Chinese manufacturers are using TikTok to sell low-cost luxury dupes directly to Americans, claiming ties to major brands amid rising U.S. tariffs, reports Sapna Maheshwari and Ang Li at the New York Times. Influencers are promoting the products, driving downloads of Chinese shopping apps, despite concerns over counterfeits and trade tensions.
Chinese manufacturers are flooding TikTok and other social media apps with direct appeals to American shoppers, urging people to buy luxury items straight from their factories. And amid the threats of sky-high tariffs on Chinese exports, Americans seem to be all in.
Retail experts — and vendors in China — say it’s unlikely that the most viral videos, which claim to be manufacturers for brands like Lululemon and Hermes, are peddling authentic products from those labels. […]
The volume of TikTok videos urging users to source products directly from Chinese factories soared almost 250 percent during the week of April 13, according to Margot Hardy, an analyst at Graphika, a social network analysis firm. On TikTok, the hashtag #ChineseFactory had 29,500 posts on April 23; on Instagram, it had 27,300 posts. […]
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