Why Buy Genuine Brands?

Reasons Why You Should Only Buy Genuine Brand Costumes - Find Out More!
11 November 2020 338 view(s)

The Advantages of Buying Genuine Brands vs Cheap Copies

What are the advantages of buying the real thing and how do you know?

The world of online shopping is growing at an incredible rate, and there is so much that you can easily buy now that 10 years ago, you could not. Mostly, it is a fun and convenient way to shop for almost anything you want or need, and this includes costumes, sexy costumes and fancy dress. There are lots of great reasons to buy your costumes online, it is cheaper and easier because you don't need to drive to a lot of shops and then sort out what they have. Online you can simply search for what you want and find it instantly.

In the costume industry, you will find that at least half the online retailers are genuine and stock genuine brands, above board retailers of great costume brands (and some cheaper ones!). You pretty well know what you will receive after you have placed your order because it will look like the photo you saw on the website. However, this is not always the way it works. There are many stores that are selling fakes instead of genuine brands, most know it, but some are novices to the industry and they don't realise that when they buy their stock from Chinese 'wholesalers', they are buying replicas, and then selling them to you!

So what is the problem with replicas compared with genuine brands? They are cheaper that is for sure, but you know the saying, 'you get what you pay for'! They cost less because they are not up to the standard of the originals, if they look at all like the photos that the retailers use illegally to represent them! These are the risks you take by buying cheap copies instead of genuine brands:

  1. It might not be a copy at all! The costume you recieve often looks completely different to the costume in the beautiful photo that was taken by the brand of costume that has been copied.

  2. Copies of costumes are most often 'copied' very badly. When the manufacturing of Western themes (all of our fancy dress costumes are very western themes) is left to people of cultures that do not really understand our western culture or history, then you end up with some very strange variations on the original. For instance a 'Cleopatra' costume in blue and yellow instead of white and gold; the manufacturer thought the 'dress' would look nice that way!

  3. The quality of the copies compared with genuine brands are often very poor, again this is why they are so cheap - if it looks too good to be true.....with copies there is not a brand name with a reputation to protect ensuring the quality is high. Remember that costumes are not a mainstream clothing industry, these are not made in the tens of 1000's like your jeans or t-shirts - so therefore the cost to manufacture them is much higher than your clothing - it is not reasonable to believe that you will get a high quality costume for $30-$45 - it just can't be done!

  4. The sizing and fit of copies compared with genuine brands is often very wrong. Besides the fact that they are mostly made in 'one size fits all' aka 6-10 or 12 -14 when it is not appropriate to size the costume that way, they are often very ill fitting.

Genuine Brands vs Fake Brands

Of course, even with imitation costumes you can get lucky, but you definitely take a risk by chancing it!

How can you tell if a store has genuine brands or not? Ask! If they can tell you the brand, then google the costume to see if others are also selling it in the same configuration (same sizes available, same configuration - see below). There are of course variations in pricing, many brands of fancy dress and sexy costumes are sourced from USA so it depends on exchange rates at the time of importing etc, but there still should not be an enormous variance in prices. If one retailer is consistently 1/2 the price of others, they are replicas or they are going out of business and selling at cost!

When it comes to configurations, it is easy to tell a copy if the genuine brands are a 2 piece set with a top and skirt and the replica is a one piece dress!

Of course there are also lower quality, one time wear costumes around that are not made by any 'brands' at all, they are sold generically, and very often in your local 'cheap store'. These are more in the category of 'toy/costume' than 'clothing/costume' and are great if you need to keep to a budget. Many of our lower cost costumes on Heaven Costumes are at, or not much above this level and you can tell by the price if the costume falls into this category. The issue of replica vs genuine brands is only an problem if you really want a great quality reusable costume that looks like the photo representing it.

Once you have your costume, it is easy to tell if you have been cheated. Does the costume look like the photo? What is the brand name on it? How was the costume packaged? All genuine brands use a quality hanging display bag for their costume with resealable poppers to close them. They have large printed retail cards in the front of the packaging with large glossy photos of the costume and the brand logos and costume details. And of course the brand name label is sewn into the costume. If your costume doesn't sound like this, then it is most likely not the genuine brand!

If you need any assistance with brand information or have questions about any particular products, please feel free to contact us.

Happy Shopping!

©Copyright Heaven Costumes Pty Ltd. All text and images on this website are the property of Heaven Costumes Pty Ltd. Copying of our text or images without our express permission is illegal.

Comments
Leave your comment
Your email address will not be published
Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×