North Face Jackets

In the late 1990s and early 2000s with the rise of wilderness chic, The North Face became a well-known brand and its popularity, especially among youth and college students, increased substantially. Due to the high demand for and the high prices of these products, a market developed for counterfeit (illegally replicated) The North Face goods. Sold on eBay or in other unregulated venues, counterfeits can usually be detected by their misplacement of logos and obvious inferiority of craftsmanship. In addition to this, many counterfeit The North Face products are not made of Gore-Tex or HyVent, despite being so marked.
For the same reasons that The North Face products are counterfeited, they are also prime targets for theft. In early 2005, a group of teenagers from Washington D.C. were arrested on charges including the armed robbery of specifically The North Face jackets from randomly picked students on the street.Allegedly, the thieves would then resell the products for a substantially decreased price.
The massive counterfeiting has prompted the creation of a website with information for consumers intending to purchase North Face items online in 2004. In August 2007, Businessweek interviewed the owner and featured the site in one of their articles.