How To Spot Fake OPI Products

Here at Nicely Polished we only sell 100% genuine products, but unfortunately, fake polishes of leading brands are an increasingly frustrating reality for industry professionals and spotting them can be very tricky. Despite regular changes made by the brands to the design of their bottles and labelling, fake polish producers can often manage to duplicate these changes very successfully.

There are however a few general tell-tale signs and distinguishable features to look out for in determining between genuine and fake polish.

Here is our guide for the various polishes from OPI (some of this information also applies to older style OPI bottles that may still be in circulation).

OPI GelColor:

• First, check that the name and the product code of the colour on the label underneath the bottle is correct by visiting the OPI website:
  

• The bottom label should be peelable revealing a list of ingredients:
  

• The label itself should be very well stuck onto the base if you can remove this label easily be wary
• Fake bottles seem to be slightly shorter when compared to genuine bottles
• Genuine bottles have a finely ribbed base. Many fakes have no ribbed base or the ribbed texture is chunkier (see above photo)
• The unit measurements on the front of the bottle; the letter "L" of "mL" should be upper case and the "fl.oz." all lower case (NOTE: as of writing this is the current format of this text, OPI has made changes over previous bottle designs with upper and lower case variations of these letters):
  

• On fakes, the placing of the OPI text on the front of the bottle is higher than genuine bottles
• There should be an embossed OPI logo on the neck of the brush in the correct font. This is quite difficult to see but it is there, you will need to clear the polish from the brush
• Genuine OPI brushes are thick, with many bristles, and flatten down to provide good coverage. Fakes will have a thinner poor quality brush
• The shoulders of fake bottles are often less curved than genuine ones
• The inside of the cap has gear-like ridges all round:
  

• The OPI logo on the top of the cap should have a small indented dot in the middle of the ‘P’:
  

•  Fake polish has an unpleasant smell compared with genuine polish

OPI Infinite Shine:

• As above
• Genuine OPI Infinite Shine has two small steel balls inside the polish – turn the bottle on its side to see them:
  

• The printed text on the bottles should feel raised to the touch

OPI Nail Lacquer:

• As above
• Genuine OPI Nail lacquer has two small steel balls inside the polish – turn the bottle on its side to see them:
  

• Fake caps are not as textured as the genuine ones:
  

• The printed text on the bottles should feel raised to the touch

Note that fake bottles vary in quality with some exhibiting many of the above points and some exhibiting very few but used as an overall guide this information will help you to form a ‘gut feeling’ on whether your OPI is genuine or not.