Legit Check App’s Redesign — The New Direction

Written by
Ch Daniel
a picture of Ch Daniel, the founder
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Last Updated on September 3, 2020 by Ch Daniel

Hi all,

This is meant to be an as-honest-as-it-gets post.

LCA needed me spending more time on it and, sadly, that did not happen lately. I never imagined we’d get to almost half a million people over here (at the time of writing), yet here we are.

I’ll give some backstory to explain why that happened and then explain what’s coming up next for the legit Check App.

Here are the main points

  1. Backstory
  2. The New Direction
    1. We’ll start offering services
    2. Making More Authentication Guides At Scale
    3. StockX partnership
    4. More than just guides
      1. Podcast
      2. Events
      3. A magazine
    5. A true community
    6. Other functions

Backstory

Most of my time is tied into running my design agency (Chagency) and other things (see chdaniel.com if you’re really curious), so the app was considered just a side-project.

It was always in the back of my brain that at one point LCA will become something more serious as the daily influx of messages I receive kept increasing.

I get anywhere between 2 to 6 emails a day with people asking for LCs. Sometimes, as much as I wish it wouldn’t be the case, I don’t have the time to answer them. Sometimes I only manage to get back to you guys on weekends.

At the moment all the legit checking guides are out there, for free. They will always be this way — everyone deserves to have the means to authenticate for themselves. On top of these guides, new functions will be added with time. And I believe in transparency, which is what this post is about.

You may have noticed that it’s not called “Legit Check App by Ch Daniel” anymore, rather the “Daniel” part dropped. The reason for doing that is that my brother David is joining me in building what you see here from now on, thus the rename.

Therefore, the Ch stands for David as well now.

Without further ado, here’s the plan and the new direction for the Legit Check App.

The New Direction

1. We’ll start offering services

Not because I want to make purchases for myself. I do well with my paid engagements within my creative agency, which is what allowed me to put money into creating the app — both initially and for this revamp.

The point of gathering capital for the app is different.

There hasn’t been any direct income from this app so far and it’s been a humanitarian project. Since the value is confirmed to be there (thing which I did not expect at this scale), that means it’d be lost potential if more isn’t done.

The service of a legit check will cost so that whatever amount of capital this app gains will be repoured into making it better. Why? Leads me to point #2 but before that, I need to mention there’s also this “authenticity letter” service, the second one currently offered by LCA.

That is meant to help those who have their money “stuck” into PayPal/eBay, in cases where they’ve bought fakes and these two platforms require proof for that. It happened before and yes, we helped people get their money back.

2. Making More Authentication Guides At Scale

There’s this problem: how many guides can one person write? In other words, we’d need to scale this process. The solution…?

Since it’s neither something a robot could do, a judgement has to be made at one point when deciding whether a guide is good or not. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we’d have the possibility of letting everyone write guides and put them out here.

We’ve seen how Facebook groups are plagued by random comments saying “fake” or “real” when someone is asking for a legit check, some of these comments are left even jokingly. And we’ve also seen how much confusion there is when something like this happens.

Therefore, the guides have to be made with care and attention.

A tell has to apply to at least 30 pairs before it’s considered reliable — there’s been many cases where someone found a flaw on a fake that wasn’t consistent. It appeared on very few real pairs and that’s already enough to send people into despair for nothing — they would believe they bought fakes when in fact that wasn’t the case.

With the funds gathered by the Legit Check App, more guides will come to life.

Not only because items will be bought so that we can move faster in creating them (it takes a long time to scrap for certain pictures online), but also because hopefully we’ll be able to pay a sum of money to those who write guides for us.

There’s a button at the end of every page where someone can submit an authentication guide they’ve written up. We will people the option to either:

  1. Have their name put in the guide, offering exposure
  2. We will purchase the rights to the guide, therefore the author gets $$$

That’s right, you’ll be able to make money if you’re making an exhaustive LC guide. This should help us speed up the guide creation, we believe.

3. StockX partnership

StockX is a company I loved from the first moment I’ve heard about them. A really smart system that mediates a market — hate it or love it, everyone knows it.

With this, I’ll get the chance to announce our partnership with them. I promised I’ll be transparent and honest so I’ll have to mention this.

I was very reluctant to do some kind of sponsorship or anything that would look like we’re selling out the attention we’ve started to gather from you guys. However, StockX looks like a perfect fit for the Legit Check App since part of their main idea is to get legit shoes to people.

Not only that, but since we also don’t have any plans of selling shoes, guiding people towards the most reliable source of buying them seems like a good fit.

4. More than just guides

We’ve got a set direction of content we’d like to put out on social media pages but I’m more than sure that in a few months we’ll have in mind something slightly different. Trial and error will lead us to something different that what we imagine at this moment (before we’ve even started).

With that being said, I don’t want to mention now what we plan. However, I can talk about the intent behind it.

The main intent is definitely to help people authenticate their items, stop scams from taking place and all that. I can’t be happier than when I get messages like

This app just saved me I almost spent $250 and the dude was trying to act stupid when I said they were fake.

I don’t really care whether you wear fake or real stuff, all I care about is making sure people know what they’re buying. This “busted” shit going around is just helping insecure people feed off of the insecurities of others. We won’t be promoting fakes and it’s up to people to decide whether they want to wear them or not.

So what’s more than just guides, you may ask? More content. More things that may help the people who come here for authenticating their streetwear/high-end designer items:

  • Videos on how to legit check (1 minute version, 3 minute version, etc)
  • Guides on how to buy safely
  • Guides on how to sell safely
  • Anything related to staying safe online (no sex-ed here though)
  • Maybe even guides into how to start reselling (a bit late, but there’s no authority out there teaching this)
  • A community where people can meet, interact with each other and discuss
  • Guides on how to wear stuff, colour coordinate, etc.

And here’s a list with “maybe”

A podcast

A bit hard to integrate in my schedule but a podcast with various London-based people (and not only London, actually, but starting with that) would be something I’m capable of creating (I’m a co-host on a podcast) and would love doing.

This will truly come out only if other things are previously working.

Events

This has been on my mind for quite some time. We might create events since there’s no monthly-night-out for people who are into this culture. By night out I mean those of us can go out and enjoy music in a club.

Something exclusively for the people that are deep into this community of streetwear. Imagine every 2/3/4 weeks there’s a Saturday night out where you go to a club and the played music is exclusively what you and I listen to and it’s also a place where you can go flex.

By flex I don’t necessarily mean expensive clothes. I mean showing your outfit. Might be worth trying it. I know myself I’d love to have that.

People love Virgil’s or other DJ’s opening-concert sets but what if you’d have that kind of atmosphere lasting the whole night?

A magazine

Not necessarily a physical (though who knows) magazine but indeed making all these things would turn LCA into a publication. Since this one is truly far into the future, I won’t spend time on it, but the essence of it would mean showing/discussing news in an innovative way.

——

Remember point #1 in this list? Yeah, those funds would poured into these ambitious moves.

5. A true community

You may have noticed I’ve set up “join” or “subscribe” every now and there. The central point of that is to get the phone number from you, the readers. And my plan is not to spam you with newsletters, I hate them as much as I do.

Rather, since you know me and I know you, we can have a direct relationship — all these questions I get either through email or DM can be seen there and I can answer straight to you I still need to decide how this will happen as I’ll basically need a text messaging platform.

Since everyone is on Whatsapp/WeChat/FB Messenger/IG DMs/etc, everyone left text messaging behind.

I would love to be able to have a direct communication line to you guys there, it might just be too complicated to make that happen solely through text. Telegram is an option, though not all of us are on it. As soon as something certain is put in place, I’ll let you know.

Until then, since we won’t have 10,000 subscribers overnight, join the community here. Careful to put in your phone number right as you’ll want to be in the loop.

Besides the text messaging thing, we’ll make sure communities are built on Instagram, our Facebook group and every other place we’ll build. Please make sure you follow these.

6. Other functions

There are multiple other items on our lists on how to make the LC-ing process faster and better but I can’t list them here.

Hopefully we’ll be able to implement them. The barcode scanner has some great potential, that’s what I’ll be able to say.

The bottom line

We want to build LCA into something bigger and better. Thank you for sticking with us.

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About the Author

Ch Daniel is the co-founder and co-CEO of Legit Check By Ch, one of the world's leading companies in product authentications. Daniel's experience: 8+ years in the luxury industry, 7+ years in the authentication industry, 10+ years of business development. Currently, Daniel is overseeing the development of new products of Legit Check By Ch.
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