Fakes are costing Europe’s fashion industry

It’s exceedingly easy to buy knock-offs of European luxury brands. They’re so common people hardly pay them any mind. But their prevalence is actually a major problem, and it’s undermining Europe’s fashion industry.Counterfeits cost European brands the value of 9.7% of their total sales every year, or a staggering €26.3 billion ($28.7 billion), according to a new report by Europe’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). Those lost sales ripple outward, resulting in approximately 363,000 lost jobs across the manufacturing, retail, and wholesale sectors of Europe’s fashion industries.

http://qz.com/460932/fakes-are-costing-europes-fashion-industry-10-of-its-sales-and-thousands-of-jobs/