AUGUST 7 — Vivy Yusof is angry that anyone is angry about her being angry about anyone buying headscarves meant to duplicate her Duck brand of scarves. She believes, apparently, that wearing a knock-off Duck scarf when praying invalidates the Salah because her trademark is being violated.

A few points here. Through a combination of media savvy and what is generally regarded (until recently anyway) as a winning and relatable personality, Vivy Yusof has managed to convince women in Malaysia to spend as much as 10 times what they would on an unbranded piece of fabric to cover their heads for the privilege of owning a Duck scarf.

She has succeeded in creating a luxury niche in the tudung market; because apparently modesty and decadence can be compatible; who knew?

Her Duck brand has become highly sought after, but remains unaffordable for the majority of Malaysian women; so predictably, the rules of the market have been applied to the gap between demand and accessible supply, with fake Duck scarves beginning to satisfy the desires of Vivy Yusuf’s non-wealthy would-be loyal consumers.

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This, it seems to me, is a failure on Ms Vivy's part, no one else’s.

The popularity of her brand has extended beyond her target demographic largely due to her own promotional efforts. The wise business move would have been to begin producing a lower end version of her scarves that normal consumers could afford, thus closing the gap between demand and affordability herself, rather than letting the inevitable happen.

After all, the product she has turned into a luxury item is, in fact, a common product used across all class lines in Muslim societies. We are not talking about diamond jewelry here, we are talking about a piece of cloth. It is a tudung, not an Aston Martin. Of course affordable fakes will be made.

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And this is probably why Ms Vivy is so angry; because the easy availability of a fake Duck scarf that is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing reveals just how fragile the brand is. Duck scarves have a higher value than other pieces of fabric almost exclusively because people choose to believe that they do.

Vivy Yusof has convinced them that they do. The hard work she has put in to creating the illusion of value is undermined by the product’s effortless duplication. The veil, as it were, is lifted and everyone can see that the only real difference between Ms Vivy’s piece of cloth and everyone else’s is the sales pitch.

And now, on that; since Vivy Yusof decided to issue a religious judgement about people who wear an imitation Duck scarf; it is worth looking at this business model from an Islamic perspective. Identical items are supposed to have the same price in the same market, and that price is determined by its material value.

Hype is not material value. Persuading a consumer that one of two equivalent items is actually worth more than the other because... “reasons” ...amounts to a kind of deception, and indeed, the excess price for that item is defined by many fuqaha as Riba.

So one might well ask Vivy Yusof, if she believes that a person’s Salah is unacceptable because they are wearing an imitation Duck scarf, what then about the Salah of a person who is charging people 10 times more for an essentially identical piece of fabric?

* Shahid Bolsen is founder and joint partner in Active Voice, a political consultancy and public relations firm.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.