A social media influencer has been ordered by the UK High Court to pay £213,000 to luxury fashion businesses, including Fendi and Loewe, over her side hustle selling counterfeit goods through a dropshipping operation.
The order follows a January 2025 default judgment that found the defendant, Georgia Aldridge, and her company, Rolo Fashion, which she ran separately from her social media marketing business, had infringed the trade marks of several luxury brands by selling counterfeit products.
A subsequent High Court hearing determined the compensation owed to the brands. The five claimants were Fendi Italia Srl, Loewe S.A., Christian Dior Couture S.A., Celine S.A. and LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton SE. The LVMH luxury group owns all of the previously mentioned brands.
Items sold through the operation were presented as products from brands including Fendi and Louis Vuitton, with counterfeit Christian Dior goods also identified during the proceedings.
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Sales used dropshipping and private messaging
Aldridge, who has more than 32,000 Instagram followers, runs Sloane House Marketing in Loughton, Essex. Her business promotes social media marketing services intended to help brands generate sales from online content.
Rolo Fashion operated separately as a side-hustle, using a dropshipping model under which products were marketed to customers while being sourced from third-party suppliers. Some goods came from AliExpress, and some transactions were arranged through a dedicated WhatsApp group.
The counterfeit trade ceased around 18 months before the damages ruling, following legal action by the fashion companies. The £213,000 award is payable collectively to the five claimants mentioned previously.
How the court calculated the award
Judge Richard Hacon awarded £200,000 for profits lost on an estimated 713 genuine sales. Using an approximate profit of £280 for each product, the court calculated a loss of £199,640, deciding to round up the figure to £200,000.
The judge said sales by the defendants had caused the claimants to lose “around 713 sales”, according to the reports by The Independent.
A further 4,039 transactions involved lower-quality counterfeit products that the court found had not displaced genuine purchases. The brands were awarded another £13,000 for licensing income associated with those sales.
Evidence distinguished between counterfeit quality
Evidence from Nicolas Lambert, LVMH’s Head of Online Brand Protection, divided the products into lower- and higher-quality counterfeits.
Higher prices and closer attention to product details could lead buyers to mistake these products for genuine goods, according to Lambert’s evidence, with Judge Hacon adding that these would fall into the category described in online communities as “superfakes” or “dupes”.
That assessment helped the court determine which transactions were likely to have displaced authentic purchases.
The claimants also sought compensation for alleged damage to their trade marks’ reputations. Judge Hacon rejected that part of the case, finding “no evidential basis” that the defendants’ sales had affected brand reputation.
The judge found that buyers were more likely to have understood that the products came from unauthorised suppliers and were counterfeit.