Two restaurateurs in New York City, Tom and Anthony Martignetti announced this month that they are opening a new restaurant on Canal Street. The interesting thing about this new, unnamed restaurant is that it is set to be located right in the middle of Canal Street’s “Counterfeit Triangle” district. A few years ago, this group of storefronts was a hub for all things counterfeit, until a major raid by law enforcement officials in 2008. The estimated value of the raid was over $1 million. According to a NY Times article, the stores were required “to replace the counterfeit vendors with legitimate businesses and pay a substantial fine to the city before the buildings can be reopened.”  Last year the property owners agreed to pay the city for the right to reopen them.

(Image taken from NY Times article)

The community of downtown residents fully supports the addition of such a positive establishment. The new restaurant is certainly contributing to an urban renewal of Canal Street. From a street full of 32 criminally run bodegas, Canal Street is starting to perk up. With the “Counterfeit Triangle” gone, the destroyed brick storefronts are slowly looking more optimistic. Criminal activity has decreased making the neighborhood much safer and allowing businesses to move in that can actually contribute to the economy instead of take away jobs and taxes from New York City. We are excited to see the changes Canal Street will endure over the next few years as it tries to rebuild and become more appealing to the community.

When Englishman John Donne famously wrote that no person is an island, it’s likely he wasn’t thinking about an actual land mass. It’s also likely he wasn’t thinking specifically about his neighbors in Ireland. And though it's been said that the only things on the Emerald Isle you’ll run into as frequently as poets may be barstools (or perhaps some combination of the two), the fake trade has brought yet another poet’s words to bear on Hibernia. As described in a recent piece that ran in the Irish Independent, the country’s counterfeiting problem is expanding.

Now, where sham goods are concerned, it would seem no island is…well…an island, either.

Celine Naughton’s fine survey ably shifts apertures between the global and local effects of the epidemic and focuses firmly on how the purchase of phony goods via the internet has been so detrimental to business that the Irish Fashion and Footwear Federation, the trade group representing the industry’s retailers, will shut down because many of the organization’s members can’t afford to remain with them. It’s a compelling portrait of how difficult competition has become for legitimate businesses.
 
Naughton is similarly concerned about the second party retailers and e-tailers who are being undercut by counterfeiters to the point that wholesale prices can’t compete. When legitimate smaller players are forced out of the space, it is not only the selection of goods available to the public that shrinks, but, as is always the case with sham products, the quality is atrocious.
 
The manufacture and sale of counterfeit goods injures nearly every party along the production and distribution chain. We say ‘nearly’ because, like any illegal activity, there are always a few criminal masterminds who benefit immensely. But together, we can curb their illicit profits. Share your knowledge of the counterfeiting industry with friends and family and encourage them to pass it along to others. Each time our collective awareness stops the purchase of a counterfeit item, we get closer to stalling the demand for these sham goods entirely. Stop the demand and the supply will follow. Instantly.
 
Just because the fake trade hides in the shadows doesn't mean we can't talk about it in vivid terms.  So keep having these conversations. Anything that helps fight this epidemic is poetry to our ears.

Image from NASA's Earth Observatory 

Native American artisans in Gallup, New Mexico explained to a local paper, The Independent, that vendors peddling knockoffs of their carefully constructed folk art at half the price are hurting both their business and the art itself. Earl’s, an establishment in the town that sells authentic Navajo pottery and more, has begun a serious crackdown on any vendors attempting to pass off fakes as the real thing.

“Most of the vendors here have been here for 30 to 40 years,” said storeowner Ralph Richards. “They’ve got families. They’ve got kids in school and they’re just trying to make a living.”

“That’s all we ask is tell the consumers the truth,” Richards said of the counterfeiters selling knockoff folk art.

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