The other day I was siting next to a lady on my flight back home, and as normal we started talking about life in Kazakhstan... and eventually our discussion turned towards fake products. Now it is quite common to find fake products at the markets in almost every country. But to my surprise, she mentioned that she bought a high-end product from a local cosmetics store that specialise in upper-end products and found it to be a fake! She mentioned that she was using this specific product line for many years and immediately could feel that the consistency of the product was not right. Imagine paying top dollar (everything is overpriced here) for a product and finding out it is not even the real thing!
I was quite surprised to which retailer she referred to...as I am also a frequent customer of that establishment, and worst of all, I have bought many gifts for friends from that retailer across Almaty.
Since then, I have been made aware by various local friends that you could easily end up buying a fake product from a legitimate store... I am not talking about kiosks at the markets, but actual stores in shopping centres. Now it could easily be that the retailer changed suppliers and was unaware of the inferior quality.
Personally, I do not think that supply chain management is a strong aspects in corporate cultures of especially retailers here in Kazakhstan.... and it is just plain stupidity when retailers do not buy brands from the recommended supplier!
One option that many foreigners take is the "wait until you are back home" option, but this is not always practical. So, this had me thinking, where can I buy cosmetics and minimise the fear of paying a high-end price for an inferior product. Having raised this question with various local friends, the best suggested I got was Strawberrynet.
Strawberry.net guarantees that they only supply original items, and their prices look good too!!
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