Before you shop Black Friday deals, check the address

Recon has found 155,434 clones of Shopify stores. A clone is a fake store built to look like a real brand. It copies the logo, the product photos and the prices. Then it takes orders that the real brand never sees. Fewer than 3 in 100 have ever been taken down.

Recon watches for clones of 790,573 Shopify stores. It has checked more than 4.7 million websites to find them, and it also tracks 766,893 lookalike web addresses.

Black Friday is November 27. Many people will shop for gifts from a link in an ad, a text or a social post. So we looked up the brands people actually wrap: tumblers, pizza ovens, makeup, skincare, dolls, watches, jewelry and loungewear. Every brand below runs on Shopify, and every one has clones.

Gift brands with the most clones

Gift	Brand	Clones
Kitchen and drinkware	Ooni (pizza ovens)	18
	Stanley (tumblers)	17
	Our Place (cookware)	10
	Ember (mugs)	4
	Caraway (cookware)	3
Beauty	Glossier	38
	Olaplex	25
	Glow Recipe	20
	Rare Beauty	19
	Fenty Beauty	13
	Summer Fridays	7
	Kylie Cosmetics	5
	rhode	4
Toys and kids	Mattel (Barbie, Hot Wheels)	33
	Tonies (kids’ audio)	21
	American Girl	16
	Lovevery	7
	Magna-Tiles	7
Watches and jewelry	Daniel Wellington	40
	Timex	20
	Mejuri	15
	BaubleBar	11
	Pura Vida	9
Cozy and home	Cozy Earth	14
	Parachute	12
	Barefoot Dreams	10
	Comfrt	5
	SKIMS	2
Wellness	Therabody	10
	Hyperice	5

Beauty gifts have the most clones, followed by watches and jewelry, then toys.

What the fakes look like

Each pair below shows the real store on the left and a clone on the right. We captured them on October 14, 2026, in a separate browser, without clicking anything on the clone. Clone addresses are defanged ([.]) so they can’t be clicked.

Stanley. The clone’s page title is “Stanley 1913 Official Site”. Same logo, same menu, same product photos.

American Girl. Same logo, same colours, same dolls, at an address with “official” in it.

Tonies. A popular gift for young kids. The clone copies the brand’s photos and its “screen-free play” pitch.

Glossier. The clone’s page title is simply “Home | Glossier”.

rhode. Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand, cloned on an address with “deal” in it.

BaubleBar. The clone advertises “25% off sitewide” on a “sale” address.

Comfrt. The hoodie and blanket brand, cloned on a “sale” address.

Rare Beauty. A clone aimed at Australian shoppers, with Rare Beauty’s logo and a “Vegan Makeup Sale”.

Kylie Cosmetics. A Spanish-language clone built around a Kylie Jenner campaign image.

Daniel Wellington. Same wordmark and menu, with “Up to 70% off” across the top.

Our Place. The clone shows the brand’s green Always Pan.

SKIMS. The clone’s page title is simply “Home | SKIMS”.

“Official”, “sale” and “deal” are warning signs

Real brands rarely put “official”, “sale” or “deal” in their web address. Clones do. Among the clones of these gift brands that are still online:

• stanley1913official[.]com and stanley1913official[.]shop
• glossierofficial[.]shop and glowrecipeofficial[.]shop
• americangirlofficial[.]com and toniesofficial[.]shop
• baublebarsale[.]com, comfrtsale[.]com and rhodeskindeal.us[.]com

Most clones also use a .shop address: 291 of the 420 clones of these brands.

And many clones don’t use the brand’s name at all. One of Stanley’s clones is stannic[.]shop. A quick look at the address is not always enough, so go direct.

Before you check out: a shopper’s checklist

1. Check the address. Look at the address bar before you pay. Compare it to the brand’s real address. A .shop ending or an extra word (“official”, “store”, “outlet”) is a warning sign.
2. Be careful with deal-word addresses. “Sale”, “deal”, “discount”, “outlet” or “blackfriday” in an address is a red flag. Real brands put their sales on their own site.
3. Go direct. Got a deal from an ad, a text or a social post? Close it. Type the brand’s address yourself, or search for the brand and look for its usual address.
4. Pay by credit card. A credit card gives you the strongest way to dispute a charge. Avoid bank transfers, gift cards, crypto and payment apps that send money to a stranger.
5. Watch for prices that are too good. 70% off a tumbler that is sold out everywhere else is not a deal.

If you already bought from one

• Call your card issuer or bank. Ask to dispute the charge (a chargeback).
• Keep the order email, the receipt and a screenshot of the site.
• Change any password you used on the site.
• Report the site. In the US, use ReportFraud.ftc.gov. In Canada, contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. You can also report it to Google Safe Browsing.
• Tell the real brand. They can report the clone too.

Run a Shopify brand? Your store may have clones too. Run a free clone check or add Recon to Shopify.

For brands: check your store before the rush

If well-known gift brands have dozens of clones, smaller brands have them too. Holiday traffic is when a clone can do the most damage. Shoppers who buy from it blame the real brand when the parcel never comes.

• Run a free clone check. It looks for clones on addresses built from your brand’s name, and shows each one with a dated screenshot. It takes a minute and needs no account.
• Add Recon to Shopify to keep watching. With the optional theme block, Recon records when your store’s copied code loads on another address, even one that doesn’t use your name.
• Get them taken down. For each clone, Recon finds who to report it to (the registrar, the host and the browser blocklists) and writes the notices. You review them and send them. The registrar or host decides whether a site comes down. (How to report a fake Shopify store.)

How we did this

• Database totals (clones, takedowns, lookalikes, stores watched, sites checked) come from Recon’s clone database on October 14, 2026.
• Brands: we picked 30 brands people commonly buy as gifts (kitchen and drinkware, beauty, toys, watches and jewelry, cozy home goods, wellness) and confirmed each one runs on Shopify. Barbie and Hot Wheels are counted once, as Mattel.
• Clone counts: for each brand, we counted the clones Recon’s database links to its store. A brand’s own spare domains don’t count.
• Screenshots were captured on October 14, 2026, at 1280 by 860 pixels, in a separate browser, without interacting with the clone sites. We hid pop-ups that covered the page and dropped pairs where the clone did not load or was not a true copy.

Limits

• Recon finds clones built from copied store code best. Hand-built fakes are mostly missing, so every number here is a lower bound.
• The brands shown are examples we chose because people know them and buy them as gifts. They are not a random sample.
• Removal is only visible for some domain endings, so the takedown share is a lower bound too.
• Clones come and go every day. Some addresses above may be offline by the time you read this.

Related reading

• Fake websites of well-known brands: check a store’s address
• Taylor Swift, SKIMS, Stanley: inside 153,000 clones of Shopify stores
• Inside a copy factory: one operation faking 475 Shopify brands
• Someone cloned your store. Here’s what to do
• How to report a fake Shopify store

Recon is a Shopify app that watches for clones of your store and lookalike web addresses, and helps you get them taken down. See pricing.