You do not need to be an expert to spot the difference. Four things give it away, and you can check all of them from photographs before you spend anything — here or anywhere else.
1. Look at the stitching where the strap meets the body
This is the joint that carries all the weight, and it is the first thing to fail. On a well-made bag you will see a dense, even row of stitches, usually reinforced with a box or a cross shape. On a cheap one you will see a single line of loose stitches, or a rivet doing a job stitching should be doing.
2. Check whether the pattern lines up at the seams
On a quilted, striped or printed bag, look at where two panels meet. Matching the pattern across a seam wastes material and takes time, so it is the first corner cut. It tells you nothing about durability but a great deal about how carefully the bag was assembled.
3. Open the zip in the photographs
Good zips have a wide tape, teeth that sit evenly and a pull that is solid metal rather than plated plastic. If a listing never photographs the bag open, that is information too.
4. Look at the edges
Cut edges on leather and coated fabrics are either painted, folded and stitched, or simply left raw. Painted and folded edges last. Raw edges fray, and on coated fabric they are where peeling starts.
None of this tells you what a bag is worth. It tells you how it was made, which is a different and more useful question.
What we can and cannot tell you
We resell bags from suppliers. Where the source listing names a manufacturer we print it on the product page. Where it does not, we say so rather than inventing one. We are not the manufacturer of anything we sell and we are not an authorised dealer for any brand, and that is stated on every listing.
