I live in one of the knock-off capitals of Costa Rica. Walking around town today I saw three different men, in three different parts of town, all wearing the same t-shirts with variations on the Levi Dockers logo. None resembled the actual Dockers logo.
At the largest Ropa Americana in the city center, I saw a variety of nice quality t-shirts with logos from Nike to Adidas to Lacoste to Calvin Klein. The prices are the giveaway. Brand name designer tees for three thousand colons.
I bought several a while back. They are of decent quality and good for exercise or lounging around the house. Every t-shirt has an imperfection that caused it to fail inspection for sale in the US and Euro markets.
Most of mine have the same error – a tiny emblem of the logo, that is supposed to be on the sleeve of the shirt, is instead in some weird location elsewhere, such as the back or lower front area. Those are the ones that don’t make it to the intended market and are instead sent to the t-shirt dumping grounds down this way. The flawed shirt that is otherwise of quality is one of the types of knock-offs found here.
Another type is the blatant counterfeit. Years ago, when a designer named Tommy Hilfiger was big, we were inundated with products bearing the name Tonny Hilifer. There were shirts, shorts and of course, the unforgettable Tonny Jeans.
Not Tommy but Tonny. Same logo, same colors and design, different name. There were no meaningful copyright laws here, so it was not unusual to see.
