24 ms·

My service to check whether an item is counterfeit or not

169 points by chdaniel 5y ago

whalesalad 5y ago
I still don’t really understand what this person is selling.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  "that’s what we do — we tell people whether their item is fake or authentic. Not authentication as in login authentication" Should've made it clearer - a mistake on my part. So you know how there are fakes of Rolex, Nike, Louis Vuitton etc — some are scarily close. We make guides on how to tell the fake from the real item, with the best fakes. We teach people (for free) But we also have a service, if they want us to check it for them
  - wheybags 5y ago
    Your blog post is a bit incomprehensible tbh. I did get it eventually, but I got a good bit into the article before I did. #1 issue for me is you say "writing order notes", and that doesn't make sense at all to me. "verifying whether products are fake or legitimate" would be a much better article title.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mtalantikite 5y ago
      Yeah I had no idea what this was about and had to Google “Order Notes”, which also didn’t turn up much. Bailed on the article pretty quickly since I didn’t understand anything, assuming I wasn’t the target audience.
      - chdaniel 5y ago
        Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message Think: "your order has been shipped" But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong
        mtalantikite 5y ago
        I think the word “authenticity” is something that expresses what it is your team does that more people would understand. I think most people know what a certificate of authenticity is and it sounds like your service provides a digital, saas version of that.
    - the_local_host 5y ago
      Even after understanding that the service is about distinguishing fake from legitimate products, I still don't know what an "order note" is.
      - chdaniel 5y ago
        Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message Think: "your order has been shipped" But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong
        bobsmooth 5y ago
        Keep in mind the usual type of person that is here on HN. I was able to gleam what you are doing and how you are doing it the moment I started reading the first order note.
    - chdaniel 5y ago
      Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message Think: "your order has been shipped" But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong
  - leeoniya 5y ago
    i've always wondered how this works, on antiques roadshow, etc. can't the manufacturers of the fakes simply take the course, learn the subtlties, and make better fakes?
    - dv_dt 5y ago
      I would like to think that as the quality of the work improves, it makes more and more sense to establish your own brand instead of duplicating the work of another entity. Of course it all breaks down if the faked brands aren’t making all that high a quality items.
    - 83457 5y ago
      Diminishing returns on perfection.
    - dpritchett 5y ago
      Presumably the perfect fake often costs too much to reliably manufacture. Think of the randomness inherent in the microscopically unique features of the original and how you might emulate them reliably with a margin that still lets you compete with its luxury pricing.
  - NationalPark 5y ago
    Have you noticed anyone using your guides to make fakes targeted to fool your authentication? Do you keep a few clues secret just to be sure?
    - chdaniel 5y ago
      > Do you keep a few clues secret just to be sure? Not really. We give away everything we have. As others've mentioned, fake manufcaturers get diminishing results by spending the extra $$$ to go from 95% to 99% Whe anyway, as part of 95%, the exterior side is 99% done. The last 5 bits are interior details unseen by anyone but the wearer All they care about is selling more products to fake wearers. And fake wearers care only about exterior
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    My understanding is that some of the "fakes" for high-end fashion are due to multiple factories building products to the same specifications, but only the first one to deliver them gets paid. The others are still built to the exact same specification, and are functionally identical except for the logo. Is my understanding correct, and does your service distinguish between "fake because it isn't officially blessed" and "fake because it uses inferior construction"? I tend to see the following categories overall, and while I'm not at all interested in the label/authenticity side of things, I have a difficult time identifying well-constructed or poorly-constructed household items. * Real label, high quality. Good to have, but much more expensive than I can usually justify. * Real label, low quality. Typically when a brand has just been bought out, and is trying to cash in on a reputation while using cheaper construction. * Fake/knock-off label, low quality. Trash, masquerading as a good deal. * Fake/knock-off label, high quality. The absolute sweet spot, getting the higher quality build without needing to pay for the social "authenticity" of the brand label.
    - hattmall 5y ago
      It's more like this: A company contracts with a factory, they want 100,000 pair of shoes. The factory however is going to make a million or keep making it until there's no one to buy it. These are called "ghost shift" goods which is the bulk of counterfeits. If the product is not a limited run and still being produced the quality will be exactly the same. If the original manufacturer is no longer purchasing then the factory will very likely use cheaper materials. The brands know this happens, they really don't care, what the brand will do is send a couple workers to the factory to be QC buyers. The factory makes a million items, and the QC workers will go through and pick out the best 100,000. The other 900,000 will be sold in the the developing world. The brand will typically take the 100,000 then send them to the US or Europe to another factory where they will have tags sewn in them and possibly some more labels or insignia attached. If it's a particularly premium brand they will add some secret identifying marks that even this LegitCheck website is unlikely to know about. Those secret marks are typically for extremely high end goods that have lifetime warranties etc and the only time it's checked is if you send it in for warranty work. A LOT of these goods are completely indistinguishable and will even make it into the retail supply chain. Particularly at stores like TJ Maxx, Bealls, and Ross et al. Though they go through a series of distributors that will basically only exist for a few shipments to avoid liability after some previous large lawsuits. Ross and Burlington will also knowingly buy the ghost shift goods but keep them unbranded and sell them in stores with no labeling at all. You can find these clothes and they will have a tag sewn into that has a lot number. You can take that lot number and put it in to import manifest search engines and find out what brand was also importing them. This would be where you find your coveted Fake / Knock off high quality with the best success.
  - roofwellhams 5y ago
    But maybe you could explain the whole use case. I doubt sometime that bought a pair of air max will pay you 60usd to say it's not authentic. Then I guess they will copy your message to their paypal claim? PayPal sides with buyer like 90% of the time anyway..
- tyingq 5y ago
  See https://legitcheck.app/ https://legitcheck.app/ The headline doesn't help much. They are doing more than "writing order notes". It's a service to check whether an item (watch, purse, designer clothing, etc) is counterfeit, divided into 3 use cases: -You’re about to buy an item and you’re not sure whether it’s authentic or not -You’ve already bought an item and you don’t know if you’ve been scammed -You’ve been scammed and you want to get your money back
  - chdaniel 5y ago
    Yep, correct! We do more than writing order notes in the sense that we now have: * A Price Comparison tool * A SaaS for resellers (that sucks. we need to fix it) * A lot of words written on public guides * We just started a video library But ultimately, the bread and butter is our service. And the workflow is: * People place an order * We handle it by replying to them via order notes
    - lazide 5y ago
      No offense, but you seriously need someone with some business and sales expertise to help you. While that may be your workflow, that is almost never what any customer cares about or makes decisions based on. What they care about is how you are going to help THEM, by how much, and at what cost. The actual workflow is rarely even secondary, it usually the last step/usage thing post-buy decision for the vast majority of people.
      - paulpauper 5y ago
        You do realize he is making almost $200k profit. I think he knows what he is doing
        onlyfortoday2 5y ago
        exactly LOL HN
        lazide 5y ago
- ww520 5y ago
  They are the product authenticators. You know people bring their antiques to the antique TV show and ask the antique authenticators to verify the authenticity of the items. It’s the same kind of service. Kudos for them to make a business out of it.
- koreanguy 5y ago
  its a service, think of it like this, you and your friend go into a shoe shop and you want tell your friend do you know if this is fake or real ? and your friend answers .
redwood 5y ago
Why would you tell the world your business model?
- chdaniel 5y ago
  Because I don't think the business model is something worth guarding. Or that if somebody else replicates it (they have), we have a lot to lose. I do believe in moats, and I'm trying my best to see what moats I can build on top of what we have to 'protect' the business
  - vishnugupta 5y ago
    I think you left out a crucial part. How did you develop the skill to spot a fake? The encyclopedic domain knowledge that you possess is the anchor of your business and the value you being to the table. How did you gain that knowledge? Super cool! Thanks for sharing this though.
    - chdaniel 5y ago
      Honestly I just 'hamstered' all the material I could on the most popular items. In the beginning, in those first 10 guides I mention in the article, I just curated all the splintered bits of info* from the internet into one mega-guide, and added what I found after analysing fakes * bits of info from as little as a forum thread comment, lost on page 48, to a full-blown attmept at a guide that, to me, wasn't exhaustive enough In time, it refined to partly what I did in the beginning, and partly our own research which got better with exercise Package all that info in a free, properly formatted guide (with some imperfect English, I admit, as we're not natives), and that gives us the traffic figures I screenshot'd
- tyingq 5y ago
  The moat seems to be the actual expertise. See one of their guides: https://legitcheck.app/guides/fear-of-god/fake-vs-real-nike-fog-1/ https://legitcheck.app/guides/fear-of-god/fake-vs-real-nike-...
magneticnorth 5y ago
This is great, very impressive that they've had such success with a scrappy 2-person business. The hard part of success like this often seems to be finding an under-served niche where you have, or can easily gain, some expertise. If anyone knows of a guide or has advice for how to solve that problem, I'd love to hear it.
deleted 5y ago
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Codesleuth 5y ago
So people are just paying for your opinion or do you have some sort of credentials? I find it ironic that you are selling authenticity checks, and yet I can't tell if the check is authentic.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  We do. B2B Partnerships, some big companies trust us, and ultimately, I thought of the academic world so as to prove the expertise (I'm the complete opposite of an academic) * We write public guides (see: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/) - we have about 1m words written on the subject * People are free to contest it. If we're wrong, we'll correct * The more other people link to our guides, the more we get... credentials, I guess?
  - amelius 5y ago
    > some big companies trust us Can't the infosec community define and setup a "trust" network? E.g. everybody trusts a number of people, and trust can be transitive (perhaps with weights). Hence when I read some review the network can compute a trustworthiness value. If the product turns out to be fake, the system can do a backprop and adjust weights. Etc. etc.
    - chdaniel 5y ago
      You're defo smart with what you're saying But the challenge would then be to explain something like this to the average non-techie who's just buying some expensive sneakers because they're cool
    - iandinwoodie 5y ago
      Yeah, basically a chain of trust certificates like outlined by X.509. I think managing the chain of trust would be a pretty involved process.
  - Codesleuth 5y ago
    I really admire your approach to this. Making guides should not only improve your credibility but also overall help reduce the market of fakes by reducing demand.
deleted 5y ago
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mrtksn 5y ago
I don't know why this is flagged. It's a legit entrepreneurial story(We can't know if the the claims are true but the story is a legit one). At first it was hard to understand what it is all about and sounded like get rich quick scheme but essentially it is about someone building a service to check the authenticity of physical items.
- matsemann 5y ago
  I actually found the writeup refreshing in acknowledging the luck (but also the hard work) behind the success. Also unsure why it's flagged when I came back to comment after reading. The vouch button is also missing for me (or is that only for dead stuff? Not sure what the difference is)
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    Yep, I like the writing style too. Upvoted but don't know if this will help.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      It takes a lot of upvotes to cancel out flags, unfortunately.
  - chdaniel 5y ago
    Hey thanks! I was curious to see if handling the topic of luck did vibe with people. Thanks for taking the time to mention this, as it's very valuable to me
- FlagBrigade 5y ago
  The flagging system needs to be more open. If a user flags a post/comment they need to give a reason. These reasons, along with the username, needs to be accessible to everyone, not just moderators, so people can be aware why their submission is wrong, or whether there is a pattern to certain users flagging behavior.
  - 5y ago
raldi 5y ago
Do counterfeiters ever use your service to find ways to improve their impersonations?
- not_math 5y ago
  I feel like it's not a knowledge problem to the counterfeiters, but more of how the economics work in counterfeits. A lot of people are ready to pay for a 20$ bag on AliExpress and probably never seen how a real Louis Vuitton bag feels, so they don't see/feel the difference. Same thing for jewelries, watches, shoes, etc. You see a lot of fake Yeezy (for example), and you can probably get a similar enough shoe to the real one, but it'll cost 100-200$, and most people are not ready to pay this price for a "fake". On r/repladies, I've seen girls pay 1200$ for "fakes" that are very similar to the real product, at a certain point that only a handfuls of people will see the difference.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  /u/not-math put it perfectly in the reply
- xzel 5y ago
  Sneaker counterfeiters generally don't care all that much about pass authentication checks. For shoes, and most clothing, they care more about time to market (getting their fake out before or near release date) and price point. If someone is wearing fake shoes, unless they're outlandishly fake (there were some hot pink fake yeezys I've seen more than one), you mostly likely won't be able to spot these imperfections from a distance. Also, unless you're in the niche you probably won't care if they're real or fake. I'd liken this to hanging prints of famous paintings; people like the look but might not want to shell out for a Picasso. I work with shoes on a daily basis and have done/do auth checks.
  - jasonladuke0311 5y ago
    Yeah unfortunately this is true. There are absolutely fakes that get passed through StockX/GOAT/eBay and even sneakerheads wouldn't guess. Some are even made on the same production lines with the same staff, etc, according to some people in the rep industry (yeah that's weaselly, sorry). I have disputed purchases when I got inauthentic items but they were fairly obvious.
ohadpr 5y ago
One thing I couldn’t figure out by skimming through the article is who performs the actual authentication (checking if an item is counterfeit)? Is it the two founders? Do they have a team working on this?
- koreanguy 5y ago
  a person places a order appointment to website, that piece order has the customers item location normally just a url with a picture like on eBay or amazon, now one of the team members tracks a authentic item from the main company and gets a high def picture or the actual product. and simply compares it against the listed eBay item. if anything is mismatches like wrong label wrong tag etc it gets recorded and sent to customer, website says thank for service and that's end of it . its a good format for long term customers who buy a lot of expensive items online and need to have third party eyes and opinions
- chdaniel 5y ago
  We do as well, but it's not only us. So the answer is a team. We get help from others as well on authentications!
__turbobrew__ 5y ago
Counterfeiting is becoming a real problem in Magic The Gathering. Just this past week I received a counterfeit card in an order from a reputable business. Once you start buying expensive MTG cards you need to know how to spot a counterfeit in order to protect yourself. Luckily with MTG cards the printing process is the same with cheap cards and expensive cards so you can easily compare the cards for differences. I imagine most people buying Yeazys don’t have an authentic pair to compare with. I’m wondering how “counterfeit aware” payment processors (VISA, Mastercards, etc) are becoming? It seems like counterfeits are only going to become more frequent in the future and payment processors should have some awareness of counterfeits when investigating a chargeback claim.
- rasz 5y ago
  In what way is it a problem exactly? are counterfeit cards printed with unreadable font? do they fall apart when used? oooh, you mean its a problem for speculat^^^^investors, not for actually playing the game?
  - squeaky-clean 5y ago
    If you're trying to imply counterfeiting doesn't actually affect gameplay, counterfeit cards are not tournament legal. If you paid $100 to purchase a playset of 4 cards and you show up to a tournament and get declined entry, you'd rightfully be pissed at the counterfeiter. Maybe the next response to that is "who cares about tournaments. Just play kitchen table magic with your friends." In that case sure, but still don't use counterfeit cards. "Proxy" cards are when a player prints out (or even hand-scribbles on paper) the image of the "real" card they want to use. No one is scammed out of money. It doesn't cost anymore than a sheet of printer paper and some ink. And because the card is obviously not official, there's no confusion as to it's authenticity.
    - treeman79 5y ago
      At high levels, when a Tactic is to hoard certain cards, so that no one can “counter” your deck. Never mind things like a black lotus which is over powered but still legal due to rarity.
101008 5y ago
What happens when a buyer disputes a counterfeit item with their "message" and the seller doesn't agree? It may be easy to differentiate with counterfeit shoes, but what happens with art pieces, books, collectors' items in general? (My experience: I collect Harry Potter books. Signed copies were always faked, because it is "easy" to forge a signature. But lately I've been seen fake first printings. Some people buy 2nd or 3rd printings (way cheaper) and change the page with the bibliographical details, which is hard to spot. Other ones even printed the whole book, those are a bit easy to spot because a 25 years old book shouldn't look as new, but if you buy it online seeing only photos, you may get scammed after paying thousdans of dollars)
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  First edition Harry Potter books are worth thousands of dollars?!? I’m assuming that’s only in mint condition but wow.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    First edition first volume was a much smaller print run than subsequent volumes.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      So if I bought the first day it was available, that’s not necessarily first edition?
      - jeffgreco 5y ago
        In the UK, it probably is. But it was relatively unknown at the time, so it would be surprising if you had.
        101008 5y ago
        First edition first printing of Harry Potter 1 from the UK was only 500 copies in hardback. That one fetched a recent record of 190.000 dollars. Paperback is expensive as well, from ranges between 2k and 10k. Hardback US first printing is around 1k/2k too
anfractuosity 5y ago
Very interesting! Out of interest with say a 'super fake' Rolex, would it still be possible to tell if it's real/fake from only external photos of the watch? I'm curious if they have or might reach a point whereby you'd need to open up the watch and look at the movement quality?
- iandinwoodie 5y ago
  There is a spectrum of replica quality in the watch world. Some watches are very obvious to spot while others would be impossible to spot from a photo. There is also the concept of a frankenwatch: a watch that is a blend of original and non-original parts. Assuming the builder has done their research and due diligence with part selection, you would likely not be able to identify a frankenwatch from an original if they were sitting right in front of you. As a result, all watch exchange forums that I have visited have suggest that authenticity of a purchased watch be verified from a authorized dealer for that brand. To expand on this, serious watch collectors will keep service records from authorized dealers as proof of authenticity. For example, many models of Rolex have “service” parts that differ from the parts originally used in the model. Pricing general follows the hierarchy: original parts > oem service parts > non-oem replacement parts. The pricing gap between each of those steps can be in the tens of thousands. So if eBay authenticates a Rolex as original and you later on find out it has some non-oem replacement parts, you’ve likely lost a significant amount of money on that transaction.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  It's still possible! It'd help us to open the watch, naturally, but we can still rely on pics. Make no mistake though — the watches can be 99.5% perfect, but (at least for the watches we're handling, which have high values) the compromise in manufacturing processes is spotted one way or another It's worth pointing out that the discussion about replacing pieces of a fake watch with authentic pieces (making a so-called 'franken' watch, as rep watch connoisseurs call it) is a totally separate discussion
nvarsj 5y ago
I wonder what percentage of luxury goods are fake on Ebay? In my own experience, 100%. The sellers are not even apologetic - they take your return, issue a refund, and immediately relist the item.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  Lots of fakes on eBay They started efforts to curate that, but it's far from cleaning eBay 100% What you're saying happens, more often than we wish it'd be the case. That's why we never considered charging for our guides, even something as little as $1 → The point was to allow people to inform themselves about fakes, with as little friction as possible That way, if we bump the % of people who get scammed by even a few negative points, we'd still be happy for a positive contribution
walrus01 5y ago
Using this image as an example: https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-1-1024x1012.png https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-1-102... What would stop a particularly clever counterfeiting factory from using this service as a 'check list' of things to change, to improve the authentic appearance of their work product? Seems like a bargain for the price.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  There's even more info for them in any of the guides: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ e.g. for this very item in the screenshot, the guide is: https://legitcheck.app/guides/real-vs-fake-hermes-birkin/ https://legitcheck.app/guides/real-vs-fake-hermes-birkin/ Partly answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090248 Partly answered by someone else here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27089111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27089111
  - walrus01 5y ago
    Having never been in the market for such things, what price would the fake Hermes Birkin bag in the example URL typically sell for? Either on aliexpress or similar or in a domestic retail market in China? The fake certainly seems good enough to pass casual inspection from a distance.
    - eh9 5y ago
      Anywhere from $50 for a bad rep, $500 for something that looks pretty good, and ~$1,300+ for something that’ll pass for the real thing. (Source: wife is fascinated by the rep industry)
      - Jommi 5y ago
        1300 is when you get scammed. Most likely the 500 already gets you near perfect replicas.
    - 5y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I'm glad this got a second chance, because I really think it's a brilliant idea. I just have a difficult time seeing how it could be cost-effective, without being eye-wateringly expensive. Being able to detect forgeries requires some pretty intense domain expertise, and that tends to come with a lot of experience and schooling. Those folks don't run cheap. Very often, you need specialists in each domain. For example, you can't have a fashion purse expert determining whether an "antique" firearm (where forgery is a big problem) is fake. I'd assume the biggest value would be to contract with auction houses or appraisers, where the workflow would be familiar. With regular users, the workflow would be all over the place, and I could easily see the whole thing taking hours, because the user keeps sending cruddy photos in a tungsten light, so the color can't be judged, or the focus is off. But I guess if it's really just sending links to Amazon listings, things are fairly "standardized," so a number of assumptions can be made. Nonetheless, this is not my area of expertise, and the OP insists that it is a viable service, making a profit, so I must offer kudos.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  I'm glad too and grateful for the second chance on the article! > I just have a difficult time seeing how it could be cost-effective, without being eye-wateringly expensive. We write the guides first, which 'earns' us the 'audacity' to claim we know how to authenticate. I thought of the academic world so as to prove the expertise (I'm the complete opposite of an academic) * We write public guides (see: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/) - we have about 1m words written on the subject * People are free to contest it. If we're wrong, we'll correct * The more other people link to our guides, the more we get... credentials, I guess? > you can't have a fashion purse expert determining whether an "antique" firearm (where forgery is a big problem) We don't really get that far, into firearms and the such. Currently we do sneakers, clothing, watches, bags and some collectibles (e.g. Pokemon Cards) > I'd assume the biggest value would be to contract with auction houses or appraisers, where the workflow would be familiar We've worked occasionally with some (e.g. authenticated a pair of $20,000 Jordans: https://legitcheck.app/certificate-of-authenticity/property-room-air-jordan-4-eminem-carhartt/ https://legitcheck.app/certificate-of-authenticity/property-... But mostly B2C, so it's a consumer-focuseed service > But I guess if it's really just sending links to Amazon listings The products we're authenticating are mostly 'asset products', so items that are $300+, most of the time sold-out, have some resale value over retail OR retain more of their retail value than usual items (think: Chanel items)
kickbutt22 5y ago
I wonder if this is a good use case for deep learning. I am wondering if you rely completely on images or, in some cases, does it boil down to things that images cannot portray? Like texture, weight, flexibility, etc.?
- chdaniel 5y ago
  Nothing that complicated. And it's not because I haven't explored that option If anybody reading this is able to create something that can reach 99%+ accuracy in terms of authenticating items, I've (obvious in the post) got the distribution and the audience to sell this to — DMs always open if you've got something solid Currently it's a fully manual process. We have competitors claiming they're 'using AI' but it's a bullshit gimmick for the masses of users. Unless an 'AI' is having 99%+ accuracy, it's probably too risky to implement
FounderBurr 5y ago
Isn’t providing an “authentication service” without the input of the original manufacturers legally precarious?
- jeffgreco 5y ago
  Seems unlikely. Why?
- inopinatus 5y ago
  Auction houses do this routinely, since Thomas Chippendale died two centuries ago and can’t provide input. It’s only problematic if you’re corrupt or incompetent and become a means to reinforce the fraud.
meltedcapacitor 5y ago
Next product: a fake legit checker that produces legit-checker style prose to fool bank clerks into authorising refunds for non-fakes. This would solve the "having to pay for stuff" problem. Huge market.
- saadalem 5y ago
  could you expane?
  - Ozzie_osman 5y ago
    You buy a pair of real shoes. You pay me to give you a certificate saying they are fake (even though they are real). You show the certificate and get a refund, and keep the real shoes.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      Why do you think you would get to keep the fake? The store would want them to take back to their supplier as evidence.
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        I've been sent fake/copycat stuff via Amazon. Never had to return it for a refund.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Yeah, the bit I missed is why paying them 60 dollars for an official looking "I was scammed" certificate actually helps with the refund process. Also, my next thought was that if you actually wanted to buy replicas, and were okay with gambling your money, it would be possible to buy the fake that pretends to be real, and then get refunded, you get a decent fake for free (minus risking your money). I guess you'd need to create new accounts as the pattern would become obvious over time, but I like the idea of fakers, and platforms that don't prevent it effectively paying the price rather than dumb consumers, especially since it reduces the utility of online shopping for me.
iav 5y ago
There is a similar publicly traded business - https://www.collectorsuniverse.com/ https://www.collectorsuniverse.com/
solidasparagus 5y ago
I don't fully understand this business and so it seems a little off to me. You claim: > An authenticator that has public, verifiable proof to their claim of expertise will be assigned to your order. Can you please share some of that public, verifiable proof? You are averaging $28 per order and you say you have a 'team' of experts to help you do authentication. Is an expert's time really worth so little that this price point is profitable? Or is authentication really that trivial to do? You only track revenue and net revenue and not profit. You are getting around $200k in revenue per year. It would be very enlightening to know the costs of the team of experts and now much of that revenue is profit. You seem to be running something like 6 other lines of businesses at the same time: - Layered Ink, a new way to do digital writing. - Price Unlock, a SaaS pricing tool. - Synergy, something that helps with decision making. - Dear Mom/Investor, writing up progress/financial number of your businesses for subscribers. - LegitCheck Price Comparison, a tool to find the lowest prices - LegitCheck Organizer, a reselling tool (without those unnecessary fees) To do that many things well would be extraordinary. Doing some brief investigation into your competitors, this industry seems to be full of companies putting forth an image that they are a large and respected team with real expertise, while further digging suggests they are one person writing their opinions of questionable value and calling them certificates of authenticity. Why should your users trust that you aren't another one of those companies? You claim expertise in 91 brands. In order to truly be able to authenticate those, it seems like it would require a good amount of expertise and time. You claim: > Real expertise, not self-claimed. > Find out the truth about your item and either start wearing it proudly or we’ll help you get your money back. > Our expertise is backed by the 1,000,000+ words we've written on this subject. but with all due respect, writing lots of blog posts is not a basis for 'real expertise' rather than 'self-claimed'. You could be an expert in authenticity for 91 brands (I have no idea), or you could be a rando on the internet regurgitating (mis)information found on the internet. Being good at something and getting noticed for talking about something a lot are different skill sets. Why should your users believe you have real expertise in all 91 of those brands?
- dreamer7 5y ago
  Some very good questions in this post that I would have also liked OP to answer. For context, I run a marketplace (https://vendiapp.com https://vendiapp.com) where we physically verify every product transacted on our platform. We are focussing on Phones and similar high value electronic products susceptible to fraud. And visual inspection is definitely not enough to detect fakes in this industry. Also, average cost of having external experts is more than $20. So, there is a need for deep tech and a great supply chain to make the unit economics work.
hnarn 5y ago
Short feedback: The phrasing in this message is a rollercoaster: https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-5.png https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-5.png You have to imagine someone paid money for this and is eagerly awaiting a response. Queue "I got an e-mail!": 1) Green checkbox: So the item is legit? 2) "Good news!", so it must be legit? 3) "the item is 100% fake" You should really consider changing the design and the tone of this message. People literally pay to get one answer so it should be the most obvious thing about the message.

169 points by chdaniel 5y ago

whalesalad 5y ago

I still don’t really understand what this person is selling.

chdaniel 5y ago
"that’s what we do — we tell people whether their item is fake or authentic. Not authentication as in login authentication" Should've made it clearer - a mistake on my part. So you know how there are fakes of Rolex, Nike, Louis Vuitton etc — some are scarily close. We make guides on how to tell the fake from the real item, with the best fakes. We teach people (for free) But we also have a service, if they want us to check it for them
- wheybags 5y ago
  Your blog post is a bit incomprehensible tbh. I did get it eventually, but I got a good bit into the article before I did. #1 issue for me is you say "writing order notes", and that doesn't make sense at all to me. "verifying whether products are fake or legitimate" would be a much better article title.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mtalantikite 5y ago
    Yeah I had no idea what this was about and had to Google “Order Notes”, which also didn’t turn up much. Bailed on the article pretty quickly since I didn’t understand anything, assuming I wasn’t the target audience.
    - chdaniel 5y ago
      Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message Think: "your order has been shipped" But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong
      - mtalantikite 5y ago
        I think the word “authenticity” is something that expresses what it is your team does that more people would understand. I think most people know what a certificate of authenticity is and it sounds like your service provides a digital, saas version of that.
  - the_local_host 5y ago
    Even after understanding that the service is about distinguishing fake from legitimate products, I still don't know what an "order note" is.
    - chdaniel 5y ago
      Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message Think: "your order has been shipped" But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong
      - bobsmooth 5y ago
        Keep in mind the usual type of person that is here on HN. I was able to gleam what you are doing and how you are doing it the moment I started reading the first order note.
  - chdaniel 5y ago
    Hmm, okay. Too much in my own bubble with that notion then The 'order notes' is a field in any e-commerce store, where you (the store) can send the customer a message Think: "your order has been shipped" But we write it manually — "your item is authentic because X and Y" — that's our order note. And at the same time our service What I tried to do with the title was show the scrappiness. Maybe even inspire some hackers to be scrappy or to look for something other than perfection first Because if you're pitching to a VC that you're starting an authentication company for luxury items And you'll claim that you'll use the WooCommerce 'order notes' section, you'd be laughed out of the room. And not like the Airbnb founders — without that second part of the story where you prove them wrong
- leeoniya 5y ago
  i've always wondered how this works, on antiques roadshow, etc. can't the manufacturers of the fakes simply take the course, learn the subtlties, and make better fakes?
  - dv_dt 5y ago
    I would like to think that as the quality of the work improves, it makes more and more sense to establish your own brand instead of duplicating the work of another entity. Of course it all breaks down if the faked brands aren’t making all that high a quality items.
  - 83457 5y ago
    Diminishing returns on perfection.
  - dpritchett 5y ago
    Presumably the perfect fake often costs too much to reliably manufacture. Think of the randomness inherent in the microscopically unique features of the original and how you might emulate them reliably with a margin that still lets you compete with its luxury pricing.
- NationalPark 5y ago
  Have you noticed anyone using your guides to make fakes targeted to fool your authentication? Do you keep a few clues secret just to be sure?
  - chdaniel 5y ago
    > Do you keep a few clues secret just to be sure? Not really. We give away everything we have. As others've mentioned, fake manufcaturers get diminishing results by spending the extra $$$ to go from 95% to 99% Whe anyway, as part of 95%, the exterior side is 99% done. The last 5 bits are interior details unseen by anyone but the wearer All they care about is selling more products to fake wearers. And fake wearers care only about exterior
- MereInterest 5y ago
  My understanding is that some of the "fakes" for high-end fashion are due to multiple factories building products to the same specifications, but only the first one to deliver them gets paid. The others are still built to the exact same specification, and are functionally identical except for the logo. Is my understanding correct, and does your service distinguish between "fake because it isn't officially blessed" and "fake because it uses inferior construction"? I tend to see the following categories overall, and while I'm not at all interested in the label/authenticity side of things, I have a difficult time identifying well-constructed or poorly-constructed household items. * Real label, high quality. Good to have, but much more expensive than I can usually justify. * Real label, low quality. Typically when a brand has just been bought out, and is trying to cash in on a reputation while using cheaper construction. * Fake/knock-off label, low quality. Trash, masquerading as a good deal. * Fake/knock-off label, high quality. The absolute sweet spot, getting the higher quality build without needing to pay for the social "authenticity" of the brand label.
  - hattmall 5y ago
    It's more like this: A company contracts with a factory, they want 100,000 pair of shoes. The factory however is going to make a million or keep making it until there's no one to buy it. These are called "ghost shift" goods which is the bulk of counterfeits. If the product is not a limited run and still being produced the quality will be exactly the same. If the original manufacturer is no longer purchasing then the factory will very likely use cheaper materials. The brands know this happens, they really don't care, what the brand will do is send a couple workers to the factory to be QC buyers. The factory makes a million items, and the QC workers will go through and pick out the best 100,000. The other 900,000 will be sold in the the developing world. The brand will typically take the 100,000 then send them to the US or Europe to another factory where they will have tags sewn in them and possibly some more labels or insignia attached. If it's a particularly premium brand they will add some secret identifying marks that even this LegitCheck website is unlikely to know about. Those secret marks are typically for extremely high end goods that have lifetime warranties etc and the only time it's checked is if you send it in for warranty work. A LOT of these goods are completely indistinguishable and will even make it into the retail supply chain. Particularly at stores like TJ Maxx, Bealls, and Ross et al. Though they go through a series of distributors that will basically only exist for a few shipments to avoid liability after some previous large lawsuits. Ross and Burlington will also knowingly buy the ghost shift goods but keep them unbranded and sell them in stores with no labeling at all. You can find these clothes and they will have a tag sewn into that has a lot number. You can take that lot number and put it in to import manifest search engines and find out what brand was also importing them. This would be where you find your coveted Fake / Knock off high quality with the best success.
- roofwellhams 5y ago
  But maybe you could explain the whole use case. I doubt sometime that bought a pair of air max will pay you 60usd to say it's not authentic. Then I guess they will copy your message to their paypal claim? PayPal sides with buyer like 90% of the time anyway..
tyingq 5y ago
See https://legitcheck.app/ https://legitcheck.app/ The headline doesn't help much. They are doing more than "writing order notes". It's a service to check whether an item (watch, purse, designer clothing, etc) is counterfeit, divided into 3 use cases: -You’re about to buy an item and you’re not sure whether it’s authentic or not -You’ve already bought an item and you don’t know if you’ve been scammed -You’ve been scammed and you want to get your money back
- chdaniel 5y ago
  Yep, correct! We do more than writing order notes in the sense that we now have: * A Price Comparison tool * A SaaS for resellers (that sucks. we need to fix it) * A lot of words written on public guides * We just started a video library But ultimately, the bread and butter is our service. And the workflow is: * People place an order * We handle it by replying to them via order notes
  - lazide 5y ago
    No offense, but you seriously need someone with some business and sales expertise to help you. While that may be your workflow, that is almost never what any customer cares about or makes decisions based on. What they care about is how you are going to help THEM, by how much, and at what cost. The actual workflow is rarely even secondary, it usually the last step/usage thing post-buy decision for the vast majority of people.
    - paulpauper 5y ago
      You do realize he is making almost $200k profit. I think he knows what he is doing
      - onlyfortoday2 5y ago
        exactly LOL HN
      - lazide 5y ago
ww520 5y ago
They are the product authenticators. You know people bring their antiques to the antique TV show and ask the antique authenticators to verify the authenticity of the items. It’s the same kind of service. Kudos for them to make a business out of it.
koreanguy 5y ago
its a service, think of it like this, you and your friend go into a shoe shop and you want tell your friend do you know if this is fake or real ? and your friend answers .

redwood 5y ago

Why would you tell the world your business model?

chdaniel 5y ago
Because I don't think the business model is something worth guarding. Or that if somebody else replicates it (they have), we have a lot to lose. I do believe in moats, and I'm trying my best to see what moats I can build on top of what we have to 'protect' the business
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  I think you left out a crucial part. How did you develop the skill to spot a fake? The encyclopedic domain knowledge that you possess is the anchor of your business and the value you being to the table. How did you gain that knowledge? Super cool! Thanks for sharing this though.
  - chdaniel 5y ago
    Honestly I just 'hamstered' all the material I could on the most popular items. In the beginning, in those first 10 guides I mention in the article, I just curated all the splintered bits of info* from the internet into one mega-guide, and added what I found after analysing fakes * bits of info from as little as a forum thread comment, lost on page 48, to a full-blown attmept at a guide that, to me, wasn't exhaustive enough In time, it refined to partly what I did in the beginning, and partly our own research which got better with exercise Package all that info in a free, properly formatted guide (with some imperfect English, I admit, as we're not natives), and that gives us the traffic figures I screenshot'd
tyingq 5y ago
The moat seems to be the actual expertise. See one of their guides: https://legitcheck.app/guides/fear-of-god/fake-vs-real-nike-fog-1/ https://legitcheck.app/guides/fear-of-god/fake-vs-real-nike-...

magneticnorth 5y ago

This is great, very impressive that they've had such success with a scrappy 2-person business. The hard part of success like this often seems to be finding an under-served niche where you have, or can easily gain, some expertise. If anyone knows of a guide or has advice for how to solve that problem, I'd love to hear it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Codesleuth 5y ago

So people are just paying for your opinion or do you have some sort of credentials? I find it ironic that you are selling authenticity checks, and yet I can't tell if the check is authentic.

chdaniel 5y ago
We do. B2B Partnerships, some big companies trust us, and ultimately, I thought of the academic world so as to prove the expertise (I'm the complete opposite of an academic) * We write public guides (see: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/) - we have about 1m words written on the subject * People are free to contest it. If we're wrong, we'll correct * The more other people link to our guides, the more we get... credentials, I guess?
- amelius 5y ago
  > some big companies trust us Can't the infosec community define and setup a "trust" network? E.g. everybody trusts a number of people, and trust can be transitive (perhaps with weights). Hence when I read some review the network can compute a trustworthiness value. If the product turns out to be fake, the system can do a backprop and adjust weights. Etc. etc.
  - chdaniel 5y ago
    You're defo smart with what you're saying But the challenge would then be to explain something like this to the average non-techie who's just buying some expensive sneakers because they're cool
  - iandinwoodie 5y ago
    Yeah, basically a chain of trust certificates like outlined by X.509. I think managing the chain of trust would be a pretty involved process.
- Codesleuth 5y ago
  I really admire your approach to this. Making guides should not only improve your credibility but also overall help reduce the market of fakes by reducing demand.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mrtksn 5y ago

I don't know why this is flagged. It's a legit entrepreneurial story(We can't know if the the claims are true but the story is a legit one). At first it was hard to understand what it is all about and sounded like get rich quick scheme but essentially it is about someone building a service to check the authenticity of physical items.

matsemann 5y ago
I actually found the writeup refreshing in acknowledging the luck (but also the hard work) behind the success. Also unsure why it's flagged when I came back to comment after reading. The vouch button is also missing for me (or is that only for dead stuff? Not sure what the difference is)
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Yep, I like the writing style too. Upvoted but don't know if this will help.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    It takes a lot of upvotes to cancel out flags, unfortunately.
- chdaniel 5y ago
  Hey thanks! I was curious to see if handling the topic of luck did vibe with people. Thanks for taking the time to mention this, as it's very valuable to me
FlagBrigade 5y ago
The flagging system needs to be more open. If a user flags a post/comment they need to give a reason. These reasons, along with the username, needs to be accessible to everyone, not just moderators, so people can be aware why their submission is wrong, or whether there is a pattern to certain users flagging behavior.
- 5y ago

raldi 5y ago

Do counterfeiters ever use your service to find ways to improve their impersonations?

not_math 5y ago
I feel like it's not a knowledge problem to the counterfeiters, but more of how the economics work in counterfeits. A lot of people are ready to pay for a 20$ bag on AliExpress and probably never seen how a real Louis Vuitton bag feels, so they don't see/feel the difference. Same thing for jewelries, watches, shoes, etc. You see a lot of fake Yeezy (for example), and you can probably get a similar enough shoe to the real one, but it'll cost 100-200$, and most people are not ready to pay this price for a "fake". On r/repladies, I've seen girls pay 1200$ for "fakes" that are very similar to the real product, at a certain point that only a handfuls of people will see the difference.
chdaniel 5y ago
/u/not-math put it perfectly in the reply
xzel 5y ago
Sneaker counterfeiters generally don't care all that much about pass authentication checks. For shoes, and most clothing, they care more about time to market (getting their fake out before or near release date) and price point. If someone is wearing fake shoes, unless they're outlandishly fake (there were some hot pink fake yeezys I've seen more than one), you mostly likely won't be able to spot these imperfections from a distance. Also, unless you're in the niche you probably won't care if they're real or fake. I'd liken this to hanging prints of famous paintings; people like the look but might not want to shell out for a Picasso. I work with shoes on a daily basis and have done/do auth checks.
- jasonladuke0311 5y ago
  Yeah unfortunately this is true. There are absolutely fakes that get passed through StockX/GOAT/eBay and even sneakerheads wouldn't guess. Some are even made on the same production lines with the same staff, etc, according to some people in the rep industry (yeah that's weaselly, sorry). I have disputed purchases when I got inauthentic items but they were fairly obvious.

ohadpr 5y ago

One thing I couldn’t figure out by skimming through the article is who performs the actual authentication (checking if an item is counterfeit)? Is it the two founders? Do they have a team working on this?

koreanguy 5y ago
a person places a order appointment to website, that piece order has the customers item location normally just a url with a picture like on eBay or amazon, now one of the team members tracks a authentic item from the main company and gets a high def picture or the actual product. and simply compares it against the listed eBay item. if anything is mismatches like wrong label wrong tag etc it gets recorded and sent to customer, website says thank for service and that's end of it . its a good format for long term customers who buy a lot of expensive items online and need to have third party eyes and opinions
chdaniel 5y ago
We do as well, but it's not only us. So the answer is a team. We get help from others as well on authentications!

__turbobrew__ 5y ago

Counterfeiting is becoming a real problem in Magic The Gathering. Just this past week I received a counterfeit card in an order from a reputable business. Once you start buying expensive MTG cards you need to know how to spot a counterfeit in order to protect yourself. Luckily with MTG cards the printing process is the same with cheap cards and expensive cards so you can easily compare the cards for differences. I imagine most people buying Yeazys don’t have an authentic pair to compare with. I’m wondering how “counterfeit aware” payment processors (VISA, Mastercards, etc) are becoming? It seems like counterfeits are only going to become more frequent in the future and payment processors should have some awareness of counterfeits when investigating a chargeback claim.

rasz 5y ago
In what way is it a problem exactly? are counterfeit cards printed with unreadable font? do they fall apart when used? oooh, you mean its a problem for speculat^^^^investors, not for actually playing the game?
- squeaky-clean 5y ago
  If you're trying to imply counterfeiting doesn't actually affect gameplay, counterfeit cards are not tournament legal. If you paid $100 to purchase a playset of 4 cards and you show up to a tournament and get declined entry, you'd rightfully be pissed at the counterfeiter. Maybe the next response to that is "who cares about tournaments. Just play kitchen table magic with your friends." In that case sure, but still don't use counterfeit cards. "Proxy" cards are when a player prints out (or even hand-scribbles on paper) the image of the "real" card they want to use. No one is scammed out of money. It doesn't cost anymore than a sheet of printer paper and some ink. And because the card is obviously not official, there's no confusion as to it's authenticity.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    At high levels, when a Tactic is to hoard certain cards, so that no one can “counter” your deck. Never mind things like a black lotus which is over powered but still legal due to rarity.

101008 5y ago

What happens when a buyer disputes a counterfeit item with their "message" and the seller doesn't agree? It may be easy to differentiate with counterfeit shoes, but what happens with art pieces, books, collectors' items in general? (My experience: I collect Harry Potter books. Signed copies were always faked, because it is "easy" to forge a signature. But lately I've been seen fake first printings. Some people buy 2nd or 3rd printings (way cheaper) and change the page with the bibliographical details, which is hard to spot. Other ones even printed the whole book, those are a bit easy to spot because a 25 years old book shouldn't look as new, but if you buy it online seeing only photos, you may get scammed after paying thousdans of dollars)

bradleyjg 5y ago
First edition Harry Potter books are worth thousands of dollars?!? I’m assuming that’s only in mint condition but wow.
- bombcar 5y ago
  First edition first volume was a much smaller print run than subsequent volumes.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    So if I bought the first day it was available, that’s not necessarily first edition?
    - jeffgreco 5y ago
      In the UK, it probably is. But it was relatively unknown at the time, so it would be surprising if you had.
      - 101008 5y ago
        First edition first printing of Harry Potter 1 from the UK was only 500 copies in hardback. That one fetched a recent record of 190.000 dollars. Paperback is expensive as well, from ranges between 2k and 10k. Hardback US first printing is around 1k/2k too

anfractuosity 5y ago

Very interesting! Out of interest with say a 'super fake' Rolex, would it still be possible to tell if it's real/fake from only external photos of the watch? I'm curious if they have or might reach a point whereby you'd need to open up the watch and look at the movement quality?

iandinwoodie 5y ago
There is a spectrum of replica quality in the watch world. Some watches are very obvious to spot while others would be impossible to spot from a photo. There is also the concept of a frankenwatch: a watch that is a blend of original and non-original parts. Assuming the builder has done their research and due diligence with part selection, you would likely not be able to identify a frankenwatch from an original if they were sitting right in front of you. As a result, all watch exchange forums that I have visited have suggest that authenticity of a purchased watch be verified from a authorized dealer for that brand. To expand on this, serious watch collectors will keep service records from authorized dealers as proof of authenticity. For example, many models of Rolex have “service” parts that differ from the parts originally used in the model. Pricing general follows the hierarchy: original parts > oem service parts > non-oem replacement parts. The pricing gap between each of those steps can be in the tens of thousands. So if eBay authenticates a Rolex as original and you later on find out it has some non-oem replacement parts, you’ve likely lost a significant amount of money on that transaction.
chdaniel 5y ago
It's still possible! It'd help us to open the watch, naturally, but we can still rely on pics. Make no mistake though — the watches can be 99.5% perfect, but (at least for the watches we're handling, which have high values) the compromise in manufacturing processes is spotted one way or another It's worth pointing out that the discussion about replacing pieces of a fake watch with authentic pieces (making a so-called 'franken' watch, as rep watch connoisseurs call it) is a totally separate discussion

nvarsj 5y ago

I wonder what percentage of luxury goods are fake on Ebay? In my own experience, 100%. The sellers are not even apologetic - they take your return, issue a refund, and immediately relist the item.

chdaniel 5y ago
Lots of fakes on eBay They started efforts to curate that, but it's far from cleaning eBay 100% What you're saying happens, more often than we wish it'd be the case. That's why we never considered charging for our guides, even something as little as $1 → The point was to allow people to inform themselves about fakes, with as little friction as possible That way, if we bump the % of people who get scammed by even a few negative points, we'd still be happy for a positive contribution

walrus01 5y ago

Using this image as an example: https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-1-1024x1012.png https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-1-102... What would stop a particularly clever counterfeiting factory from using this service as a 'check list' of things to change, to improve the authentic appearance of their work product? Seems like a bargain for the price.

chdaniel 5y ago
There's even more info for them in any of the guides: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ e.g. for this very item in the screenshot, the guide is: https://legitcheck.app/guides/real-vs-fake-hermes-birkin/ https://legitcheck.app/guides/real-vs-fake-hermes-birkin/ Partly answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090248 Partly answered by someone else here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27089111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27089111
- walrus01 5y ago
  Having never been in the market for such things, what price would the fake Hermes Birkin bag in the example URL typically sell for? Either on aliexpress or similar or in a domestic retail market in China? The fake certainly seems good enough to pass casual inspection from a distance.
  - eh9 5y ago
    Anywhere from $50 for a bad rep, $500 for something that looks pretty good, and ~$1,300+ for something that’ll pass for the real thing. (Source: wife is fascinated by the rep industry)
    - Jommi 5y ago
      1300 is when you get scammed. Most likely the 500 already gets you near perfect replicas.
  - 5y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I'm glad this got a second chance, because I really think it's a brilliant idea. I just have a difficult time seeing how it could be cost-effective, without being eye-wateringly expensive. Being able to detect forgeries requires some pretty intense domain expertise, and that tends to come with a lot of experience and schooling. Those folks don't run cheap. Very often, you need specialists in each domain. For example, you can't have a fashion purse expert determining whether an "antique" firearm (where forgery is a big problem) is fake. I'd assume the biggest value would be to contract with auction houses or appraisers, where the workflow would be familiar. With regular users, the workflow would be all over the place, and I could easily see the whole thing taking hours, because the user keeps sending cruddy photos in a tungsten light, so the color can't be judged, or the focus is off. But I guess if it's really just sending links to Amazon listings, things are fairly "standardized," so a number of assumptions can be made. Nonetheless, this is not my area of expertise, and the OP insists that it is a viable service, making a profit, so I must offer kudos.

chdaniel 5y ago
I'm glad too and grateful for the second chance on the article! > I just have a difficult time seeing how it could be cost-effective, without being eye-wateringly expensive. We write the guides first, which 'earns' us the 'audacity' to claim we know how to authenticate. I thought of the academic world so as to prove the expertise (I'm the complete opposite of an academic) * We write public guides (see: https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/ https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/) - we have about 1m words written on the subject * People are free to contest it. If we're wrong, we'll correct * The more other people link to our guides, the more we get... credentials, I guess? > you can't have a fashion purse expert determining whether an "antique" firearm (where forgery is a big problem) We don't really get that far, into firearms and the such. Currently we do sneakers, clothing, watches, bags and some collectibles (e.g. Pokemon Cards) > I'd assume the biggest value would be to contract with auction houses or appraisers, where the workflow would be familiar We've worked occasionally with some (e.g. authenticated a pair of $20,000 Jordans: https://legitcheck.app/certificate-of-authenticity/property-room-air-jordan-4-eminem-carhartt/ https://legitcheck.app/certificate-of-authenticity/property-... But mostly B2C, so it's a consumer-focuseed service > But I guess if it's really just sending links to Amazon listings The products we're authenticating are mostly 'asset products', so items that are $300+, most of the time sold-out, have some resale value over retail OR retain more of their retail value than usual items (think: Chanel items)

kickbutt22 5y ago

I wonder if this is a good use case for deep learning. I am wondering if you rely completely on images or, in some cases, does it boil down to things that images cannot portray? Like texture, weight, flexibility, etc.?

chdaniel 5y ago
Nothing that complicated. And it's not because I haven't explored that option If anybody reading this is able to create something that can reach 99%+ accuracy in terms of authenticating items, I've (obvious in the post) got the distribution and the audience to sell this to — DMs always open if you've got something solid Currently it's a fully manual process. We have competitors claiming they're 'using AI' but it's a bullshit gimmick for the masses of users. Unless an 'AI' is having 99%+ accuracy, it's probably too risky to implement

FounderBurr 5y ago

Isn’t providing an “authentication service” without the input of the original manufacturers legally precarious?

jeffgreco 5y ago
Seems unlikely. Why?
inopinatus 5y ago
Auction houses do this routinely, since Thomas Chippendale died two centuries ago and can’t provide input. It’s only problematic if you’re corrupt or incompetent and become a means to reinforce the fraud.

meltedcapacitor 5y ago

Next product: a fake legit checker that produces legit-checker style prose to fool bank clerks into authorising refunds for non-fakes. This would solve the "having to pay for stuff" problem. Huge market.

saadalem 5y ago
could you expane?
- Ozzie_osman 5y ago
  You buy a pair of real shoes. You pay me to give you a certificate saying they are fake (even though they are real). You show the certificate and get a refund, and keep the real shoes.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Why do you think you would get to keep the fake? The store would want them to take back to their supplier as evidence.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      I've been sent fake/copycat stuff via Amazon. Never had to return it for a refund.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Yeah, the bit I missed is why paying them 60 dollars for an official looking "I was scammed" certificate actually helps with the refund process. Also, my next thought was that if you actually wanted to buy replicas, and were okay with gambling your money, it would be possible to buy the fake that pretends to be real, and then get refunded, you get a decent fake for free (minus risking your money). I guess you'd need to create new accounts as the pattern would become obvious over time, but I like the idea of fakers, and platforms that don't prevent it effectively paying the price rather than dumb consumers, especially since it reduces the utility of online shopping for me.

iav 5y ago

There is a similar publicly traded business - https://www.collectorsuniverse.com/ https://www.collectorsuniverse.com/

solidasparagus 5y ago

I don't fully understand this business and so it seems a little off to me. You claim: > An authenticator that has public, verifiable proof to their claim of expertise will be assigned to your order. Can you please share some of that public, verifiable proof? You are averaging $28 per order and you say you have a 'team' of experts to help you do authentication. Is an expert's time really worth so little that this price point is profitable? Or is authentication really that trivial to do? You only track revenue and net revenue and not profit. You are getting around $200k in revenue per year. It would be very enlightening to know the costs of the team of experts and now much of that revenue is profit. You seem to be running something like 6 other lines of businesses at the same time: - Layered Ink, a new way to do digital writing. - Price Unlock, a SaaS pricing tool. - Synergy, something that helps with decision making. - Dear Mom/Investor, writing up progress/financial number of your businesses for subscribers. - LegitCheck Price Comparison, a tool to find the lowest prices - LegitCheck Organizer, a reselling tool (without those unnecessary fees) To do that many things well would be extraordinary. Doing some brief investigation into your competitors, this industry seems to be full of companies putting forth an image that they are a large and respected team with real expertise, while further digging suggests they are one person writing their opinions of questionable value and calling them certificates of authenticity. Why should your users trust that you aren't another one of those companies? You claim expertise in 91 brands. In order to truly be able to authenticate those, it seems like it would require a good amount of expertise and time. You claim: > Real expertise, not self-claimed. > Find out the truth about your item and either start wearing it proudly or we’ll help you get your money back. > Our expertise is backed by the 1,000,000+ words we've written on this subject. but with all due respect, writing lots of blog posts is not a basis for 'real expertise' rather than 'self-claimed'. You could be an expert in authenticity for 91 brands (I have no idea), or you could be a rando on the internet regurgitating (mis)information found on the internet. Being good at something and getting noticed for talking about something a lot are different skill sets. Why should your users believe you have real expertise in all 91 of those brands?

dreamer7 5y ago
Some very good questions in this post that I would have also liked OP to answer. For context, I run a marketplace (https://vendiapp.com https://vendiapp.com) where we physically verify every product transacted on our platform. We are focussing on Phones and similar high value electronic products susceptible to fraud. And visual inspection is definitely not enough to detect fakes in this industry. Also, average cost of having external experts is more than $20. So, there is a need for deep tech and a great supply chain to make the unit economics work.

hnarn 5y ago

Short feedback: The phrasing in this message is a rollercoaster: https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-5.png https://bychgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-5.png You have to imagine someone paid money for this and is eagerly awaiting a response. Queue "I got an e-mail!": 1) Green checkbox: So the item is legit? 2) "Good news!", so it must be legit? 3) "the item is 100% fake" You should really consider changing the design and the tone of this message. People literally pay to get one answer so it should be the most obvious thing about the message.