Beware the Fakes

Did you find an awesome statue of Odin with a price to good to be true? Maybe some cheap jewelry? There’s a reason for that: theft. The internet is plagued now with online shopping sites like Temu, Wish, Shein, Aliexpress, and far, far more. If the website url seems odd, or gibberish or some mash up of a real word then random junk, you’re being scammed. If product description fails to tell you materials used, you definitely are. These sites take other designs, artwork, goods and recreate inferior knock-offs without any financial compensation to the original artist or business. They then sell the fakes reaping profits while the original artist loses out on sales, impacting their livelihood. These sites also now have access to your credit card information, and personal information… everything they need to steal from you sooner or later too.

Online Store with stolen photos (scraped from the official store) selling cheap knockoffs

Above is something that popped up in my Facebook feed. The statues look amazing, and that sale is an eye-catching discount, the problem was I had been looking at the real storefront earlier in the day, and I immediately recognized it for what it was: stolen. I reached out to the Ukrainian artist responsible for the real work, Oleksandr Yankovyi. He sells wood carved Pagan statues through his official storefront on Etsy: ZagravaWorkshop. He indicated they stole the photos, not only his photos from the product listing, but even some of the customer shots. While they use his photos to market and use in product listings, he provided me with a photo, “what they actually sell is this” which are cheap, resin (not wood) statues of his stolen designs.

These knock offs are hideous. The design theft is horrible enough, but what they did to the artist’s beautiful work is terrible too. 😞But look at the stats on the knock-off site: the Norse statues in the last month sold 3 thousand units (cumulatively of the Odin, Thor, Freya or Loki statues), and they had over 14,000 shares across social media. It’s unclear if they’re only counting the 19 days of November so far, or if that’s sales in the last 30 days. If those stats are real (and not some engineered gimmick designed to get you to purchase), they sold around $60,000 -$69,000 gross profit (varying on if someone purchased one statue, or multiples where a bundle discount comes into play). Even taking into consideration they’d have out of pocket costs to manufacture the cheap knock offs, they’re probably pocketing between $40,000 -$55,000 in net profit in just one month (based on a typical 60-80% profit margins for mass manufactured goods). In a year if you had steady sustained sales, that’s around $480,000 – $660,000 net profit. Near half a million dollars, or more.. Money like that would be revolutionary for artists serving our community.

Knock-Off Product listing with data on sales and social media shares

This is not a victim-less crime. Not only is this impacting the artist, customers are not getting what they think they bought, and in many cases these websites and stores are being run by Chinese companies (even though some hide behind names supposedly based elsewhere), companies that not only pay taxes to the Chinese government, but in some cases are part owned by China. This means that part of the money is going towards perpetuating more thefts from others and towards libricide and academic suppression and a horrifying array of human rights abuses: rape and the torture of women, genocide (including infanticide and forced sterilization), forced separation of a million Tibetan children from their families and with it re-education camps that seem far too similar to the mission and residential schools indigenous populations were subjected to in America (ex: Carlisle Indian School), the creation of a database to track Tibetan and Buddhist monks/clergy, and religious destruction (including ancestral shrines, and thousands of polytheistic temples for the local folk religions).

Amazon also is part of this debacle. When you shop on Amazon, goods come from both Amazon, but also third party sellers using their interface to sell to you. In this later group you will find among legitimate professional businesses, an unfortunate number of bootleg goods, illegal items, and cheap knock offs from China. If anything is shipping from China it should be an automatic red flag, though some of these businesses have warehouses elsewhere like in the US so it may show it ships from there. Third party sellers create their own listings on amazon, the goods aren’t being approved by Amazon. Amazon will eventually shut down the fake sites with enough complaints but it takes time. When I worked in the entertainment industry even when we had a dedicated representative for our company, it could take weeks. Small businesses it can take months. Amazon will at least refund you, though I’ve had one refund come years later when it came back the battery I purchased for my camera was found to be a knock off and not real. These thieves selling through Amazon are now instead of trying to use the photos of the real wooden statues, using photos of the resin knock offs instead to eliminate customer complaints so they can hopefully operated longer on amazon before being shut down. Currently there are three different businesses on Amazon selling the knock offs from ZagravaWorkshop.

knock-off resin statues stolen from Oleksandr Yankovyi also are being sold on amazon

Some sites will have a section on their page dedicated to intellectual property concerns, like TEMU, which gives you the impression that they’re trying to operate ethically. But it’s set dressing, there’s no real accountability process in place at Temu. As an aside, Etsy tends to have solid options from legitimate artisans, though occasionally some knock-offs might infiltrate the service.

I know what it’s like to yearn for religious items, but knowingly buying these fakes is so problematic on a wyrdic level. You’ll offend the duergar (who based on their interactions with the gods in lore tell us they expect craftsman and artisans to be suitably compensated). It’d be somewhat analogous to you being the one who maimed Weyland, held him captive, and forced him to labor–which didn’t do well for his captor, whom Weyland had his revenge upon. Not to mention how can you put a religious item on your altar for your own Gods knowing that it’s funding rape, genocide, destruction of culture (like Christianity did to heathen peoples and indigenous nations), and it’s funding the destruction of temples to other Gods and Goddesses, as well as ancestral shrines. That’s bad juju all the way around.

It’s better to purchase real goods, even if it means you receive less items. Budget for it, special items are worth saving for, and become more cherished. If you want a visual focus, but are frustrated because you can’t afford a legitimate statue, you can pick up prayer cards and art prints at a very economical price. And remember all you really need is you. The stuff may help us connect, but it’s just dressing.

If you want to support religious art and items, you have to support the real artisans and their official partners. Otherwise they’ll have to seek out other jobs, and may have to abandon making future goods that fill a need for those in our religious communities. Pay attention, support the legitimate artists and their official business partners.

Might I suggest that you consider shopping for Yuletide goodies from Zagrava Workshop. Let’s show Oleksandr Yankovyi who has had his work stolen, that we as a community care and support him.

Statues of Norse Gods and Goddesses by Zagrava Workshop

Some other legitimate artisans and shops:

• AnglesdottirArts
• PerCubes Carving
• Ulf Pagan Store
• WyrdCuriosities
• Debs Burnt Offerings
• Raven from Vinland
• Anetteprs
• KykvendiByK
• Godsnorth
• Norttree
• VisaVisJewelryLA
• AncientGods
• JohannaPolle
• FriggasFinery
• HellesTeeth

P.S. Please share this post online, we need to educate our community.