Recently there has been a proliferation of imitation Crocs in the market. The hot topic you can hear daily is “I bought a pair of Crocs for only RM35. It’s real one. The pasar malam guy told me Crocs is closing down and they are dumping their goods now”. Or “they are original Crocs but are rejects”. If the manufacturer of Crocs has that amount of rejects, then we have to think twice about wearing the original Crocs because there is no guarantee that a reject pair may just pass through the quality control.
I bought some 10 pairs back from Guangzhou recently and the shopkeeper also sold me the same line that they are originals. I bought them because they were cheap and were comfortable as well. I do own a pair of original Crocs and if I compare the fake to that of the original, I must say the fake pass the test. Until yesterday.
I can’t say the blister on my left foot was caused by the imitation Crocs but yesterday I had this challenge so I decided not to wear it to give the foot time to heal. I have seen bizarre pictures circulating on the net on how footwear from China created blisters on foot. So a note of caution here.
In the Star sometime in early September, they had an article on how to differentiate an original Crocs to that of a fake.
The originals come with the following :
1. The material, Crosslite, is odourless
2. Every pair of Crocs has its own barcode on its handtag. If you see the same serial number appearing on the same model or different model then you know you are the owner of a pair of imitation.
3, On the handtag of orignal Crocs are information of the model of the shoe, size and colour description.
Even with these guidelines there is no guarantee that you are buying a pair of original Crocs if you are not purchasing them from the authorised retailers. Just know what you are buying and don’t get sold.
