Online, scammers will often impersonate a famous brand in hopes of fooling internet denizens into downloading malware or robbing them. It’s rare to see this sort of thing in the real world. Rare, but not uncommon.
At the weekend, there was buzz around a pop-up shop at Mall of Africa claiming to sell cosmetics from the brand Rhode. Rhode is the brand established by celebrity Hailey Rhode Bieber and features a variety of skincare products which are highly regarded by customers.
Unfortunately for locals, Rhode doesn’t ship its products to South Africa in an official capacity. With this in mind, news of a Rhode pop-up shop sent locals into a fervour at the weekend. Videos of influencers visiting the store flooded social media and most of our very tech forward social media feeds were inundated with posts about the store.
However, no sooner had folks visited the store at Mall of Africa when they realised all the pieces weren’t welding together true. Beauty and health influencers quickly realised that some of the products they had purchased weren’t the same as the products they had purchased through official channels. Beyond that, the fact that Rhode made no mention of the pop-up shop outside of its usual retail environment was odd for sure although it didn’t immediately arouse suspicions.
It was at this point that somebody had the good sense to contact Rhode and find out if the store at the Mall of Africa was indeed legitimate.
Spoiler alert – it wasn’t.
TikToker Mi’Chal Naidoo contacted Rhode to ask about the store and, well, the brand confirmed that the pop-up store wasn’t affiliated with the brand at all.
This video was published on Sunday and soon after it was published, the internet got riled up. As you might imagine, angry shoppers who had been taken for a ride returned to the store, only to find that it was gone. Not only was there nobody in the location, it was empty with not so much as a trace that Rhode products had ever been in the shopping centre.
So who was behind this?
A quick search reveals a post about the store on Instagram from Beutessa_SA in which it invites locals to “Join us from 13 – 19 March 2025 for an exclusive beauty experience at Sook, Mall of Africa”.
That Instagram page is now empty with not a single post from the account. However, the account was tagged in a post showcasing the pop-up store.
Visiting the website linked in the Instagram account’s bio takes you to the Beutessa website where Rhode products are proudly displayed. You can even reportedly pick up those instantly recognisable Rhode iPhone cases for R699, where on the official Rhode website they cost ~R619 (direct conversion from $38).
Not exactly official
With the shop disappearing once an official statement from Rhode was issued, folks turned their attention to Beutessa itself.
The reviews from shoppers on the website seem positive enough until you actually take a look at them. For one, a store that claims to be selling products to locals sure has a lot of non-African sounding names. We aren’t saying the reviews are fake but we’re also saying we’ve never met a South African with the name Władek. In fact, we’re not even sure how to say that name competently. We also have to question whether Patrick G really is a 48 year old who has never written a product until now.
The red flags continue over on customer review website, Hello Peter. Again, the Hello Peter page is littered with positive reviews praising Beutessa for its speedy delivery. However, there are also reviews in which it is alleged that the products aren’t from Rhode but are counterfeit products from China.
“Received my order, 2 rhode blushes, however these are dupes, still nice but could have order myself from China for cheap,” one user wrote on Hello Peter.
Now, it could be that Beutessa itself was duped into selling what many claim to be fake Rhode products. We aren’t here to pass judgement so we visited the Beutessa website in search of a way to contact the company. The contact form on the website has no submit button. A cell number listed as an official way to contact Beutessa just rings endlessly but we were able to send an email to info[at]beutessa[dot]com. Lets hope we hear back from the company.
Beutessa was registered on 12th June 2024 in Klerksdorp. The sole director listed on Biz Portal is one Ismail Kathrada. The Biz Portal page for this business reports its enterprise number as K2024351539 but the Beutessa website only features a unrelated “Trade number” which we can’t find a record of anywhere.
It’s all just very odd.
The other party in this disaster is Mall of Africa.
Internet users have questioned how Mall of Africa could let this retailer sell alleged fake products on its premises. The thing is, Beutessa was selling a product that folks could buy, the thing in question here is the authenticity of that product. It seems that Mall of Africa was dupped, just like many shoppers were.
This incident does have folks wondering about other retailers in the shopping centre though and whether they are indeed selling authentic products. We’ve contacted the Mall to find out what processes are in place to vet retailers.
Unfortunately, there are currently no answers to any of our questions. Customers who purchased these seemingly fake products have no recourse and will likely be left to either use these products of unknown origin
This reminds us of an incident last year in which a fake pop-up for the famous Crumbl cookie store appeared in Australia. The pop-up was quickly discovered to have no affiliation with Crumbl and charged as much as $17.50 for a $4.49 cookie that was flown in from the US and was likely as stale as week old bread when it arrived. The brand has since said that it will open a shop in the country.
Be careful out there folks, it seems everybody is trying to get the bag, and they have little regard for how they get it.
