Hermès handbags, Birkenstocks, Tide Pods, Lululemon activewear, and mountains of luxury furniture — what if I told you you could cut out the middleman and buy it straight from the source for a fraction of the cost?
So goes a genre of viral videos cropping up on social media that claim to show Chinese manufacturers producing the products beloved by American consumers. The videos have cheery background music, some light editing, and are delivered in English, clearly targeting American shoppers. In one clip on TikTok, a man holds up an array of shoes that look like Birkenstock’s Boston model. Instead of the $165 full price, @china.yiwu.factor’s version is only $10 a pair. The video garnered six million views before being deleted.
“Chinese manufacturers outing luxury brands is my new favourite TikTok,” one comment reads. “Let’s start skipping these retail stores and buy right from the source,” says another user. The videos are perfectly crafted to elicit maximum emotions from American viewers overwhelmed by tariff anxiety and political upheaval.
As Trump upends the global economy using the threat of arbitrary and severe tariffs, including a 145 percent tax on Chinese goods, millions of Americans are coming to a realization: we depend on China for a lot of stuff. Our phones and computers, shoes, clothing, home appliances, and more are manufactured in China. It’s against this backdrop that Chinese factory videos are enticing US shoppers with promises of bargains — but it’s not as simple as the clips make it out to be.
Take, for example, the $10 Birkenstocks. According to the company’s website, the Boston clog is made in Germany, not China, and Birkenstock positions itself as resisting the offshoring of its production. It’s true that sometimes product components are made in a manufacturing hub like China and then shipped elsewhere to be finished or assembled, thus getting the designation “Made in Italy,” for example. It’s also true that even when luxury goods are made in other countries shoppers associate with quality or craftsmanship, it’s often underpaid Chinese employees doing the work in European countries. As shoppers have gotten a closer look into the manufacturing systems through investigative reporting and workers’ accounts, they’ve learned to be skeptical — even indignant — of manufacturing claims, especially for luxury goods. Under this mindset, every company is ripping you off and it makes perfect sense that leather sandals and shoes marked “Made in Germany” are actually cheaply produced in China. But a little digging suggests the Chinese “Birkenstock” factory TikToks are not what they appear to be.
The @china.yiwu.factor TikTok account links out to an AliExpress storefront that sells what it says are suede slip-on shoes for around $15. At first glance, they look like Birkenstocks — but the devil is in the details. Photos in customer reviews show that some shoes are branded Kidmi, not Birkenstock, while others have no brand label at all. The soles are a different design and the buckles are stamped Kidmi as well. The AliExpress storefront also lists Birkenstock lookalike sandals that bear yet another brand, Orado. On these shoes, the difference is even more stark: instead of Birkenstock’s signature moulded footbed, these sandals look smooth and slippery. The bottom soles appear to be the wrong color. Both the Kidmi and Orado shoes are sold on Amazon at a slightly higher price point.
Birkenstock and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
All signs point to the conclusion that the Birkenstock “factory” is producing dupes of the recognizable shoe at a fraction of the cost using visually similar but substantively different materials. If you buy the TikTok “Birkenstocks” you will probably get an OK version that someone on the street would not even notice is a dupe — that doesn’t make them Birkenstocks. But the belief that you are a savvy shopper that just “cut out the middleman” for the real thing might be reward enough.
Americans are the biggest buyers in the world, and we have become accustomed to wild deals, bottom of the barrel prices, and diminished quality in exchange for the ability to buy a whole lot of stuff. In a TikTok video by user @luoluo.sunny, a woman sits in front of a wall of fake Louis Vuitton totes and Hermès Mini Kelly bags, which command around $30,000 on the secondhand market and are notoriously difficult to purchase in-store even when you have the money. “Hello boss!” the woman says. “Do you like Mini Katie? Follow me.” She holds up the tiny purses in bright pink and blue colorways, protective wrapping still on the handles and metal clasps. It looks like she’s in a mall of some sort where the social order of conspicuous consumption has been flipped upside down: “designer” bags hanging on hooks and piled into bursting cardboard boxes.
That some shoppers buy into the fantasy that a $2 Hermès bag is a substitute for the real thing suggests the true cost (and the more debatable “value”) of a product is lost on many Americans who have never stepped foot on a factory floor. And as long as we can buy dozens of $2 handbags that imitate a luxury product, perhaps we can temporarily forget that rent has skyrocketed and the national minimum wage has not increased in 15 years.
Ironically, these direct-to-consumer imitation goods are poised to skyrocket in price regardless, thanks to Trump’s taxes. If you ordered, say, 10 of the $2 handbags and had them shipped directly to your home, your package will get hit with tariffs of either 120 percent of the package’s value or a flat rate of $100 per package, depending on what option the shipper has selected. For that cost, a US buyer could instead purchase a decent leather bag on the secondhand market.
Even if most people never buy products from the TikTok factory accounts, the messaging is beneficial to China. As US soft power wanes under Trump, there is an opening for other countries, especially China, to swoop in — whether that’s in providing foreign aid where the US has backed out or encouraging Americans to visit China to buy furniture for cheap and ship it back home in crates. “This is how you win a trade war,” a comment under a furniture manufacturers’ video says.
Elsewhere, there were jokes of the TikTok algorithm suddenly serving up countless factory videos, riffing on the assertion by US lawmakers that the app is a Chinese propaganda machine.
“I feel like TikTok has switched to Chinese servers overnight,” one viewer said. “And I’m not complaining.” The comment was liked more than 100,000 times.
