THE SCOOP ON FAKE SNEAKERS

You've brought in some fakes here. Generally the materials look good, they're bright, they seem to fit together quite well, the molding's not too bad. What are the things that indicate to you that these are fakes?

Everything I need to know about a shoe is contained on its tongue label. If you were to hand me a pair of shoes I would generally be able to tell you within two seconds whether it was real or not. The other really key piece is the sole, how shiny the sole is. The less carbon that's in the sole the shinier it is. It's the mix, just like a car tyre, that heats up and causes a shoe to have traction. The more pure the rubber compound the shinier it is. Pure rubber is so much cheaper than rubber mixed with carbon, so they'll go for the cheapest option. The next thing I'd look at is stitching quality and the air unit.

I would say the vast majority of shoes don't have Nike Air in them. They have a thing that looks incredibly similar to it but it's just blown up with air as opposed to the patented Nike gaseous infills and feels too squashy in the fakes. In all the years I've been doing this I rarely ever see really crisp edges to embroidery or to labelling; it's always fuzzy and only near enough. And if you think it's fake there's every chance that it is. What I won't do is that I won't field a thousand emails a week from people going, ‘Are these real?' If you want to buy a real shoe go to a real retailer and buy a shoe.

Thanks for your time Richard.
Another very interesting chat as usual!