Retail Fact, Retail Fiction; In Luxury Goods, a War on Fakes Has Many Pitfalls

By ANDREA ADELSON Published: September 16, 1995 Sign In to E-Mail Print Single-Page For nearly 20 years, Charles W. Bogar made a good living selling high-priced luxury goods in shops in Los Angeles and San Francisco, particularly to Japanese tourists. Along the way, he settled lawsuits from companies including Alfred Dunhill, Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Chanel that accused him of selling counterfeit goods. Despite the legal tussles, the profits rolled in. Mr. Bogar, who is 59, and his wife, Jo Ann, 51, lived in a suburban Los Angeles home that was once valued at $1.7 million. He drove a Maserati, she a Corvette. No more. For Mr. Bogar ran into another luxury goods company, Hunting World Inc., which was determined to put an end to what it contended were unauthorized sales. And while Mr. Bogar settled this complaint, too, without acknowledging wrongdoing, he paid a far steeper price than in the other settlements. "Bob Lee has ruined me financially," Mr. Bogar said, referring to Robert M. Lee, the founder and owner of Hunting World, which is based in Sparks, Nev., and is known for its luggage, apparel, watches and jewelry. The company's catalogue lists a duffel bag at $1,400, a key case at $197 and a mother-of-pearl watch at $2,525. Mr. Bogar now operates just one San Francisco store and is a retail consultant in Las Vegas. "I've lost everything I had," he said. He decided to settle with Hunting World, he said, after his legal fees of $1 million exhausted his resources. Mr. Bogar agreed to pay Hunting World $1.7 million at a rate of $30,000 a month. The Los Angeles home is up for sale, and the Bogars are in the midst of divorce proceedings. The tale of Mr. Bogar and his settlement with Hunting World throws some light on how difficult luxury goods companies find it to stop the sales of unauthorized goods -- and, indeed, how hard it can be to determine just what is authentic. Mr. Bogar and his lawyers, for example, say the Hunting World items he sold in his stores were identical to the real thing in every way except documentation -- a technicality, he told the Federal District Court in San Francisco, where the Hunting World case was heard. Mr. Bogar obtained the merchandise, he said, through an Italian buying agent who approached Hunting World contractors in Florence and persuaded them to sell him the same goods that they were making for Hunting World. On a buying trip to Florence, Mr. Bogar visited a factory where Mr. Lee's picture was displayed, according to a lawyer for Mr. Bogar.