The Truth about those Cheap Swarovskis

This is from our buyer. This discussion came up as a result of some questions about where Swarovskis are made.

Had a long talk with — today on the subject of Swarovskis, real or knock-offs.

First of all, to his knowledge, all Swarovski manufacturing is done in Austria. Some of the non-glass components, like the cupchains, may be done elsewhere, but the glass is done in Austria. This is about what we would expect from a family-owned business.

However, years ago when the Euro-rate was more favourable to them, the Chinese wholesalers bought enormous quantities of Swarovski crystals. — thinks that all the genuine Swarovskis that are coming from the Chinese wholesalers are from this older stock. That would explain why none of the newer colours are available from them.

The less ethical wholesalers are selling Chinese-made Preciosa or machine-cut knockoffs and calling them Swarovski. The colours are not quite right, the cut is less consistent, the lead content of the glass is not as high, so it doesn't have the Swarovski sparkle. But by themselves, they look pretty good. The really unethical vendors, if they have some of the imitations in a litttle glass dish, may scatter some genuine Swarovski in with the fakes, so that they all seem to sparkle like the real thing.

We have some of that Chinese-made machine-cut and we sell it as that. The 12mm machine-cut rounds and the pear drops are Chinese.

I suspect (the vendor in question) honestly thinks he/she is selling the genuine article. He just doesn't know any better.

So the bottom line is, if it seems really, really cheap, it's probably not the real thing.

Chinese-made machine-cut (faceted) Large Faceted Crystal Rounds