I was pretty hesitant to create this post since I have had many, many DMs over the years from people panicking over whether a specific item is a fake and not once so far has the piece in question ever not been real. There is massively more paranoia out there than there has any reason to be and it is all whipped up by Dunning-Kruger individuals on Facebook groups and other areas of social media, i.e. people who just want to look cool and ‘in the know’ by decrying everything they’ve not personally seen before as a definite knock-off.
That said, I was linked to some AliExpress listings recently which I feel are just too relevant to the content of this site to not post about. While I have been aware of the manufacturing of some illegitimate Crye labels in China for quite a few years now, I hadn’t seen some of the sewn goods shown below until a few months ago. Sufficed to say the extent and accuracy of the cloning has most certainly increased over the past couple of years, especially with regards to the labels.
With that said, I am still yet to personally see any significant quantity of actual assembled uniforms or cordura products anywhere that are really trying to pass themselves off as the genuine article and doing a great job of it; though just today I did find an image of some TigerStripes that were sort of getting the tiniest bit close (though still not really):
The above are incredibly obvious fakes and if you are reading this and not able to discern that, just spend a little bit of time looking at genuine Crye labels, you will spot the clear differences in a fairly short time.
The only vaguely convincing fakes I have ever seen actually trick any notable number of people are the Woodland Camo G3s that appeared around the mid-to-late 2010s and did sadly dupe a few folks who paid collector type prices for them. Though fortunately that only happened a couple of times before the word got around, plus multiple batches of legit NYCO Woodland G3s were then sold by a few shops. These particular examples of fakes had various spelling and factual errors in their labels as detailed at the bottom of this post I published in 2019:
One other example I was very recently made aware of is the small batch of Navy Custom style G2 combats from the Shekkin Gears site (the video contains very easy ways to identify these as fake):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34z3n_wf9-s
Here is one currently active listing of the types of fake labels being sold which I mentioned on the G3s above:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006145741134.html
Given that there is a decent chance that the above link is no longer active (quite likely with the way AliExpress works), I have also hosted images of the product listing here on this site:
As to where these labels are actually being used, I do not currently know. Personally, I am yet to see any knock-offs of products of American brands like Crye, Spiritus or Ferro that were making use of these fake labels. I would expect such clones to pop up on airsoft retail sites from east Asia that often sell the non-labelled copies, but so far I have not. That is not to say it hasn’t happened/is happening of course, but every now and then when I shop at the small number of Asian retailers of parts for my airsoft guns I do check out the gear sections, and I haven’t spotted any examples.
Is there potentially something more nefarious going on? Companies with US Gov contracts making products overseas with these tags? Wholesale suppliers to retailers passing off counterfeit goods? I would say probably not, as in the case of Crye I believe most entities and shops deal with the company directly, or they are maybe 1 step removed at most and go through companies like ADS. At this time I do not really have a better answer on what, if anything, is going on, but I will post again at a later date if I receive more pertinent information.
As I said at the very start of this post I was hesitant to even put this information out as I already get somewhat-regular DMs of people going a bit crazy over ‘fakes!’ that never actually are fake. Publishing this piece is highly likely to only make things worse in that regard as some folks have a real tendency to make mountains out of molehills. On the one hand I sometimes understand it as Crye items are very expensive and 99.999% of people don’t have the time, inclination or funds to gain enough hands-on experience with the products such that the fakes are easy to tell, therefore emotions can run high. However, as mentioned above I am yet to see any significant amount of ‘try hard’ fakes floating around in the marketplace, even in all my time of collecting and taking an interest in the world of high end tactical gear.
If you are reading this and ever in any doubt about the authenticity of an item the solution is incredibly easy – simply buy directly from the manufacturer or one of the retailers/distributors listed on their official website. You cannot go wrong that way.
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