I am attached to Lacoste in Malaysia. I was checking on the effectiveness of marketing for Lacoste in Malaysia before I stumbled across this site. I can't help but to read all of the 11 pages of posting dated since 2009.

I registered after reading and as you can see, this is my first posting.

I am here to confirm 100% with you that the products sold in here are FAKE. I am impressed especially with the RED collection that is sold in here as the crocodile is getting better but still no where close to the real product. The earlier products that was offered are of a lower grade fake. This can be clearly seen by the crocodile. The real Lacoste crocodile logo is definitely the "SAME" globally. I have seen fake crocodiles with wider mouths, shorter legs, tail closer to the body, some thinner croc and some fatter croc.

Of coz there are a few ways in identifying between a REAL and a FAKE Lacoste. I am not going to share all of them in order to protect the interest of Lacoste. But one of them, as posted, is the button itself. Real Lacoste buttons are made of Mother of Pearl. You can identify this by looking at the back of the button. Another way, that you guys may have not noticed, is that the 2 holes on the button are sewn vertically.

I also would like to confirm here that there should not be 2 tags, no matter where you purchase the polo. There is ONLY 1 tag, on the polo, wether you are buying in Paris, Istanbul, Rome, New York or Japan. Many fake still carry the made in Peru because that is where the first few lacoste factories were located. But it has since evolved. With the high demand, factories are now located everywhere in the world with QC personnel just like any other luxury brands.

In terms of pricing, Singapore is definitely cheaper than us as they do not need to pay duty. However, starting Spring Summer 2011, you will find that the prices has dropped by 15% to 20% in line with the PM's announcement on the abolishment of duty in his recent Budget. The signature basic polo, L1212 would remain the same at RM299. We would not be able to drop much on the pricing due to the increase of cost for cotton. If you had visited Ralph Lauren recently, you will find that they had just increased their basic polo from RM300 to RM450. I would also foresee an increase in price this year for Lacoste in Singapore due to the increase in cotton. However, the good news is that we are not increasing, but decreasing, thanks to the abolishment of duty. Therefore, our prices would be nearly the same.

Lacoste is now currently on Sale, from 30% to 50% for the off season products. Not many left though. The basic polo with old season colors are selling at 30% discount. Again, not many color and sizes left.

As for L!VE, this is a new collection that is a continuity from RED. L!VE would eventually stand by itself as a category apart from the Lacoste mainline. L!VE is available from Spring Summer 2011 onwards and would only be found in Lacoste Sunway Pyramid boutique.

As for Outlet stores, if you had been reading the newspapers, there is a joint venture project between Genting and Chelsea Group (not the football club) to build an Outlet Village in Kulai, Johor. Many of the international brands would have their outlet store in the Village which iis called Johor Premium Outlet. Lacoste would have its first outlet store there and it targeted to open in November 2011.

I hope this clarify everything. i can't stop those who wish to purchase fake Lacoste at a cheaper price, but I would certainly want to educate those who are unaware that these are FAKE products.

Firstly, Lacoste do not allow damaged, overrun or whatsoever that the people claim to be sold or re-sold.

For damaged products, the distributor in each country has to cut the damaged item into pieces and to be verified by an ccountant before any refund would be given back to the dictributor. Therefore, damaged products should NOT be in the market.

Talking about overrun, I think we now have a problem of not having enough Lacoste products being supplied to the countries than having overrun! Lacoste DO NOT allow such sale. However, we cannot 100% control if there were leakage from producing factories that sold any of the items out cheaply to illegal resellers or parallel importers. But I can assure you, so far, what I see is FAKE and not overrun.

During my visit to Dataran Pahlawan, I stumbled across a shop that is well presented. In the shop, it sold brands like Lacoste, Tommy, AX, Ralph Lauren. I must say, I was shock to see that the crocodiles used in the apparel were close to real (or maybe real, if the logo's had been smuggled out). However, looking at the quality of finishing and some other details that I cannot reveal here, I conclude that they were FAKE eventhough the sales girl stated that they were old stocks to be cleared.

You can see that they had Chinese tags, so I preseumed they were imported from China.

My advice, only buy Lacoste from Lacoste boutiques and counter if you have doubt.