Original manduca®
A little warning to our fans and friends: Product piracy doesn't stop at manduca either.
It is a great evil of our time and the downside of globalization: brazen counterfeit products. Almost every company with rank and name has to fight with it - and unfortunately we at manduca have to fight with it, too.
Time and again, inferior copies of our baby carriers appear on dubious channels. Some look astonishingly similar to our original manduca baby carriers, others are easily recognized as fakes even by laymen.
All plagiarisms have one thing in common: they do not meet the high safety and quality standards we at manduca are committed to for all our products.
Before a new product from manduca goes on sale, it has undergone countless checks and safety tests. Every single shipment is checked by us to ensure that buckles and snap fasteners are correctly processed and that all safety seams are present. We regularly send random samples to recognised laboratories to have our fabrics and products tested for harmful substances. Our container deliveries must not be "fumigated" with fungicides. And our suppliers regularly provide us with certificates for all materials. As you know, manduca never uses conventional cotton, only organic cotton.
So we can say with a clear conscience in every carrying situation and under every weight load: In a manduca your baby sits safely and is protected and may also suck the fabric without any health hazard. This is not the case with copies.
We have already picked up fake baby carriers or received messages from customs about confiscated carriers whose buckles opened themselves under strain or whose back section was much shorter than an original manduca baby carrier. Not to mention suspicious odours that point to harmful substances or moulds. And organic cotton is certainly not used by counterfeiters.
But how do you recognize a counterfeit?
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As a general rule, caution is advised when your own intuition is already sending alarm signals. For example:
- Suspiciously cheap offers for new goods. We at manduca pursue a pricing policy that is owed to the high quality of our carriers. Skepticism is always appropriate when it comes to cheap offers.
- Sellers who work exclusively with prepayment and do not give out dealer addresses and contact addresses.
- Offers of baby carriers without cardboard box, packed only in plastic foil, offers of baby carriers without instructions or with only one instruction in English - our original baby carriers are always equipped with multilingual instructions.
- Baby carriers that smell strange when the packaging is opened
- Care should be taken with special offers via online platforms such as Ebay, Wallapop, Jofogas, etc, where serious and dubious sellers mix, as well as alleged original new goods via Facebook groups, Facebook marketplace or second-hand portals.
- Especially suspicious: All offers about Alibaba/Aliexpress and similar Chinese online malls that allegedly ship original new goods from China/Asia directly to Europe. At the moment (as of 2019), these are to be regarded as counterfeits in principle and without exception.
We at manduca also have official distributors and certified dealers in Asia who import our manduca baby carriers. However, these dealers only sell our manduca baby carriers within the countries and territories they represent, e.g. Singapore, Korea, etc. Our certified overseas dealers never ever export back to Europe. - Definitive counterfeits are offers with direct shipment from China of manduca baby carriers from the collections "First Limited Edition", "bellybutton by manduca", "First PureCotton" or "First BlackLine", as well as any design of the new "manduca XT". All these collections are made exclusively in Europe and have never been produced in China.
So what to do now?
In case of doubt: Buy your manduca either at your local authorized dealer or online via our website www.manduca.de and its links. If you are not sure about a (online) dealer, just ask us if we know this dealer and if we have him on our list. You can also register your baby sling at https://manduca.de/de/service-blog/mymanduca and enjoy the additional benefits of mymanduca care.
There you can also send photos of your manduca or links to a strange page, if you think something is strange and if you suspect a fake. Sometimes we see at first glance that something is not right. In case of doubt or questions please contact us directly in Marburg: service@manduca.de
So: Keep your eyes open - and don't let cheap offers dazzle you. If you notice suspicious products: A message to us would be great. This way we can work together to screw up the counterfeiters' business.