[HN Gopher] My service to check whether an item is counterfeit o...
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My service to check whether an item is counterfeit or not
Author : chdaniel
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-05-08 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bychgroup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bychgroup.com)
| nvarsj wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| magneticnorth wrote:
| 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.
| ohadpr wrote:
| 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?
| chdaniel wrote:
| 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!
| koreanguy wrote:
| 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
| mrtksn wrote:
| 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.
| FlagBrigade wrote:
| 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.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| The username would seem to provide a golden path for
| harassment. The reason, though, makes sense.
| matsemann wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yep, I like the writing style too. Upvoted but don't know if
| this will help.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It takes a lot of upvotes to cancel out flags,
| unfortunately.
| chdaniel wrote:
| 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
| chdaniel wrote:
| It's true that the title was sensationalistic, and I'm the OP.
| I probably hang too much in the 'build in public' sphere where
| it's all about the numbers
|
| I mean it'd obviously benefit me more if we kept the old title,
| but that'd be too much me, and too little for the community
|
| Title got corrected and I'm actually grateful the post wasn't
| fully taken down (or that I wasn't banned)
|
| EDIT: And thanks for the comment below saying u upvoted!
| guerrilla wrote:
| I flagged it originally because at a glance it looks exactly
| like a scam. I unflagged it after seeing people actually having
| a discussion about it and saying there's something to it.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| 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?
| chdaniel wrote:
| 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
| iandinwoodie wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Codesleuth wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/) - 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| chdaniel wrote:
| It's exactly what we aim for!
|
| That's why we never considered charging for our guides,
| even something as little as $1 - The point was to allow
| people to inform themselves about fakes, with as little
| friction as possible
|
| That way, if we bump the % of people who get scammed by
| even a few negative points, we'd still be happy for a
| positive contribution
| raldi wrote:
| Do counterfeiters ever use your service to find ways to improve
| their impersonations?
| xzel wrote:
| Sneaker counterfeiters generally don't care all that much about
| pass authentication checks. For shoes, and most clothing, they
| care more about time to market (getting their fake out before
| or near release date) and price point. If someone is wearing
| fake shoes, unless they're outlandishly fake (there were some
| hot pink fake yeezys I've seen more than one), you mostly
| likely won't be able to spot these imperfections from a
| distance. Also, unless you're in the niche you probably won't
| care if they're real or fake. I'd liken this to hanging prints
| of famous paintings; people like the look but might not want to
| shell out for a Picasso.
|
| I work with shoes on a daily basis and have done/do auth
| checks.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| Yeah unfortunately this is true. There are absolutely fakes
| that get passed through StockX/GOAT/eBay and even
| sneakerheads wouldn't guess. Some are even made on the same
| production lines with the same staff, etc, according to some
| people in the rep industry (yeah that's weaselly, sorry). I
| have disputed purchases when I got inauthentic items but they
| were fairly obvious.
| chdaniel wrote:
| /u/not-math put it perfectly in the reply
| not_math wrote:
| I feel like it's not a knowledge problem to the counterfeiters,
| but more of how the economics work in counterfeits.
|
| A lot of people are ready to pay for a 20$ 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.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Using this image as an example:
|
| 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 wrote:
| There's even more info for them in any of the guides:
| 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/
|
| Partly answered here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090248
|
| Partly answered by someone else here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27089111
| walrus01 wrote:
| 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.
| 101008 wrote:
| 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)
| chdaniel wrote:
| > It may be easy to differentiate with counterfeit shoes, but
| what happens with art pieces, books, collectors' items in
| general?
|
| We don't do art or books, but we do some collectors' items
|
| > What happens when a buyer disputes a counterfeit item with
| their "message" and the seller doesn't agree?
|
| We ourselves can help if the customer paid via paypal/credit
| card -- we've got the service mentioned in the article, which
| gets people's money back with 99.9% success rate, which we also
| guarantee it (so if it doesn't get your money back from the
| bank or from PayPal, we refund the $60 you paid us)
|
| But yes -- if you've been scammed by a malevolent seller, they
| might even believe the 'message' (they themselves know the item
| is fake anyway) and not care to do anyhting
| bradleyjg wrote:
| First edition Harry Potter books are worth thousands of
| dollars?!? I'm assuming that's only in mint condition but wow.
| bombcar wrote:
| First edition first volume was a much smaller print run than
| subsequent volumes.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| So if I bought the first day it was available, that's not
| necessarily first edition?
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| 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.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| The bigger issue is that the good counterfeits can get PSA or
| BGS graded (either officially, or a fake slab). PSA guarantees
| that their graded cards are genuine but Beckett does not.
|
| With an Alpha Black Lotus going for over $500K, it's only a
| matter of time before undetectable counterfeits exist.
| rasz wrote:
| 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?
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| My main problem with counterfeit cards is when someone pays
| for authentic cards but they receive counterfeits instead. If
| both parties knowingly buy and sell counterfeit cards I don't
| have any problem with it.
|
| In addition to counterfeits not being tournament playable,
| they are not collectable either. It feels good to own/play
| cards which are rare, valuable, and a part of MTGs history.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Black lotus is illegal in tournament play except for
| Vintage.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| " _Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| chdaniel wrote:
| @"I imagine most people buying Yeazys don't have an authentic
| pair to compare with." -- that's right! It's the position I was
| in, which is what I come close to mentioning in the article:
| it's why I made the app in the first place.
|
| So even better than that would be a public guide where both the
| fake and the real are. That, plus somebody who's put in the
| hours to do a thorough job to explain the differences they've
| found.
|
| @MTG - Somebody was just telling me the other day about these
| perfect (or 99% perfect) clones of Warhammer figurines. I
| didn't even know they can reach $1,000+ figures, but hey, with
| today's asset products, that doesn't surprise me.
|
| Magic The Gathering, Pokemon games (not cards -- we've covered
| a free guide on that), Warhammer -- it seems like sky is the
| limit really. Whatever can be replicated and is worth $200+
| _will be_ replicated IMO
|
| > I'm wondering how "counterfeit aware" payment processors
| (VISA, Mastercards, etc) are becoming?
|
| A bit more! They trust our Certificate with less pushback these
| days, more than 2 years ago, when we discovered our Certificate
| can get people's money back. We guarantee the Certificate
| nonetheless, so if it doesn't get your money back from the bank
| or from PayPal, we refund the $60 you paid us.
|
| I know you said payment processors, but it's the banks
| (exception: AMEX) that are responsible for that segment of the
| transaction, AFAIK -- with chargebacks and what have you
|
| But if there would be an easily integrable solution for
| banks/payment processors, I can see them moving vertically into
| that
| whalesalad wrote:
| I still don't really understand what this person is selling.
| chdaniel wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| chdaniel wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| mtalantikite wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| the_local_host wrote:
| Even after understanding that the service is about
| distinguishing fake from legitimate products, I still don't
| know what an "order note" is.
| chdaniel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Diminishing returns on perfection.
| dpritchett wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| See 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 wrote:
| 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
| acmecorps wrote:
| Congrats on being on the HN homepage! :). I'm wondering tho
| - does this check if a website that claims to be selling
| something online is a scam or not?
| chdaniel wrote:
| Thanks a bunch ACME Corps! I see you everywhere lol
|
| Nope, we don't check for that. Others might do but that's
| outside our area of expertise.
|
| We pretty much authenticate what we ourselves have
| 'earned' the right to authenticate, by covering the item
| in a free, public guide first:
| https://legitcheck.app/explore-the-library/
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| chdaniel wrote:
| No offense taken! Especially since you're right
|
| We are a scrappy company and we're looking to mature,
| given the figures we've done the last year. I'd love to
| know if you'd still have the same opinion after going
| through our customer workflow
|
| (since yes, what we've discussed is our internal
| workflow)
| lazide wrote:
| I wasn't able to find a way to your customer
| experience/UI workflow the first time I read the article
| (which is odd - you have some words that seemed to
| clearly be intended to be links to it, but they were dead
| to me). Second time, I just went to your footer to your
| holding company, and was able to figure out the actual
| product from the list there. I didn't download it though.
| I also figured out that some of your links ARE live, just
| not the ones I expected, and will take me to the app.
| Despite being interested at the beginning, I lost
| momentum and stopped.
|
| You clearly have a viable product, and have already
| started doing some solid sales despite having no sales
| (or marketing) expertise - which is great, and you're in
| an awesome place!
|
| The next challenges are finding and scaling more ways to
| reach customers, conveying the value you can provide them
| in a way they can understand at scale, and converting
| those 'take my money!' potential folks into actual
| orders. Then executing on them at scale, of course.
|
| The sales and the execution side are separate sets of
| expertise. Managing people from those backgrounds to get
| what you want is also a challenge for most
| execution/technical founders. Most folks with your
| background and having done what you have, will be quite
| comfortable with the execution side and people who also
| like it.
|
| If you think of it as a computing system, you've got a
| great 32 core machine with an awesome GPU and 32GB of
| memory. You're bottlenecking on the 80's era Amiga tape
| drive you somehow managed to boot off of.
|
| If you get yourself even a halfway decent 20GB drive from
| a decade+ ago, you'll be doing leaps and bounds more
| business. If you find a modern SSD, even more.
|
| There are a number of books out there for how to do sales
| as a technical founder, I can try to dig one up if you're
| interested.
| chdaniel wrote:
| You're clearly having _some_ experience, if not lot
|
| Is there any chance I can get your mentorship over a vid
| call? No commitment for more
|
| The 32-core, 32 GB of memory made sense to me
|
| EDIT: Just to not risk losing this in a not-seen-HN-reply
| -- if yes, let me know where I can reach out, or my
| Twitter is this: https://twitter.com/chddaniel
| paulpauper wrote:
| You do realize he is making almost $200k profit. I think
| he knows what he is doing
| onlyfortoday2 wrote:
| exactly LOL HN
| lazide wrote:
| Not if he could be making half a billion if he could
| articulate what he does?
|
| The thread and feedback/discussion is clearly helping, as
| he's getting a lot clearer on what he actually does and
| what the value is.
|
| But my point stands. With someone who has business and
| sales sense, he could be doing dramatically better.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Headline sounds like some get rich quick scheme but really
| the product being sold is a tremendous amount of knowledge
| and expertise about product manufacturing.
| chdaniel wrote:
| Hmm, defo didn't meant to come across that way
|
| In all honesty, the post got inspired by this HackerNews
| hall-of-famer:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132
|
| It sounded like an interesting story
|
| As we leave our scrappiness behind soon, I thought some
| hackers would like to hear our (scrappy) story
| dang wrote:
| We can restore the post but I'm not sure what an accurate
| title would be. What are some options for an accurate
| title? (Edit: I've pinched tyingq's from upthread for
| now.)
|
| "I sell onions on the internet" is a fine HN title; it's
| unusual and intriguing without being overly sensational.
| "How I made $XXX per year" is not a good HN title; it's
| extremely common and $sensational $dollars are
| $sensational. But don't worry--it's far more important
| that the article itself be good!
| chdaniel wrote:
| Then it's my mistake -- probably I spent too much time in
| the 'build in public' bubble which is all about the
| numbers, and I forgot to get myself out of that bubble
|
| I'd change the title to "I authenticate items for
| strangers for a living" -- but if that doesn't fit
| either, the current title is ok
|
| Thanks Dan!
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| I'm pinched your phrase for the title above, since the
| original was baity and probably provoked the flags. Thanks!
| koreanguy wrote:
| 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 .
| ww520 wrote:
| 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.
| redwood wrote:
| Why would you tell the world your business model?
| chdaniel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The moat seems to be the actual expertise.
|
| See one of their guides: https://legitcheck.app/guides/fear-of-
| god/fake-vs-real-nike-...
| jmchuster wrote:
| Right, it looks their business model is actually
|
| 1) Becoming the world's leading expert on a topic
|
| 2) Share and spread that knowledge, until you have publicly
| cemented your place as an expert
|
| 3) Start charging for services that require usage of your
| expertise
| chdaniel wrote:
| OP here.
|
| A pretty fair model if you ask me! I think generally we
| move more towards that model as the internet progresses
|
| To me, before starting this, it looked like all the ones
| who made a noticable bump did it this way. It's why we hate
| Instagram gurus, I'd say
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| There is a lot of niche FB groups who know their
| products/hobbies.
|
| I was just about to drop FB, but the groups are handy.
| nkrisc wrote:
| What's to protect? There's no secret. You send them pictures
| and money and they tell you if it's fake or not. There's no
| secret sauce beyond their personal knowledge.
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