Dupes have moved from the fringes of online marketplaces into mainstream retail, institutional investment, and the regulatory agenda. For brand leaders in perfumery and cosmetics, the question is no longer whether to take the dupe economy seriously — it is how to compete strategically within it.
A fragrance sold at under EUR 3 for 100ml, positioned explicitly as a substitute for Lancôme's *La vie est belle* at EUR 149. A mascara or shampoo described openly as delivering "the same result" as a premium brand at a fraction of the price. These are no longer underground alternatives — they are stocked in mainstream European retailers, backed by institutional investors, and amplified daily by social media communities that have normalised the language of imitation.
Dupes — products marketed as being "inspired by" or offering equivalent results to established premium brands — are not new. What is new is their institutionalisation. This is a structural market shift that demands a strategic response from brand leaders, not just a legal one.
The dupe phenomenon has been accelerated by two forces operating simultaneously: social media discovery and global e-commerce distribution. On Instagram and Reddit, audiences openly document which lower-cost products they have substituted for premium ones, with comments that flip the traditional aspiration logic — "If I really like the dupe, I'll buy the original" — suggesting that the original brand is now the one being auditioned, not the copy.
The commercial infrastructure around dupes has matured accordingly. Dossier, a US-based fragrance company that markets its products as "inspired by" luxury scents, was acquired in April 2026 by American Pacific Group from Otium Capital — a signal that institutional capital is now aligned behind this model. In European retail, chains such as Lidl and Action openly promote fragrances "inspired by popular perfumes," with comparison content proliferating across digital channels. The brand Inspire goes further still, using the word "dupe" directly in its product marketing — *Inspire 103* is positioned as a dupe of Baccarat Rouge 540 by Francis Kurkdjian.
This is not a fringe phenomenon seeking legitimacy. It is an established commercial category with growing distribution, consumer cultural acceptance, and investor confidence.
Understanding the dupe model requires clarity on why the price differential is structurally possible, not just morally convenient. Guillaume Teulé, co-founder of Hélius Paris, breaks it down: for a perfume retailing at EUR 100, approximately EUR 60 flows to the retailer in margins and operating costs. Of the remaining EUR 40 to the manufacturer, at least 30% is typically reinvested in marketing and advertising. Fragrance development — testing multiple compositions in the hope that one achieves commercial traction — adds further cost that dupe producers do not carry.
Dupe brands operate under a radically different cost architecture: minimal or no marketing spend, direct-to-consumer distribution, no heritage R&D investment, and — critically — different formulation standards. This last point is significant for brand leaders. The price gap is not solely the result of brand equity premium; it also reflects differences in ingredient quality, concentration, performance durability, and safety testing rigour.
Franck Besnard, head of Estée Lauder France, characterises dupes bluntly as "a new generation of counterfeits — counterfeiting 2.0." He identifies three specific threats: damage to brand image, erosion of creative credibility, and degradation of the expertise infrastructure that supports the wider fragrance industry. These are not abstract concerns — they have measurable commercial consequences as dupe culture normalises the decoupling of value from brand equity.
Brands are not defenceless, but the legal toolkit is imperfect and jurisdiction-dependent. Boriana Guimberteau, a partner at Stephenson Harwood, identifies the available instruments: intellectual property protections including design rights and copyright, alongside claims grounded in unfair competition and economic parasitism — the doctrine that a party unlawfully benefits from another's brand investment and reputation without contributing to it.
The problem is consistency. FEBEA, the French beauty industry trade federation, has multiple legal actions underway but acknowledges that the broader phenomenon is difficult to contain through litigation alone. Xavier Guéant, FEBEA's director of legal affairs, notes that concordance tables — lists that explicitly match lower-cost alternatives to branded products — have historically been challenged in France under commercial parasitism doctrine, but attract far less legal scrutiny in other jurisdictions. Social media platforms and global e-commerce channels further fragment enforcement by distributing the comparison content across multiple regulatory territories simultaneously.
Guéant makes a wider point that is relevant for brand teams: the dupe issue is not purely an intellectual property problem. "Many of these products are sold at extremely low prices and are marketed with little regard for the health, safety, and regulatory standards that apply in Europe." This creates a competitive asymmetry where compliant brands absorb the full cost of regulatory adherence while dupe producers may not.
Benoît Heilbrunn, professor of marketing at ESCP Business School, offers the most diagnostic framing: the rise of dupes "represents a challenge to the very foundations of the brand economy." Consumers, he argues, are increasingly willing to say "I don't necessarily want the authentic product — I want something that looks and feels like it." The moral stigma once attached to buying copies has dissolved. Imitation is no longer a compromise; for many consumers, it is a rational, socially endorsed choice.
This is the strategic problem that legal action cannot solve. If a consumer is content with an olfactive approximation at 2% of the price, the brand must articulate — in terms that are compelling and credible — what the remaining 98% of the price delivers. That answer cannot be "authenticity" alone. It must be a substantive value proposition built on experience, formulation quality, sourcing integrity, narrative depth, and sensory distinctiveness that a dupe structurally cannot replicate.
The dupe economy will not be litigated away. It will be competed against — and only by brands that understand where their non-duplicable value actually sits. For brand leaders, this demands concrete actions:
The dupe economy is maturing faster than the industry's response to it. The brands that will retain premium positioning are those that treat this as a fundamental brand strategy question — not a legal nuisance to be managed at arm's length.
Asaya’s fivefold annual growth highlights a crucial structural pivot in India's BPC segment away from outsourced third-party formulation toward proprietary in-house chemical architecture and clinical validation.
Nykaa’s stellar Q1 FY27 performance highlights a broader shift toward disciplined, founder-led omnichannel growth. Discover the core B2B metrics driving this surge and what it means for domestic brand portfolios.