山寨无止境？从伪苹果专卖店谈起

你不得不佩服一些不只仿冒产品，甚至山寨整间专卖店的经营模式。 近日，一位生活在昆明的西方网友把其发现的假苹果电脑零售店的照片发表在博客上，北美和欧洲的媒体纷纷转载。昆明市工商局已要求该市的两家山寨苹果专卖店停业整顿。停业的原因不是版权问题，而是这两家商店没有经营执照。 事后证明，这些商店都没有获得任何来自苹果公司的授权。

假冒苹果商店外景wG1esmc

有关部门关闭了这些没有获得任何商业授权的商店。虽然这听起来有点像当初逮捕逃税的卡彭(Al Capone，美国禁酒令期间最大的黑帮头目)的情况，不过，这已经是当前他们所能做出的最明快处置了。事实上，没有人真正了解，一家商店的‘外观和感觉’在中国是否有版权或专利保障。这的确是两难的情况。

这些假冒苹果商店的员工都认为自己在为苹果工作wG1esmc

获得授权与否，是这整件事在供应链中引发有关仿冒争论的最关键因素。在零售或餐饮业中，特许经营权(或是授权)，意味着同意赋予私人营运业者转销售其品牌产品的权利，但却能同时维持其品牌水准。而在电子经销领域，获得特许经营权的经销商们可销售产品并成为制造商的代表。特许经销售可再授权经销售零组件，除了享有制造商的保固外，也包括其它特定权利，如退货或折扣等。 本文下一页：美国国防部关于授权经销商的政策 本文授权编译自EBN Online，版权所有，谢绝转载

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• iPad低价杀不死，白牌坐上平板电脑第二把交椅
• 深圳：寻找后山寨时代的第二春wG1esmc

{pagination} 美国国防部最近颁布了一项政策：其分包商的货源不得来自于非授权经销商。这不难理解：除了制造商，授权经销商是确保你能买到确实是工厂出品的正版产品的途径。然而，对经销商来说，情况却有点不同，经销商同样销售合法的产品，但却不一定有来自供货商的特许授权。 授权经销商一直努力将自己与‘掮客’划清界限，在我看来，他们也与许多非授权经销商有很大不同。掮客是投机主义者，他们可以从任何人手中买卖存货。掮客不需要成立一家有规模的公司，只需少数资本、电话、传真和网址即可。这类公司在2000/2001年科技产业泡沫化之前非常泛滥。许多掮客用低于市场标准的售价销售产品，或是以不可思议的高价来销售奇货可居的商品，而在10年前那场灾难后，大多数这类掮客都消失了。 授权经销商可以安心地对客户说，他们是唯一有供货商保证的产品供货来源。而像苹果专卖店，他们是从品牌商获得授权来销售商品。但这并不代表其它商店卖的就不是正版──很多工厂的库存产品也流入开放市场中。只要产品是正版的──就不用担心究竟是在哪间商店购买的吗？我现在还没办法回答这个问题，但我想听听各位读者看法：你对所谓的‘专营’卷标有什么看法？ 编译： Joy Teng 本文授权编译自EBN Online，版权所有，谢绝转载 参考英文原文：An Apple Store by Any Other Name...，by Barbara Jorgensen, EBN Community Editor

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• 苹果很忙，iPad没货这种小事先放一边
• iPad低价杀不死，白牌坐上平板电脑第二把交椅
• 深圳：寻找后山寨时代的第二春wG1esmc

{pagination} An Apple Store by Any Other Name... Barbara Jorgensen, EBN Community Editor You've got to hand it to any operation that can fake, not just a product, but an entire store. Five facilities in China purporting to be Apple Stores have been targeted by authorities as counterfeit. As it turns out, the stores weren't selling bogus products -- the stores themselves were fake. They weren’t operating under any kind of license from Apple Inc. Chinese authorities have moved to shut down the stores for not having the right business permits. While this sounds a bit like arresting Al Capone for tax evasion, it's the best they can do for the moment. Nobody's really clear on whether a store's "look and feel" can be copyrighted or patented in China. It's an interesting dilemma. This idea of licensing is one of the key issues driving the counterfeiting debate in the supply chain. In the retail or restaurant business, franchises (or licenses) are granted to private owners that agree to resell the products associated with the brand, while maintaining the brand's standards. In electronics distribution, franchises are granted by suppliers to distributors and manufacturers' reps. Franchises allow distributors to resell components, pass on the manufacturer's warranty, and provide certain other rights such as returns or discounts. They are in many ways worth their weight in gold: In the days when certain suppliers wouldn't be sold alongside others, franchises could make or break a distribution company. Nowadays they are being used in an equally high-stakes battle: authorized versus non-authorized distribution. The US Department of Defense has recently enacted a policy that its subcontractors cannot source from non-authorized distributors. This is understandable: Aside from the manufacturer, authorized distribution is the only way to guarantee you are buying factory-made product. But this is a tough situation for distributors that resell legitimate products but may not be franchised by suppliers. EBN will tackle that subject in a Live Chat Thursday, July 28, at noon with SolTec CEO Dawn Gluskin. Log in here to join us. Authorized distribution has worked hard to distinguish itself from "brokers," which in my mind differ from many non-authorized distributors. Brokers are opportunistic buyers and sellers that purchase inventory from anyone who is selling it. It doesn't take much to set up a broker firm: A little money upfront and a phone, fax, and URL, and you're pretty much in business. This kind of company deluged the electronics industry before the tech bubble burst in 2000/2001 and a lot of buyers got burned. Brokers sold product for less than market price; sold hard-to-find products at a massive profit; and then many disappeared off the face of the Earth. They deservedly earned the reputation for being less than reliable sources of product (and selling less than reliable products). Authorized distributors can safely say they are the only source of supplier-guaranteed products. Like the Apple Stores, they are licensed by the brand owners to resell their wares. This doesn't necessarily mean other stores don't sell legitimate products -- there is a lot of factory-made inventory floating around in the open market. As long as the product is authentic, does is matter which store you buy it from? I can't answer that question, but I'd like to hear from readers: What is that "franchised" label worth to you?