An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off.

BirdAbroad noticed that, for instance, none of the employee nametags had their names on it. They just said “staff.” And Apple never writes “Apple Store” on their signs, they just put up their logo. A 10-minute walk revealed two more such stores.

While the store is listed as a reseller of Apple products, it doesn’t meet Apple’s strict image control guidelines, and even if it were an authorized Premium Reseller, it would have to identify itself as such. Instead, it’s a ghettoized version of an Apple reseller, trying to pass itself off like an official Apple store.

With the attention BirdAbroad’s blog post is getting, I imagine the fake store will be getting a visit from some real Apple agents very shortly.

Are you listening, Steve Jobs? [BirdAbroad] (Thanks to GitEmSteveDave!)

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