Ask HN: What you think of my startup idea? Knockoffs & China: huge problem
The concept behind the idea, is well grounded. I will give you an example : I have been selling watches on ebay lately, and i noticed that at least 95% of the questions i received from people were: "Is this a original watch? or a knockoff copy?", but this phenomena extends to other products as well, such as perfumes (which are more dangerous when fake because they can contain harmful chemicals impurities), bags, handbadgs, and a ton more kind of goods. I was thinking to the relation this service could have with china, and its economic rise, and the fact that here fakes are almost legal. Chinese government made promises to the international community when joined WTO in 2001. They told they were going to make counterfeits good illegal. Some days ago i've asked a a smart woman who was selling counterfeit watches in Shenzhen LuoHu Commercial City :
Alberto Armandi: hey do u think china will ever put a stop on this ? Chinese Woman : do u really want to know the truth ? Alberto Armandi : yes, of course. Chinese Woman : i think China will never do that because we , and our economy depends heavily on that.
So given the Chinese economy growth, and the seriously diffused "Chinese entrepreneurial mindset make money fast with counterfeit goods", i think ebay will have to cope with a lot of those nasty stuffs in the future. This gives room for this kind of service i think. I already bought domains : spotebayfake.com and fake-howto.com. Both are related to keywords such as "how to spot fake", keywords that outputs some nice results if you look at volume of searches on google monthly.
It would not be billed with a monthly or whatever, subscription model, instead the customer would pay only for the item(s) he's interested to check, and when he or she wants, the model i am thinking is "pay per consumption". I was thinking to SMS because transactions will be vary small. I have to read how Paypal deals with micropayments. Regarding how the service would work, let's say you find a watch on ebay, like a Rolex watch, and you want to know it is fake or not, you come to our site and submit the request for investigation, i will check the object ( i know something about how to spot counterfeits and replicas, i am in china since 2005 ), and i will provide you an aswer, in terms of probability. All the process would not take more than 5 minutes, i do not think that real-time informations matter that much in this specifical case. You will then pay let's say 1 USD to me for the information, and go on with your purchase or discard it.
here is a link to get a, not very precise, big picture of the market :
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=how+to+spot+fake&aq=f&aqi=g10&oq=
There are also some forums on ebay :
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=ebay+forums+how+to+spot+fake&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
What do you think ? is it worth implementing it ? let me know your feedback. it is precious.
Thanks so much in advance. Alberto Armandi