that although the complexity of the future brand operation will only increase, the brand is still trying to speed up its operation. He will still keep the principle of the company's establishment: "I am not different from what I thought today 20 years ago.

We still need to make outstanding products, hope people will like it, and products will sell well.

All we can do is follow our instincts. "