Wanna Buy A Watch?

Shady experiences are awesome.  They make for great stories.  Gather round, children, and let me tell you a tale.

Even those of you who haven’t been to Hong Kong are probably aware of the volume of counterfeit goods that flows in and out of the city.  Well, there are a few markets where it is easiest to find them.  But there’s a trick to it that we figured out shortly after arriving.

Often the vendors in the market will have the “Hong Kong Brand” stuff out in plain view.  These are things like bags and watches that couldn’t possibly be taken for counterfeit.  Think bags vaguely resembling Louis Vuitton, but instead of the trademarked LV logo, the Hong Kong stuff has a V and an upside down V, and they’re usually made from super cheap materials.  So think cheap knock offs rather than forgeries.

But often, while you’re browsing the fake-fake stuff, a vendor or someone nearby will come up and show you an index card with recognizable brands on it, and ask “You want copy?”  Its at this point that you realize you can have a look at some real-fake watches or handbags.  That gets the blood flowing a bit.

Some of the real-fake vendors will try to negotiate a price before the goods are even presented.  Just half the price of anything they ask for and stick to it until they agree to show you whatever it is you’re after.  Often you can pull up a photo on your phone and they will tell you straight away whether or not they have the item you’re after.  Once you find someone who’s got something that interests you, that’s when the fun starts.

At this point, I’ll cease with the generalities and parlay my actual experience:  We were strolling down the street (yes, I stroll, get over it) near, but not in, one of the markets.   And were constantly getting harangued by guys who kept sidling up next to us as we walked and asking “Copywatch? Copyhandbag? Copywatch? Rolexomegarolex?” in really hushed but urgent tones.  All of these guys insisted that I was their friend, but not one of them opened a trench coat to reveal a collection of watches, which kind of disappointed me.  I guess it was too hot for trench coats.  So with my curiosity sufficiently piqued, I finally agreed to check some out.  I figured what’s the harm in looking.  I’ll only get in trouble if I buy one, right?

So the guy immediately took off in a different direction, keeping his sense of urgency and insisting that we follow him.  So we settled into a brisk walk about 10 paces back from the guy, crossed a street and went down a few more blocks.  I should mention, at this point, a little about our guide/dealer/purveyor of illicit materials.  I have no idea what his name was, but he was bald and of vaguely Middle Eastern descent (as were most of the persistent hawkers) and to complete the seller-of-illegal-merchandise cliché, he had a lazy eye.  I sincerely PROMISE that I’m not making this up.  I’m not that creative.

So after a few blocks of power walking, we were led into a hallway, somewhat innocuously guarded by two other vaguely Middle Eastern looking men.  I presume they were there with cell phones to warn of any raids by the fuzz.  With a slight nod, we pushed past them and down the somewhat cramped hallway until we came to an elevator.  Our guide invited us in to the tiny elevator and we clambered in beside him, and I shit you not, a woman with a Rubbermaid box packed with dead chickens.  At this point, I’m thinking to myself that it can’t get any more ridiculous or awesome.  So up we go in this stuffy elevator, flashes of bird flu news reports buzzing through my brain.  Why the hell not, we’ve come this far.

We step out onto a cramped, but still somehow exterior, hallway somewhere deep in the bowels of a Hong Kong city block.  We come to a halt outside a metal gated door with a sign over it.  The sign reads “ABC International, Inc.”  Sketchy?  Yup.  But I have no desire to get back in the elevator with that old woman and her recently deceased fowl.  So we sit and look around as our guide makes a phone call, presumably to someone on the other side of the door.  After discussing the encounter later, I can proudly confirm that both of us were looking around for exits, should anything go south.  However I can’t remember seeing any, so fat lot of good it did us.

The door of ABC International, Inc. is opened by substantially younger, but equally Middle Eastern kid who invites us all in.  We’re led into a pretty tattered looking ex-apartment with some really worn furniture and a few broken fans buzzing in random places.  One room appears to be the office, while the other two rooms contain a table and a couch or some chairs.  The second room is occupied by a British expat in his late 50s buying at least 2 watches from yet another Middle Eastern guy.  We are led into the first room and invited to sit on the couch and leaf through what looks like a watch catalogue.

Everything is totally pleasant at this point, but we are pretty nervous about being so far off the street and so outnumbered by a group of guys conducting an obviously illegal operation, and on their own turf.  After spending some time leafing through the brand pages (Rolex, Omega, Breitling, IWC, Tag Heuer, Movado… you name it they have it)  we settle on a few that we’d like to see.

While the kid who answered the door leaves the apartment entirely to go fetch the watches we requested, we’re forced into the idle chit chat that people meeting in a foreign city are forced into the world over.  “Where are you from, what are you doing here, how do you like it, what do you do back home” etc…  Eventually the kid returns with a bag full of poorly packaged watch copies and we start to examine them.

Upon first inspection, the watches are impeccable.  They look exactly like they came from the real manufacturer.  And if we were looking at purses, that would probably be the case.  The people who work at the Louis Vuitton, Prada and other factories are paid to smuggle out the components of the bags piecemeal to be reassembled in another factory  and then sent out to Hong Kong to be sold at a fraction of the price.  But the watches only have to look like the real thing skin deep.  And that’s where it all breaks down for the watches.

After looking a little closer, you find that the weight is definitely wrong.  Every last one of them is far too light to be authentic.  Couple that with the buttons on the side of the watch not linking directly to the dials on the face, and you realize that while it may look real, its not really even close.  When you press those buttons, the hands on the date dial advance once with each click.  Same goes for the day dial.  But unless you’re gonna let a watch snob manhandle your timepiece, it’ll pass for whatever company is written on the face.

After we’d picked out a watch each, the guy with the lazy eye tells us his asking price.  It’s somewhere between “Hell no!” and “Are you kidding me?”  And the fun part begins.  We countered with somewhere around 20% of his initial ask.  Its still a fair price for the watch, but obviously cutting into the dude’s margins a little bit.  We go back and forth for a while, but its kind of hard to walk away from a sale when you’re inside of a locked apartment in a random Hong Kong high rise.  We eventually settled somewhere around 50% of his initial ask, as these negotiations tend to go, and we each walked away with a fancy new fake watch.

I’m happy with what I’ve got, it won’t pass muster with an enthusiast, but a passing glance will be moderately impressive.  It’s a nice enough watch.  I may have over-paid for the caliber of the timepiece I got, but I’d like to think that the “extra” is the price I paid for the experience.

Either way, I highly recommend the shady experience of buying illicit counterfeit goods in a foreign country from a dude with a lazy eye.  If I had his business card, I’d give it to you.  But I don’t.  Just go roam the markets of Hong Kong look for the dude with the lazy eye, I promise it's worth it.