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SHAASUIVG is my new favorite tech brand

SHAASUIVG is my new favorite tech brand

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It takes courage to build a brand name out of a fake Samsung logo

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Step aside, Samsung, Sony, LG, and Apple, there’s a new king of the consumer tech business, and its name is SHAASUIVG. This literally unbelievable new brand has cropped up on Chinese online store Pinduoduo, offering eyebrow-raising deals such as a 55-inch 4K TV for a mere ¥388 (or around $57). What’s most impressive about it, though, is the bold and courageous logo design. Using some creative kerning and daringly varied font weights, SHAASUIVG resembles the familiar SAMSUNG insignia at first glance. What an amazing coincidence.

Pinduoduo, which began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange two weeks ago at an initial valuation of more than $23 billion, has earned itself an unenviable reputation as a home for counterfeit goods. Quartz and Bloomberg have both taken in-depth looks at the high volume of trade in shady consumers electronics on the shopping platform, wagging their disapproving fingers at China’s entrepreneurial hustle. The country’s regulators are also taking the matter seriously, with Bloomberg reporting that an investigation is about to get underway into the trade in obvious fakes on Pinduoduo. The serious edge to all this unregulated and unmoderated e-commerce is that Pinduoduo also hosts sellers of food and baby products, which are categories of goods with a far greater risk than a TV that may or may not have all the specs printed on its box.

Still, there’s something in me that just loves the ingenuity and sheer chutzpah it takes for someone to chop up the Samsung logo and assemble a brand name from the fragments.