If you are a professional chef you may be familiar with the typical scenario knock on the back door or someone asking you to spare a few minutes to see what is in the boot of the car. Whatever the approach, the story is the same. “Genuine knives at a discount!” “Direct from the manufacturer!” “Surplus stock but be quick, cash only.” Well, the knives are bound to be cheap as they were probably made in a Chinese factory for a few pence and the edge will only last a short time, despite the logo on the blade. In fact, it is normally the case that the knives are so inferior that they do not even justify the bargain price paid for them.
In another example, you may have visited a trade fair or exhibition and been approached by someone offering the deal of a lifetime. The story goes “I’m an exhibitor and its time to pack up. We have items out of their packaging/cant be bothered to transport the knives back to the warehouse, interested in these?” For cash, of course. But of course, they are fake knives, made in the same type of factory as the first example and made of inferior materials.
Yoshikin, the manufacturers of Global, have also found many examples of counterfeit products on internet auction sites such as eBay, even though the sellers claim that the products are genuine and legal. The products may be cheaper but for good reason…they are vastly inferior, incorporating cheap steel, poor manufacturing standards and blades that will not hold an edge for more than a couple of uses. These illegal reproductions are often offered as a collection of knives in a black knife roll or case…so beware ! Recently, there have been a number of warnings published on this subject and now some auction dealers split these knife collections to sell them as individual items. It should be noted that Global is an EU registered trademark, despite the fact that some counterfeit products have duplicated this protected trademark. Other reproductions may be labelled with ‘Global Chef’ or ‘Global Professional’, which have no association with Global Knives although every effort has been made to pass the reproduction off as a genuine product.
