Samsung announced its collaboration with Supreme in Beijing on Monday, December 10, but hypebeasts everywhere didn't like it. Everyone was surprised when the multinational conglomerate company partnered with the makers of the fashion brand's counterfeit products based in Italy.
Supreme Italia is a legal and authorized brand that sells fake products in Italy. It has beaten the original Supreme NYC in a court ruling this summer as they rivaled who could use the brand name in Barletta. James Jebbia founded the authentic skateboard brand in 1994.
At the end of the conference, which launched the Galaxy A8s smartphone, Samsung China head of digital marketing Feng En invited two men to join him on stage. He introduced these guys as Supreme's CEOs, and they are both Chinese. The original brand's CEO, on the other hand, is white and British.
According to the South China Morning Post, one of the introduced CEOs wore a jacket from Supreme Spain. They then said that their brand would introduce crossover products with Samsung. They, too, revealed their plans to open a seven-story flagship store in Beijing and official stores on e-commerce platforms in the country.
Later, the original Supreme brand in the U.S. released a statement on Instagram about the collaboration. "Supreme is not working with Samsung, opening a flagship location in Beijing or participating in a Mercedes-Benz runway show," it said. "These claims are blatantly false and propagated by a counterfeit organization."
Upon knowing that Samsung collaborates with a fake Supreme brand, Chinese netizens criticized the electronic company's move. Some said that it was a joke, shameless, and disgrace to all Chinese people. Another one commented that the company just showed its attitude regarding "intellectual property."
In response, Samsung China digital marketing manager Leo Lau cleared in his now-deleted Weibo post that Samsung would collaborate with Supreme Italia and not with the original Supreme NYC brand. He then explained that the latter has "no sales and marketing authorization in China," but the counterfeit one has "product sales and market authorizations" in the Asia Pacific region, except Japan.
Supreme Italia breaks the lines of intellectual property law, per The Verge. It sequestered the original brand's trade dress and logos and registered it with its trademarks in Italy. It is even protected and favored by local laws in the country.
With its first major partner, Samsung, Supreme Italia is about to make its move to China in 2019. Although the company has yet to reveal what products it is going to sell, it looks like the announcement and the noise that comes with it successfully create hype.
